Boring for water

Water is essential to life. Plants take in carbon dioxide from the air, utilise the sun’s energy along with water from the environment to make sugars, and as a by-product exhale oxygen. It’s something that we take for granted in Ireland, but without plenty of water, the planet could not live.
In the past summer we got a lesson on the importance of water to our plants, when our strawberry plants began suffering during a dry period, and we had to irrigate them.
Normally a plant keeps the pores or little holes in its leaves open so that it can take in the carbon dioxide from the air, as it needs this to make sugars and grow. However, keeping the pores open means that water can escape from the leaf into the air. And so, in normal conditions, the plant takes up water from the soil to keep itself going. However, if the soil dries out, the plant tries to preserve water by closing its pores. However, with pores closed, it cannot take in carbon dioxide, and so runs out of sugars and energy. The end result is a plant that goes into partial shut-down, unable to grow or produce a crop.
As everyone knows, the public water supply in summertime is less than abundant, with frequent calls on everyone to conserve water so that the reservoirs will not run dry. So instead of relying on the public supply for water for our crops, we have bored a well and built a water-holding tank.
The well was sunk to 360 feet (about 100 metres), and gives an estimated flow of 20,000 litres per hour. 100 metres is a fair depth, as for instance parts of Clonmel are only 40 metres above sea level. It took two days for the drill to get to this depth, as after the first twenty metres of soil and loose rock, it met solid bedrock, and still had to go eighty metres through this. 
Unfortunately we failed to strike oil. And while we were drilling we did not know how much water we would find either. However, the Geological Survey of Ireland told us that there was a regionally important aquifer across the main road from us (the Rathronan formation), and a more minor one on our side (the Giants Grave formation). Their information seems to have been correct, because our neighbour across the road also drilled a well, and found a larger water flow without having to drill as deep.
However, 20,000 litres per hour is plenty. This water is pumped into a 200,000 litre holding tank. The water from this holding tank can then be used to water needy crops.
It’s amazing how much water a crop can use though. A typical wet day may give rise to a centimetre of rain. To water a ten acre field to the same wetness requires 400,000 litres, or double the capacity of our holding tank. Clearly then, though we have quite a lot of water, it would not be enough to irrigate all our crops. Instead we will use the water selectively, only on crops that are under stress, and only on areas of an acre or two at a time. This way it should last for as long as any dry spell will last, and we will also get best value from it.
Incidentally, for anyone reading this who may be paying water charges (such as farmers), the cost of extracting your own water is much less than paying water charges, and with modern filtration and sterilisation techniques, the water quality can be excellent. Also, you will be avoiding the government-fluoridated water which has dubious effects on health and is no longer done in many developed countries. But that’s another story.