‘General’

We are about to start house building on the farm but have a problem as the irrigation water will be cut off for at least 2 months.  As the builder will need a huge amount of water for the concrete and brickwork he has to do we decided to rejuvenate an old ‘pileta’ or underground storage tank that we have close to the building site.

Digging out the old water storage tank

The tank is about 2m by 2m by 2m and was partially full of earth and rubbish. In the past it had one of its walls knocked in to provide a slope for cattle to use to walk down for a drink.
We have never done any work like this, but we had one week to dig out the rubbish, rebuild 1 underground wall, carry out cement repairs and line the whole with a cement based plaster.

In the trench, behind the spade, is an old cement floor from an earlier house

A trench was dug connecting the pileta with an irrigation ditch and a PVC pipe laid in it with a filter to keep out leaves etc. Whilst digging the trench and (later) the house footings we came across old cement floors and footings and coloured chunks of plaster indicating yet another house once stood here. More of that in a future post.

When the pileta was completed we painted it in swimming pool paint to help keep it leak tight.

Any colour as long as it is blue

The paint should have had 5 days to dry, but all it received was 3 days as we filled it with some irrigation water for a farm further downstream, 1 day before it was cut off for the whole area. Our work was OK as the pileta did not leak at all.

No sooner had the pileta been filled, then  it was emptied by the builder! He had built a bund around where the house was to go and filled it with nearly 6000 litres of water to help compress the earth before digging footings.  And to make matters worse – he wanted anoher 6000 litres to further compress it.

Water is pumped onto the site to compress the earth

We were saved by the local shop owner who has a well and a pump. He very kindly allowed us to fill our empty 220 litre oil drums with water to replenish the pileta. And with 4 drums on the back of the pick up (880 litres) at a go, that was a lot of trips.

The local municipality were great too and their water tanker dropped off a few thousand litres when they could spare it. Thanks to both those people we were now able to start and continue building.

But before we could build anything we needed steel, sand, gravel and bricks to be delivered to the site.

I filled the irrigation supply ditch for our neighbour with earth, stones and logs so that heavy traffic could access our work site on the promise that it would all be cleared away before irrigation started again.

Temporary access bridge for lorries

Tuesday 10th May was the first day of some frantic activity.

The site for the house

The 3 point linkage did not fit our tractor.

The new farm entrance looking from the road

Overflowing irrigation ditch added to the 'interest'

Site levelling in progress

Stuck in the flooded new entrance

Everyone busy working before dusk falls

Measuring up for the initial stakes to go in.

April has been a busy month and one which has seen dramatic changes as we enter autumn.

We have had a couple of days of high winds followed buy some early morning frosts and a steady drop in day time temperatures.  The trees are stunning as autumn paints their leaves in infinite shades of green and brown and yellow. Our vines were caught by one of these frosts and at first we were terrified we had lost them all. Apparently not, provided daytime temperatures continue to fall, and provided we do not water them (and it does not rain either), they will start to go dormant for the winter.
A big sigh of relief all round.

Our first section of perimeter fence (last month’s post) now has all 7 wires fitted and tensioned and the wooden spacers wired in place. It looks impressive when viewed from outside the farm and well worth the effort. Only another 300 yards to go!

All 7 wires are now in place

Our quinces ripened and we harvested some to make our own quince cheese (Dulce de Membrillo) and quince jelly (Jalea de Membrillo).

Harvesting quinces

The best fruit was selected

Selected quinces for the cheese and jelly

and once again our kitchen became a jam factory

Quinces in the pan

And now we have quite a selection of home made jams to last us the year.

Our home made jams

At the time of writing a fruit buyer has purchased the rest of our crop but we are still waiting for him to turn up with a lorry and gang of pickers.

Hare hunting with dogs (usually greyhounds) is a very popular pastime here. Many a time we have seen and heard them hunting close by the farm. The other day, when we drove into our entrance, we saw a group of men and dogs at the far end of one field. We drove over to where they were and chatted with them and explained, politely, that we did not want any hunting or shooting on our farm. No problem, they accepted our request and left.

A hare hunter leaves the farm with his dogs

And his friend leaves too

Now that autumn has arrived the whole farm is covered in a carpet of fallen leaves.

27 acres of leaves to sweep up!

Next time you moan about having to sweep up the leaves in your garden, spare a thought for us with around 5 kilometers ( about 3 miles) of various sized irrigation diches to keep clear of fallen leaves!

Ditches become nature's collages at this time of year

But with scenes like this it is a pleasure to rake them up.

Although we are only about 115 miles from the highest peaks of the Andes the atmospheric conditions can considerably change how much of them are actually visible to us. From our viewpoint there seem to be 3 or 4 groups of peaks behind each other. This picture was taken from near the farm on a rare day when the tallest, snow covered peaks were visible. Later, on the drive home it was getting cloudier and the tallest peaks became visible, showing themselves above the cloud layer. Impressive.

A rare glimpse of the snow covered peaks

Sorry, but it is artistic photo time again. This was taken as we left having just completed a night time irrigation of the vineyard.

The moon rises above the farm entrance