Its going to be our turn to irrigate from the Acequia Madre early next week. The Mayordomo informed us that the acequia channel is choked with growing grass and weeds for a long stretch of ditch and that it will take a very long time to get the water through there. He offered to help me cut the weeds so we went over there and used “weed eaters” to cut the weeds down. The force of flowing water through here will help us gather up these weeds as they flow. I didn’t notice at the time but I will also need to cut weeds down the lateral ditch or else the water might not reach the field!
Interestingly, the Mayordomo Mark Martinez noted that he hasn’t ever seen weeds grow that bad in the ditch and attributes it to the fact that we haven’t been able to burn our acequia banks for some years now given fire danger and proximity to people’s houses as well as lack of access to a water source like a garden hose to control the spread of fire. If we were able to burn the acequia banks and channel, we would burn up much of the weeds and seeds and further clean out the areas of flammable materials.
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