0:00Hi guys, Jonathan here with Farmers Friend and we're at Bountiful Blessings Farm again with my dad, John. We're going to be talking about rain and water

0:07management on your farm. Uh first of all, we're going to start with just working in the rain and systems that they have and uh tools they have to get

0:17the jobs done even on a rainy day. And then I guess we'll move down to more of the drainage and topography for managing

0:26lots of rain. Obviously, there's there's a lot of options when it comes to rain gear and

0:34um you know, from from cheap stuff up to super expensive, you know, hundreds of

0:41dollars of rain gear, we've kind of settled on something kind of in between.

0:48Um, a couple names I would recommend, Grundons is is a is a good name and um,

0:58Hely Hansen. They've got kind of a in between line. You know, obviously if if

1:05money is not an option, I mean, if if money is not an obstacle, um, get the best stuff you can afford.

1:15But having said that, well, let me just say I I like the bibs for for a couple

1:22reason. Well, the main reason being that when you're cleaning bins or pressure washing anything like that, um, these

1:32work great to keep you dry even when you don't need the coat. So, so I think bibs

1:39are good and a good coat. But the downside to rain gear is that the

1:48the really waterproof stuff is so hot.

1:55And so in the summer, you're going to be sweating a lot inside your rain gear.

2:02And so the question is, why am I wearing this? I'm getting wet anyway.

2:07So, in my opinion, rain gear is really more of a winter thing when you really

2:14don't want to get wet. Um, and the summer you're going to get wet. That's just the way it works.

2:21Yeah. Or wait until the thunderstorm passes. Yeah. Yeah. If if you can do that,

2:28that's helpful. Or kind of,

2:32you know, if you have covered growing space.

2:34Well, yeah. That's the covered growing space solution um for for wetness is invest in in covered growing area.

2:44That's huge in my opinion because Yeah.

2:48you've always got somewhere you can work when it's raining. Yeah.

2:53Yeah. And I think it's ideal not to have to be out working in the rain, but if you have uh deliveries that you have to

3:00meet, you know, harvesting that's got to be done and there's a rainstorm coming through, you got to do what you got to do. Yeah.

3:06Um but it's just like Yeah. You don't really like you you're not going to be out prepping beds and planting in the rain if uh under most circumstances.

3:17Under most circumstances. We we definitely have planted in the rain,

3:24but um yeah, it it's uh covered growing space is huge. We've had a super wet

3:32spring this year and it's still fairly wet even into the summer. Um without our

3:40covered growing spaces, we would have been toast this spring, honestly. Yeah.

3:48So, let's move on to talking about covered growing space and then more managing drainage, which because of the

3:56lay of land here, I think we naturally don't have as much of a drainage issue,

4:00but we've still had some issues to deal with, and you can talk about that a little bit. Yeah, we we're blessed to have

4:09um most of our growing land on on a slight slope. You know, you obviously

4:16you don't want too much slope because then you get into erosion issues, but if

4:23you can run your fields with the slope and then have space between the fields for water to to run down. The other

4:32thing you'll notice, hopefully you can see from here, um, is between our field,

4:40you know, we have two plots in line and we've got a section of grass in between.

4:47So for that occasional time when you may have bare soil and you get a a

4:54torrential downpour, that grass is going to catch your soil and it's not going to just run off Yeah.

5:02the farm totally. So having some grass buffer kinds of places is helpful. Yeah.

5:10Yeah, for sure. Well, let's walk down here and show people how you have the some of the high tunnel pads set up.

5:18So, I I feel like a lot of people don't pay enough attention to slope and and drainage when it comes to their tunnels.

5:29And uh we we spent a lot of time and effort up front um leveling off our pads for our

5:37tunnels. And I have no regrets about that. You know, if if you put a tunnel

5:44on any kind of slope, you're going to deal with water running through it,

5:50which is not something you want to deal with. You know, I I would say if you run your tunnels on a slope, which you know,

5:58we do have these caterpillar tunnels here on a slope, but it's with the slope. So, as the rain comes off the

6:07tunnel, it's going to go downhill rather than across the tunnel.

6:12Yeah, makes sense. Um, so here, you know, we've got, you just have to keep in mind that there's a lot of water coming off your tunnels.

6:24Uh, so we've got these swailes, so the water coming off is directed away from

6:31the tunnels and you're not dealing with with water just running through the tunnels.

6:40Yeah. And I know that doing this much much excavation uh can be challenging

6:48because you're taking top soil, you're digging way down into subs soil in the case of like this top pad here. And

6:56hopefully you can bring back some of the top soil on the pad, but you're still dealing with very disrupted soil that in

7:04a lot of instances can take, you know, a while, a few years to really kind of reconstruct it. So, that's a downside,

7:11but you know, if you're planning on doing this longterm, it's probably worth paying the price for a few years to get a really dialed in setup. Yeah. Yeah,

7:22it's a good point. You you definitely it's kind of a one step back, two steps

7:28forward kind of thing. Um you you can get into soil issues where you know one

7:37end of your pad is is down in subs soil and yeah you just have to work a little

7:43harder and it does take some time but again I think the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

7:52Yeah. Cool. Well I'm trying to think if there's anything else we can touch on.

7:55Do you have any other Yeah. The the other thing I would say is just talking about the actual soil. Um,

8:03you know, obviously sandy soil is not an issue because it drains so quickly.

8:11Um, and and the the big issue is with with high clay soils, which of course we have quite a bit of here in the south.

8:22Um, that's where you get into trouble if you're work trying to work in the soil or with the soil when it's very wet.

8:30But again, I think I've mentioned this before, the the solution is increasing your organic matter cuz if you have high organic matter, you can't compact it.

8:43Mhm.

8:44Um so anything you can do to increase your organic matter is actually going to make your soil much more workable

8:52um in wet weather. And then again, you know, you've got your pathways and

8:59you've got your beds. And as long as you're staying in your pathways when it's wet, you're not messing up anything

9:08in the beds. So, just try to stay out of the beds as much as possible. If your

9:14soil is not the ideal organic matter content, you know, it's best not to work it when it's wet.

9:23But again, um the more organic matter you get in there, the more you can

9:30actually plant or whatever in the rain and it's not a big deal.

9:34Yeah. Cool. Well, I think it's a lot of good tips. The last thing that comes to mind that uh that I think we could share is um the use of silage tarp. You know,

9:44there's a lot of uses for silage tarp,

9:46but one thing that that I've seen a lot of people do is use silage tarp to cover a field plot. Like say you you have crops that have to go in in the next

9:54couple of days and you have a big storm coming that's just going to drench it.

9:58If you have tarps that are ready to be quickly deployed, you can just put the tarp down and that'll protect the field

10:07plot and once the rain passes, you can just pull it off and you know, you know,

10:12you don't have muddy soil that you have to work with. So,

10:14yeah. And and again, you're you're back to drainage issues. You know, if if the

10:21water is just running under your silage tarp, that's not doing much good. But if if you've got good drainage away from your fields,

10:31then yeah, that's that's a good Yeah. Yeah. And you know, if if somebody has to do a lot of excavation like we

10:39have in this area here, that can be quite costly. But if you just had a relatively flat field like this and you just want somebody to come in and cut

10:48some some swailes between, that's pretty inexpensive, you know. So, that's a that's a good place to start if you need

10:56just some drainage swailes along the top side of your fields and maybe between your field plots to control water flow.

11:03Um, just get somebody with a with a bulldozer out there that can just cut those for you and it'll save you a lot of headache down the road for sure. So,

11:11yeah, I think the the key here is just think ahead. you know, have a master plan and um don't just be throwing up

11:21tunnels or whatever without a real thought about where is all this water going to go. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, I

11:29hope this information has been helpful to you all as you are maybe uh working on developing your farm or working on

11:37figuring out ways to improve it. So, if you have any questions that you would like us to consider answering in a future video, reply to this email with those questions and we will do that. Uh,

11:47until next time, happy growing.

11:50[Music]