Grape Stains: Springfield, NB

Week of May 30th

While Leeko was enjoying a much deserved break in Toronto, Leonard and I were busy finishing ripping vines out and sorting out some much needed drainage issues. Okay, to be fair, Travis and his fantastic excavator did most of this work, but Leonard and supervised, an always underrated skill...

But first I thought you might like to see how I could be spending my days, on the left, and how I often do spend my days, on the right. Though before you start feeling sorry for me :) there is an upside. When some of you were young and found it chilly in your house you likely asked your father if you could turn up the heat. He, again likely, in turn said to go stand outside for five minutes, come back in and you'd feel very warmed up. However slightly sadistic that logic is, it works in my case, because after a day of bouncing over furrows at 20 kph, my mustang on the road at 80 kph seems like heaven!

No, this isn't the underside of an outhouse. It is in fact a natural stream. The excavator had dug done maybe half a foot and found this. You probably cannot tell from a picture, but it was bubbling a few centimetres straight up and had been doing so for as long as we have had this land. It explains why this corner of our field was always so saturated and very little would grow.

It is much clearer here just how much water is on the ground...OR SPRINGS IN THE FIELD...wait a minute, field...spring...spring of field...nah, must have been thinking of something else.

To try and help resolve this problem we had some trenches dug to the ditch that runs along the edge of the property and filled them with 4 inch stone, creating a French drain. I will say it is successful as the upper drain was already filled with water by the end of the day!

We did sacrifice some of our field to the drains, but as they funnelled the excess water off the rest of it, it is a small price to pay to maximize our growing capacity (Oh, and before anyone suggests, yes the fields are drain tiled, it simply couldn't keep up with the amount of water we had).

On a more fun note, Travis let Leonard and I dig and drive the excavator at the end of the week. OOOHHH NELLIE! Do I know what I want for Xmas! It was like a video game. With a big dangerous bucket. Which tears a hole in anything. Including dirt, rocks and zombie nazis (Ok, not exactly like a video game :)