Even better than the picnic pecan is our neighbors. The first day I visited the land I dropped by the neighbor's house and asked them about water, electric and what they knew of the history of the land. They were as friendly as Texas! And ever since we make it a habit to drop by and say hi. They even invited us to a BarBQ with even more neighbors in attendance. I can't wait to put on a brisket feast in return. (More future plans...) Anyway, the photo is of our neighbor shredding about 1/2 acre in the South East corner where we will be planting the orchard.
After shredding and in addition to chopping vines from a copse of trees, I made the first measurements of the slope from the planned water harvesting tank to the orchard. The land slopes away in all directions from the SE corner. We will build a water harvesting shed with a 1700 gallon tank which will service the orchard of a dozen trees with some left over for some garden use. I needed to know if the slope is sufficient to generate enough head for drip irrigation without the need of a pump.
With a 50" board, a level and a tape measure I took measurements of rise over run every 10 paces from the point I staked out as the likely water tank outlet. The average was 4.75":50" which gives about a 9.4% slope. I sketched this out and calculated that we have a 4' 8" drop at 50' which is about where the 1st row would be. The tank will be elevated on a pad which would give almost a 6' head which results in 2.7 psi at the first row. This is a bit low for drip irrigation where the recommended minimum pressure is between 15-30 psi. It looks like I might need to investigate a pump for the system too.
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