It's 3:00 AM. Do you know where your gopher holes are? I certainly do when I irrigate. I find them bubbling up water and get myself all wet and muddy in the process of trying to collapse the holes with a trenching shovel to stop them from flooding areas I don't want to water.

Ditch water at dawn.

The gate on the main canal.

Until the Conservency put in these gates about 10 years ago, we had to put in up to six 2X6 planks to back up the water. Pulling the planks was always a challenge and one would usually get away and I would have to chase it down the ditch trying to fish it out. I usually retrieved the escaped plank from the bank, but sometimes I would have to jump into the ditch to retrieve the plank. Once in the ditch it was easy enough to throw the plank up onto the ditch bank, but getting myself up the steep bank without slipping back into the fast moving current presented another challenge. Sometimes it was easiest to float down to the next crossing.