Confidence in Irrigation Tasks

#bfrdpwy #aginternship #RightRisk

My main points of work experience from this week consisted of irrigation, moving cattle, leading trail rides, and fixing vehicles. I have been improving on my knowledge and practice of irrigation. Putting up dams to flood sections has become easier for me and I am able to complete irrigation tasks on my own. The only thing I am still trying to figure out when and where exactly to move dams and water. Moving cows has been a good opportunity to practice working well with my coworkers.

An idea that came to my attention this week while working more on irrigating, is how the sustainability of resources looks like for this kind of irrigation. I know that our water intake from the sources are monitored, but flood irrigation has to be an intense use of water. Also, how do we know if any of these ranches around here use or don’t use fertilizers and pesticides that might contaminate the water that eventually flows back into the Snake River? There are probably modern solutions to these questions, but it might be something to pursue.

Some questions I have from this week are mostly about the irrigation. I am still wondering about how this kind of irrigation compares in efficiency to pivot irrigation, but I think it might also depend on the kinds of grasses that are growing, and most pastures in this area are flood irrigated so it might be difficult to draw an accurate conclusion. We have been moving our dams every day so I also wonder what difference it would make to move them every half day or two days compared to daily.

What I plan to do with this information that I picked up this week is to continue to learn from my irrigation route, more about the bigger picture. I am hopeful that I’ll be able to understand when and where dams need to be for the most successful irrigation. I also have been improving on my horsemanship and will hopefully continue to do that by spending the time on it. I am also aware that my time at the ranch is now beyond halfway over so I plan to look back at the things I wondered about on day one and the things that I have learned since then to make the last half of the internship be the best it can be.

Submitted by: Mack Mlnarik
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team