- Submitted by Mike Pitko Irrigation, Reminiscences of Robert Hodge – Story 5 of 10 This is the fifth in a series of stories that Robert Hodge wrote in the 1980s about his childhood experiences growing up in Lawrence.
“Summers in Kansas can be very dry and in the sandy soil where we lived surface water drained so rapidly that gardens required watering to be maintained. If the garden was small and consisted of flowers or vegetables, watering could be done with a sprinkling can or, if you had “city” water or an electric pump, you could use a garden hose. If your “garden” consisted of several acres of strawberries, a better system was necessary.
“My grandfather drilled a well. He did the work himself, with the aid of his sons and son-in-law. The result was the sinking of a six-or eight-inch casing, to keep the sandy walls from caving in, and the use of a sand point, about a yard of closed pipe with tiny holes in it to allow the water to seep in while the pipe was actually in the sand, a pump which could fill constantly, a 2-inch pipe and a gasoline engine to operate the pump.
“That engine, when running, made a very loud “putt putt” noise, very rhythmic most of the time. It had a tendency to miss occasionally, and in the really dry weather, ran day and night. The night, punctuated with the “putt putt,” made sleeping fit full.
“At first, the water simply flowed into a shallow ditch along the top edge of the field, and from this feeder ditch diverted by dams constructed or destroyed as necessary to run the water into trenches made between the rows of strawberries.
“An improvement was made when the shallow ditch was replaced by a long one and one-half inch pipe punctuated about every twelve rows by a “T” shaped coupling with a reducer (to one inch) and the replacement of the trenches by the appropriate sized pipe which ran the length of the row. About every two feet, this pipe was penetrated by a nipple which let the water squirt out maybe six feet high in a jet. If the pipe were turned so the nipples were straight up, only the rows next to the pipe were “rained” upon, turning the pipe at different angles to the right or left would allow as many as six rows away on either side to be watered. The angle of the pipe was changed about every hour and this task became the responsibility of my grandmother while grandpa was working, unless she could get a son or grandchild to go out and use the pipe wrench to twist the angle of the pipe with nipples.
“When twelve rows had been watered “sufficiently,” the sections of pipe were disassembled, moved over 12 rows and reassembled. An alternative to the laborious process was to round up enough help to pick up the entire row-length of pipe and walk it over in one piece.
“It was later discovered that if the pipe was put up on poles, it could cover nearly twice the area, so wooden poles were set up about every 24 rows or so and the pipes were installed permanently.
“My father, taking the cue from the success of the irrigation system of his father, also sank a casing in the center of our largest field and installed a pump and engine protected by a pump house. Instead of using the heavy galvanized pipe my grandfather used dad bought aluminum pipe which had upright sprinklers that threw water in large (25 foot) circles. The pipe was not “threaded” but had a clamping mechanism which made it extremely easy to assemble and disassemble without the need of wrenches. The pipe was so light my dad could carry two-fifteen-foot lengths at one time, a similar length of 2-inch galvanized pipe would have required two persons to move each section.
“These irrigation systems were, at that time, rare, and the sight of the water spraying on the two adjoining fields caused lots of “sight seers” to slow down and gawk as they drove past.”
