Dig, Dig, Dig

This week Adam has been digging long trenches to deliver water from the rooftops to his big water tank. It's quite an operation! I already showed you the short ditch from the back of the barn to the tank. Now he's started the  L O N G  ditch from the barn to the house.

I'm standing at the corner of this trench near the barn. It runs through the (future) chicken yard, to the fence in the distance. From there it will slant over to the house and receive water from some water butts that will be elevated on stands at the back of the house. The butts themselves will be higher than the big water tank in the back of the field. So even though the ground slopes up from the house to the back of the field, the water should gravity feed into the tank.
Maggie (or Maggie-Moo, as Julia loves to call her) adores the trenches. She clambers down into them, roots around in the dirt, flops her belly on the cool soil, and settles in. I bet she's a hole-diggin' dog :)

She's so adorable when she jumps over the ditches!
Adam digs a shallow trench first and then returns to deepen it. He will run PVC pipe through all of it to carry the water.

Today the water trenches look like this:

The cut-off trench (above) runs from the main trench to the garage. He plans to collect water from all rooftops to keep his 1000-gallon tank full. If the big tank ever gets full, the overflow will be directed to a ditch that runs on the back of the property.

If you want a refresher on where these buildings are located, on the shot above, #3 is the barn. The big tank is to its right in that tree's dark shadow. A short trench runs between those two. The long trench runs from the corner of the barn straight toward the road, slanting to the house (#1) when it hits the green grass. A side trench runs from the main one to the garage, which is a faint red square behind the house/carport.
His back has been sore. But he's loving the farm work. He loves the outdoors and being with his dogs. And it gives him much time for prayer and thinking, which for a pastor is important work too.

The trench running toward the house.

The wheat field is quite green and growing.
Remember the passion fruit we were waiting to ripen? I think the flooding ruined them. That's mold growing on the side, and they are all shriveled and mushy. But Adam will save the seeds from them, and perhaps we'll plant some new ones for next year.

My mother asked me today, "When does he do all his pastoral work?" Here on the farm blog, it may look like all we ever do is farm, farm, farm! But Adam is also a pastor, technically part-time. He gets up about 4:30 each morning and spends several hours reading and doing his sermon and lesson preparations. So never fear, if you're worrying -- he has time for both. He teaches three times each week, usually visits at least once each week, does special services and community involvement for the church, and of course tends to emergencies that arise like hospitalizations or family crises, in addition to occasional counseling. As many men through the centuries have found, pastoral work and farm work are a good combination. God teaches interesting lessons in nature when a man (or woman) has his hands in the soil. And the farmer has time -- mental time -- to ruminate and ponder on what God is teaching him. All these things are good.