The water is coming!

Everybody lives in a community with its own idiosyncrasies and rules. One of the strange ones of the place I live is water.

Since I live on a small farm in a rural farming community, water is super important to everyone around here. Unlike homes in the city, our pastures in this area are not watered by sprinklers, but rather every farm around here flood irrigates. This means there is a decent sized stream that is turned out to each and every farm by a series of dams and headgates and we all flood our fields with water. I did the math on it once, and with the amount of water coming through and the length of time I water, my 5 acres use a bit over 300,000 gallons of water each time I water!

Well, the stream is not always running down our ditch...we tend to see the water every 18-21 days and we just have to be ready when it comes whether that is noon or 2 in the morning! The days leading up to the water coming sees my neighbors driving around more, we all stop and chat about where the water is, if we are taking the water and who we will turn it out to when we're done. For a day after we water, I'll see the neighbors driving around, checking the fields to see if they advanced the water far enough, and to report to our watermaster how much was used. You see, the amount of water we are each allowed to use each year is finite. We can't just use as much as we want, but it is carefully tracked so we don't run out.

This is our little quirk in Benjamin that brings our community closer and has us talking to each other more. What do you do in your community that's unique to you?