Planting Lavender

The long awaited moment of planting lavender arrived. With temperatures between 13C in the morning and rising fast to 39C, working against the clock to give the plants more chance to survive the transplant it was one tough job.
The first day we lost a field worker, luckily not a good one (the photographer). Got him a water/power management job and replaced him with much better Moses (no, he didn’t part our water).
During the three days, what it took us to have the job done, we used over 100.000 liters of water for irrigation and this couldn’t have been possible without the new, strong borehole. The first few weeks are critical for the plants to survive so in summer time we'll use 20.000 liters water per day.
Thank you team! Thelma,Tate Penda, Meme Penda, Willbard, Andreas and Moses (no, he didn’t make water from a rock in the desert).
Once the plants were in the ground we applied organic fertilizers through the drip irrigation system.
 Rain will be a great assistance so let’s hope we’ll have a good rainy season.

3000 seedlings in a box:

The hole makers:

Seedling:

Ready for planting

With the new borehole and a 4200 L/h submersible pump dropped in our water problem is ended.
The iron barn is finished as well. Now we are ready!
The seedlings are expected tomorrow, 11 November and the next day we should start planting.

Our new barn:

New borehole

We are now behind the schedule for planting but this was actually a good thing, it gave us time to test the irrigation system in daily working conditions and pick up the snags.
So we had to install a bigger pressure pump, then more solar panels - thank you Lucia.
The biggest concern was the water supply as the old borehole was not performing well. We decided to give it a cleaning up and see what happens. Unfortunately it was so messed up that not much we could do for it. We knew we are in deep sh…trouble.
The rig was at Kranzberg Lavender Fields anyway so a quick decision was made, drill a new bore hole.
But how to find the right spot? Easy! With professional advise from my geologist friend of Transylvanian origin, Andreas, Daniel’s experience, the mountains and rocks around telling us their story and a lot of optimism we start drilling. Only 30m! If there is no sign of water we give up.
At 50 m I start worrying. Call a neighbor, hey Dirk, how deep did you find water? 63 m. Ok, we are only at 53 now.
Let's put another rod, wow we strike the water!  What an emotional experience. We have about 5000L/h already, let’s put another rod and finish. ... But what if ...?  Another rod followed and then another one and …..wow, strike again.
Now we should really stop. But... what if...? Hey, stop it, this is not a gamble... Or is it?
8700L/h at 81m depth it’s a very good water hole considering we are in the desert and the water spotting expertise we had. Farming made easy. Some say I’m lucky.  I feel I’m a very happy lucky guy.

 

Ground samples of each 6m of drilling: