What a fantastic set of photos in this thread,fantastic views and great photos of machines at work.Thanks for posting.
Martyn

Hi guys i left Heidricks in the late sixties and returned to the UK to farm the family farm. Fred Heidrick said i would return to California and i said never? 20 years later i returned on vacation and visited some of my workmates still with Heidricks that tells you what good employers they were and still are.They virtually had to push me on the plane to go home. ps ido not have many pics but will dig out what i have. all the best Atlas

Hi guys i left Heidricks in the late sixties and returned to the UK to farm the family farm. Fred Heidrick said i would return to California and i said never? 20 years later i returned on vacation and visited some of my workmates still with Heidricks that tells you what good employers they were and still are.They virtually had to push me on the plane to go home. ps ido not have many pics but will dig out what i have. all the best Atlas.

"cojhl2" wrote:

Where does the water come from? That big thing on the end of the suction line, is that a screen?

Yes that would be the screen on the end of the 10" suction hose.

The water is pumped from the white box that delivers water from the irrigation district that has historic water rights on the San Joaquin River and purchases water from the federal government under contract as an exchange for the water that was diverted when Friant Dam was built further up the river.

That particular field requires water to be pumped through 3 lift stations to receive river water. The first lift is 80' and the other 6 lift stations are 40'. Water from the federal project can also be delivered to that lateral via a gravity pipeline.



A picture of the outside of one of the lift stations.

A picture of 4800 volt pumps inside house #1 ranging in size from 100 hp in the middle and 400 hp out on the edges.

Picture of a 3306 cat powered pump further to the south in the same district irrigating cantaloupe.

Preparing land for walnut new walnut orchard March 27, 2010 near Northeast of Vina CA.

Here are a few shots of the tile-a-palooza from last fall. I see Mt. St. Helens ash is still around, although a few feet down now. That stuff has made some nasty hard chunks down there and although they don't show up in the pics it was really evident. Owner made 4-5 passes through with the 5 before pulling the line and that thing is a load for the Challenger 65 as well. It worked good and I sashayed through those draws with the harrow the other day with no problem.

Ground temp checked in at 41 degrees Thurs. and plenty chilly to start seeding for now. I'll try to take the Nikon out with me when we get started since the cell phone doesn't cut it for detail.

98J pity the poor soul in the black Challenger when the weather turns up, they are not known for AC efficiency.

Bleedinred- nice looking tile rig, we have layed many miles of drain tile down here on our place mostly in the 80s and 90s, have to do some more on the rented ground we picked up recently lots of springs and wet spots out there even on a drier year like this.

How deep do you guys put tile around there? We go down ontop of the clay fragipan most places at 30 inches or so, other places we have to do a little shallower because of the all the rocks.

And I know what you mean about that cold soil, we have been just above 40º soil temp for weeks now, snowed a couple inches this past week and freezes up at night. Managed to go out and play in the mud this afternoon and put on some more fertilizer. Mud was sticking to the tires most places and I almost got stuck in a wet spot right before it started raining this evening. We still havent dried out enough on the majority of the acreage to get a cultivator across the ground. This year seems kind of odd that we managed to get seed in the ground weeks before we can even cultivate the rest.


Iron appraiser- Nice pics, keep them coming.

Atlas- it would be great if you have any more pics of any type- not just cat to post.

NIF, about the same depth you mentioned. Power and traction are the issue, although over the years we see some showing up in washed draws. This year was bad for erosion with the rain that came after the partial thaw--more than we've seen in a long time. Quite a few years ago we put in a lot of feet with white perforated pvc and a backhoe--that is still working good, probably better than this way but it took a lot of time.

Iron Appraiser--what model is the D4? Havn't seen one of those before. Fellow up here by the name of Clark had quite a collection of yellow several years ago and I believe had some orchards. That collection was pretty much sold off I heard, never did get up there to look at them. How do you set up your irrigation--ditch?

On December 11th 2009 I took this picture of the D9 that I hired to rip the 45 acres of land, which we had just removed almond trees from after the 2009 harvest.

After 1 week and 48 degree F soil temp the block posted last week has started to push, now they are predicting frost in a few days.

Here is the next block being irrigated.