This is a
South view of ranch

Looking toward the south from north of the house.

The ranch would have been desert since the average amount of annual precipitation is only 8.62 inches (219.0 mm)and no doubt was desert before irrigation water was brought from the mountains. In 1909 a 5.8 mile Gunnison tunnel started sending water from the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River to the Uncompahgre Valley. Our ranch on the north end of the valley was one of the last to receive irrigation water. Going north from Delta to Grand Junction along the highway it is all desert and I imagine it looked much like this in the Uncompaghre Valley before it was irrigated.

The water arrived at the ranch at the south end and then into ditches that ran around the top of the fields. Each ranch was allocated a certain amount of water. When the water was in the ditch above the field it was controled with small dams made of pipes with plastic tarps that dammed the water and kept the water near the top of the ditch. Then aluminum pipes that were curved to lay on the side of the ditch were used to bring the water over the side of the ditch and down each row into the field. A couple of times a day the pipes had to be moved down to the next set of rows and siphoned to start the water through the pipes and into the field.

There was a fence that surrounded the ranch and in the winter I leased the ranch as pasture to a neighbor for his cattle. I also had a friend that had horses along with mine and they shared the pasture. I built a chicken coup and we had chickens, turkeys, two geese. The geese did not last long as they were very territorial and mean. Cynde was not happy with their attacking her whenever she was outside. We also raised a couple of pigs. There was an old root cellar built into the side of the hill north of the house. I replaced all the old shelves and repaired the roof. It consisted of logs horizontal above the shelves and covered with soil to keep the heat out and shed what rain water might come down

The cellar is on the side of the hill in the picture above.

The video below shows how I used the siphon tubes by pumping the tubes in the ditch and then laying the pipe over the side of the ditch to allow the water to siphon out of the ditch down the rows and into the field. When the water had saturated the ground the pipes were moved down to the next section of ditch. I had about 30 pipes I ran at a time. Mice and snakes would sometimes be hiding in the pipes and as I would start pumping the pipes in the water they would be bumping my hand trying to find a way out.