The summer of 2005, Donald stayed at the Casa Grande ranch, while the girls and I headed to the John Day ranch. We were anticipating the erection of the horse barn that fall and Donald would be trenching for the water and electric lines, and then join us in Oregon later.
As it turned out, Donald ended up with Valley Fever that summer. It is unique to the Sonoran desert, and is acquired by inhaling spores found in the soil that then deposit in your lungs. It has different symptoms, but commonly acts like pneumonia. Unfortunately, the treatment with antibiotics for that misdiagnosis irritates the Valley Fever spores and makes things worse. It can be debilitating for some and even cause death. My dad had it the year prior and it really kicked his butt. We were suspicious immediately and requested the blood test to verify, but not before they gave Donald antibiotics for the misdiagnosed lung infection. Of course, they insisted that he had heart burn for a couple hours while we waited for them to arrange the lung x-ray.
His Valley Fever was diagnosed after the girls and I had arrived in Oregon. Typical Donald, he didn't let on how bad he really was. So he attempted to work in the 110+ degree summer, trenching and hand shoveling. He would last a couple hours and then he would sleep almost the rest of the day and night.
2005 was also the summer that Donald experienced the wrath of his first "microburst." A microburst is like a desert dust devil on steriods. This isolated tornado blew through the ranch at wind speeds documented by the weather station just east of the ranch, at 90 mph. Then came the torrential rains. Donald was trapped in the modular house that was placed on its jacks by the previous owner. The house was shaking and Donald thought for sure the wind would shatter the windows.
When the worst of it was over, Donald went out to investigate the damage.
When we purchased the property, there was the little house and some stalls that housed the previous owner's stallions. They were heavy duty. We had our RV and a horse trailer parked on the property, along with our personal vehicles at that time. The materials for the barn to be built were on the property at this point as well. We also had acquired a very large tank for capturing rainwater and irrigation overflow that was still on the flatbed trailer.
After the storm, the horse stalls resembled a spider carcass with the pipe rails twisted and mangled and deposited about a half mile south of the property. They were unsalvageable. Debris had flown through the air and smashed windows on the RV and one of our cars. The A/C units on top of the RV were ripped off and blown away. Donald found the water tank about 4-5 miles away in a wash, but that was about 4 months later. There was standing water everywhere. Tools had been thrown and then submerged so that they were found (and are still being found) scattered throughout the desert. The air compressor was completely submerged and ultimately destroyed. Horse blankets and supplies were underwater. Fortunately, no horses were home at the ranch for this storm.
Donald sent us pictures of the damage. It was frightening that a storm could do that much damage. But we were the lucky ones, not too far away, people with similar homes had them tossed over. We realized that we had another issue that needed to be addressed and planned for in the overall design of our property; water.
When we arrived at the ranch we had been niave about the damage storms could do. With paved roads, "stick-built" homes, water drainage, and wind breaks we never had been adversely effected. We quickly realized we were going to have to make some modifications so that we could weather the storms.
Years later after the horse barn had been erected, Donald and I recognized a storm heading our way and set to the task of preparing. We tarped the hay, brought in the horses, moved vehicles to the compacted gravel surfaces and unplugged the electronics in the house. Usually with a storm the electricity would go off more often than not. By the time we got the last horse in, the down pour trapped us in the barn. We figured it was a hard rain that would be short lived and we would wait it out. But this one just kept coming down and as we waited we watched the waters rising all around us. The water was flowing so fast that it was eroding the soil like time-elapsed photography. We were reminded of the importance of getting busy on that plan to deal with all the water that we could potentially get at one time.
Ironically, that week (yes we finally made out of the barn to the house), I heard a radio interview on NPR about rainwater harvesting. Brad Lancaster from Tucson was talking about capturing the rain water and reusing it. http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/ Donald and I had just spent those hours in the barn watching the rainwater beating down on the roof to the ground, swelling, and running across the property to the adjacent field set at the next tier, and decided we needed to figure out the next step to take advantage of all that water by catching it, or re-directing it. We had elevated our roadways and put down AB gravel for a parking area for vehicles and equipment. But more was necessary.
I spent some time reading Lancaster's work and doing some research about rainwater and greywater harvesting. Donald started designing some ways to make use of the rain water. Some ideas were pretty simple; gutters to holding tanks or rain barrels, creating low areas for planting. He also designed and set up a way to capture the water from our horse wash bay. The water drains to plumbing that runs underground to a French drain situated under newly planted trees. These were planted next to the future site of our round pen.
Donald also designed a drainage system that would be under our round pen.
The soil here on the property is primarily clay. Water sits on top of it for days at a time depending on the rain fall. So many horse facilities are basically inoperable when the rain hits, because the riding areas are flooded. We wanted to avoid that situation. We dug parallel trenches across the location of the future round pen. A porous landscape material was placed in the trenches and filled with large rounded rock. The landscape material was wrapped around the rock and covered with a sand. The area was once again level and bedding sand was spread over the area and the round pen panels installed. Now when it rains the water is able to drain through the sand and instead of sitting on top of the clay foundation, it drains down into the trenches. The trenches were dug so that they all had a slope that drains the water to the east at which point a perpendicular trench butts up to the others for a final collection point. Trees and other vegetation will be planted behind this so that their roots can take advantage of the underground water supply.
Just this week I finally finished planting 10 new trees. There is a trench that runs from the irrigated horse pasture that will provide irrigation to the trees through the summer. We have to irrigate the pasture as often as every 2 weeks, so in between I will be carrying water in the front loader of the tractor to get those baby trees off to a good start.
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