One of the most amazing things I remember seeing as a child, was when I first traveled out of the state of Arizona and realized that the farms were growing crops just using the rain that fell out of the sky. I still have a hard time believing that it is possible for a plant, other than a native desert plant, like a fruit tree or a vegetable, to grow without supplemental water from a sprinkler or a ditch.
We have always grown a garden, now for more than forty years, and each and every plant depended entirely on the water we provided from a hose on the side of the house. If we missed even one watering session, we risked losing the whole garden. If we left town, we had to arrange for someone to come over and water the garden, a common neighborhood task.
Modern irrigation can involve hugely expensive pumps and equipment, with automated sprinkler systems running in gigantic circles. But along side these computer operated high-tech systems, there are still the old faithful irrigation ditch with its gravity fed watering system.
The whole idea is to block a river or stream with a diversion dam at a level above the place where the water is needed. The water is then conducted downhill in a series of canals and ditches passing through diversion gates, until it finally gets to the field where it is to be used. I learned very early in life that the water does not run from the feeder ditch into the rows, but is siphoned in by large plastic pipes. When doing the irrigation, you put a hand over the end of the pipe and fill it with water from the ditch by dunking it in the water. When the pipe is full of water, you drop the pipe over the ditch bank and the weight of the water starts a siphoning action draining water through the pipe to the row in the field. It is very hard work and fortunately, I didn't have to irrigate too many times using siphons. Some people do that almost every day of their lives.
But, before there was plastic pipe, you had to build little feeder ditches to each row and stand there and make sure the water got to each row and then shovel like crazy before the water flooded over the rows and washed away the plants.
Irrigation ditches were a subject of constant maintenance. The ditch banks would get soft from the water and eventually leak. Small leaks always became larger leaks. I was already through with field irrigation by the time someone thought about lining a ditch with cement.
By the way, I didn't mention that the water was stored in huge reservoirs and delivered to the fields in large canals or feeder ditches. During the growing season the water runs 24/7 and you get your irrigation turn by virtue of the number of water shares you own on a rotating basis. So, guess what? Your water turn can come any day of the week, including Sundays and holidays and can be at any time, 2:00 am, 3:00 am. You get the picture. Almost nothing, not even funerals or weddings will interfere with a water turn. I can't tell you how much fun it is to get up at 2:00 am and try and find the water head and lead the water down to your field or lot. It is a lot of work trying to turn a ditch full of water down a side ditch and then dam off the main ditch so the water will run down your feeder ditch.
Irrigation from a ditch turns the whole field into a swamp. That is why it is sometimes called flood irrigation. I am intimately acquainted with a variety of types of mud in Arizona. Most people have a set of boots or shoes left by door or in a shed specifically dedicated to irrigation.
It is somehow comforting however, to realize that right now, somewhere in Arizona dozens, perhaps hundreds of people are standing out in the heat, rain or shine, irrigating fields.
Our friends make a living running irrigation for various people or businesses by contract. Like you wrote, they work nights, weekends, holidays -- whenever the irrigation is scheduled by the water company.
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