Water Weekend

Spring is here, and that means our list of things to do is getting bigger even faster than it was before. For example, Saturday morning we were involved in a "ditch cleaning".

Let me spend a few minutes here talking about "ditches". When we talk about "ditches" in Trout Lake - or in any agricultural area - we are talking about irrigation ditches. An irrigation ditch is essentially a man-made ditch for water to travel, with the purpose of bringing water near or through pieces of land that need irrigation. The "headgate" supplies water to the ditch, either via gravity or a pump; the water then flows downhill through the ditch, being split into multiple channels along the way; individuals divert water from the ditch, again via gravity or a pump, to provide water to their property; at the end of the ditch the water flows back into a natural waterway (stream, river, etc.)

Trout Lake has 6 different, non-intersecting ditches. Each ditch is managed by a ditch company, and each property along the ditch has shares in the ditch. The shares allow each person to use a certain volume of water per year (though the amount used is typically on the honor system). This photo shows our pump, and how we use boards to raise the water level high enough so the pump can pull the water out of the ditch. (This section of ditch is actually our "diversion" and not in the main ditch; it is "diverted" from the main ditch to serve our property and the property directly south of us before ending back in a stream.) It's more complicated than that, but you probably don't care.

There's a lot to know about ditches, and we are certainly no experts. But the point of all of this (and why I brought it up in this particular post) is that every spring you have to clean out the entire length of ditch to remove anything that may block the flow of water: trees that have grown in; branches or logs that may have fallen in; boards that people may have put into the main ditch to raise the level; and beaver dams that inevitably show up every year. Since we're on two ditches, that means two ditch cleanings per year. This Saturday was the first this year, and we bought rubber waders to make it easier. I'll spare you the trauma that we endured in last year's cleaning (everyone else left after ~3 hours and didn't tell us, so we worked for 7), but the cleaning this year lasted only about 2 hours and went pretty smoothly, even though we were 2 of only 4 people who showed up.

We were happy that the cleaning only took two hours, because Donna came down from Seattle to visit the same weekend. While we were out cleaning ditches, she had brunch at Skamania Lodge with some old friends, then we all (including Leif) spent the rest of the day relaxing.

It turned out that irrigation water was not the only water-related activity this weekend, either. Saturday afternoon we lost all running water in our house. This lasted for a couple hours, then the water returned. Shortly thereafter, the water stopped again, then returned again. While we have our own well on our property, it has been capped and inactive since the Glacier Springs Water Association (aka Trout Lake "city water") extended their coverage area to include our property. We called around to our neighbors Tom and Bonnie to see if they were affected, since we share a supply line with them and they would likely be more familiar with the system that we would anyway. It turned out that a nearby underground supply line had been cracked; the combination of wet soil and heavy farm machinery caused compaction that drove a rock into the pipe. The entire south section of the water system had to be shut down until the pipe could be replaced. Thankfully, it only took them until dusk to complete the work, and water was permanently restored.

We spent the remainder of the weekend alternating between the kitchen and the yard. Corinne learned to make the family creme puff recipe, and I was very thankful.

- Mike (& Corinne)