Although we hold a water use licence to be able to pump water from the Orara River, for the first 6 years on the farm we hadn’t put the infrastructure in place to be able to do so. As a result, when we planted out the gardens, we either relied on rainfall or utilised our precious rainwater.
The other challenge in the early days was that to take water to the various plantings across the farm and to provide water to our animals, we used to drag a long 100m hose all over the place to manage the water needs of the farm. While this was a big job, it is the way that we did it originally.
As the needs of the farm grew and the nature of the weather has been for it to become seasonally drier, the requirement to access water and conveniently direct it to parts of the farm that need it has been a critical construction which for the first time in Spring 2015 will allow us to maintain soil moisture. We are confident that this will also translate to increased growing success.
The whole system consists of a piston pump installed at the river with a lift height of about 7 metres from water level connected to about 800 metres of pipe installed along the edge of the property heading up towards the house and gardens eventually leading to two 22,000 litre irrigation tanks.
Oncer we have water in the irrigation tanks, a variable speed electric pump, received instructions from an electronic controller box in the shed where we can set all of the variables involved in being able to direct water to where it is needed most.
The physical series of pipes and electrical control cables works it way across the farm, offering a pressurised line to service automatic animal watering systems, hose taps, sprinklers and drip lines from smaller control points where needed.
In thinking about the future, the infrastructure is also installed and ready to extend the irrigation system to include the front paddock for both plantings and more animals with the simple ability to allocate control instructions to suit the expanded requirements.