| September, 1997 |
THE LATEST SCOOP ON YOUR FARMLAND |
Volume 9, Number 3 |
Pump Repairs
The pump which supplies the irrigation water for our land failed during July. Actually, it failed twice. On the first occasion, the motor's top bearing failed and the the motor also required rewinding. This repair took four days. When our tenant put the pump back to work, it ran two days and then failed again. The second time it failed because its column separated. The second repair also took four days.
Our thanks go to the great folks at West Side Pump Company in San Joaquin, California. They did outstanding work getting the pump repaired.
The irrigation pump motor in its new coat of white paint.
Two days after the pump repairs were completed, the pipeline which distributes the irrigation water along the upper edge of our farm broke. Our tenant repaired the pipeline himself. This repair delayed the irrigation for yet another day. During July, our tenant's cotton fields went a total of nine extra days without irrigation. Luckily for us and our tenant, this past summer was one of the mildest in living memory, so the cotton was damaged less by this "drought" than it would have been during a normally hot summer.
The result of these irrigation problems will be a yield loss in our tennant's cotton fields. As this is being written, at the end of September, we do not know how much that yield loss will be, nor what effect the yield loss and the repair expenses will have on our rent.
Robert Sturgeon
Publisher, Editor, Reporter, Ace Photographer, Newsroom Flunky, Webmaster
rsturge@inreach.com
http://www.vistech.net/users/rsturge