Wednesday 20 May 2015

Rain vs irrigation

The weatherman(?) has forecast rain starting today and lasting for several days, and he (or she) certainly didn't get it wrong about today. With the exception of a short 10-minute blast mid-morning (just as Helen was dashing down to the apartment to reset the electricity, only to realise it was a power cut), it wasn't the fierce, barrel-filling type of rain but more of a general damp, showery sort of rain that makes it hard to decide whether to try and work outside or not (not that it stopped my ever determined wife from heading out at 6.30am with her bike).



Despite Reggie's barking, I drifted back to sleep again and didn't wake until Helen came back into the bedroom at 9am to see if I was still alive.

After breakfast, I left Helen in the office and headed out to an irrigation shop that Alex had told me about in Pescia. I've spent the last few days working out our options for locating the six water-collection tanks that we're now the proud owners of and the height above the first vegetable beds we need them to be in order for there to be sufficient pressure to run drip irrigation. After posting a query on the extremely useful Permies internet forum (thanks again, Alex, for pointing me in the right direction), I was given some useful information on PSI, amongst other things. Apparently, every foot of height gives you 0.44 PSI of pressure - not much, but if we can build a platform against the first bank in front of the house just low enough to catch the rain water from the four-inch pipe that is already disposing of the rain water from the front of the roof, then we will have about 12ft, or just over 5PSI or 0.35 bar, which is just just enough (in theory) to run a low-pressure gravity-fed system, so little wiggle room in the design.

Anyway, off I went to Gaustapaglia with a couple of diagrams, a list of what I thought I needed and my pressure calculations to see what happened. I was a little daunted by this particular task - completely technical in nature and it involved going into one of those hidden away places that only men dare to enter. I figured if all went pear-shaped I could run away in the direction of OBI to poke around at their over-priced offerings (although from what I'd seen, they were missing half of what I needed). Either way, I was expecting to need to supplement my acquisitions with some Internet purchases.

I was greeted by a friendly old chap who took my drawing and fired a lot of questions my way. He was clearly very knowledgeable about the subject of irrigation, and over the course of the next 20 minutes, during which he kept disappearing off and returning with the next part of the puzzle, we assembled a full order list of bits and pieces, all of which they had in stock - even the bits I was expecting to have to order. This was a triumph in many ways, not only was my Italian just about holding up to the task, but we were saving time on waiting for orders that couriers wouldn't deliver and saving postage from the UK. This made my day, and I left leaving them to collate the order for collection this afternoon.

I got home at 12.30pm, the exact time we were supposed to be arriving at Alex and Donatella's for lunch, so we raced up the valley and arrived just at the skies were trying to clear. This afforded us the opportunity to walk around their vegetable garden to see their progress - despite the huge setbacks they've had this year, they're already way ahead of us! It's inspiring to see what we might be able to achieve with some time and effort, although it's still hard to believe we'll have that kind of food available to us here from our terraces despite things starting to grow in our vegetable beds.

After a good look around, we headed indoors to find the dining room table laden with delectable delights: hummus, baba ganoush, farro salad, carrot salad, chickpea salad, olives, sliced garlic (which I forgot to try!!), pappa al pomodoro and lovely fresh bread. Right up our street. They'd really pulled out all the stops for us and I fear we've got into some kind of cooking battle now, in which I think we'll be waving the white flag of surrender very soon! 

We enjoyed a very relaxed four-hour lunch finished with delicious vegan ganache, strawberries and soya ice cream. We could have stayed longer, having only just got onto talking politics and philosophy by the time we had to leave, were it not for Reggie being at home in his crate and me needing to collect the irrigation.

After a dash through Pescia "rush hour" (pah!) and having a demo of the connections, I left with 120 metres of drip-line irrigation pipe with built-in emitters that will deliver up to 2 litres per hour, per emitter, spaced at 30 cm (the optimum for vegetable growing supposedly); 25 metres of hose to run down the terrace that will link all of the irrigation pipe together; a pile of T connectors each with a tap so that we can turn off individual beds if needed (apparently onions don't like too much water, who knew?); a low pressure timer to automate the whole process so that not only can we concentrate on other things of an evening but we can go away for a few days if we need/want to (did I mention we've booked a little three-day trip away to a farm in Tuscany with Reggie?); a filter to stop the irrigation pipe clogging; and some end caps. So, all being well, on Friday we should (I say that with probably far too much optimism than is sensible) have a working irrigation system that should mean we are running at maximum efficiency with regards to water usage and labour.

If that wasn't enough for one day, when I got home I picked up Helen (who had gone back to her computer to do a little more work) and Reggie and headed back into town for a walk along the track to San Lorenzo and back - a successful walk where he tried to attack far fewer passing cars than he simply watched go by. By the time we got home it was nearing 8pm so time to feed Reggie and the cats, write a blog, put the geese away and settle down for the evening.

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