Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give will become in him a spring of water welling up to everlasting life. I suppose it takes little to fascinate me, but the things the farmers do really appeals to my curiosity. For the past few weeks it has become dry in the northern part of the state. The farmers have begun their annual task of irrigation.
Irrigation is an old practice.
There was a time when slaves were used to physically dig canals to bring water from the rivers to the fields and sometimes even haul it in buckets. Over the years, pumps of all kinds and configurations have been developed for the same purpose. Only a few years ago the farmers would begin the long and laborious process of laying out long sections of pipe across one end of the field. Water was pumped into these pipes, outlets formed and crops watered. Some built elaborate sprinkler systems that go in circles covering hundreds of square feet per hour.