All year waiting for the rains in Naranjas al Día. We look at the weather forecast and we rejoice because the rains are coming. We watch the sky as it becomes overcast by the second, as the clouds increase in size and take on that dark gray color... but in the end, zero liters of water on our fields of Naranjas al Día.
We have had several years of drought with very few days of rain. It seems that bad luck has taken its toll on us this summer. Through this blog we have been telling you the evolution of the rains. We may seem heavy, but the economic cost and sustainability of our aquifers is very important.
All our orange and mandarin farms are concentrated in the municipality of Corbera, in the region of La Ribera. Well, in the last year we have had three remarkable episodes of rainfall where it always rains more in the surrounding villages than in ours.
The first one, back in March, we had a few days of rain in which 20 liters per square meter fell on the fields of Naranjas al Día. A perfect manna for our trees. We congratulated ourselves and we were happy about it. It seemed that luck was smiling on us, especially considering how the neighbouring towns of Alzira and Carcaixent suffered floods.
Since those days in March we haven't received a drop of water. At the end of July we suffered one of the biggest setbacks of the season. A heavy hailstorm fell on Corbera and many neighbouring villages, spoiling part of the fruit crops, especially persimmons.
For this week we expected the rains to arrive for three days and alleviate the days of intense heat. The forecasts were hopeful but in the end not a single litre fell on our fields. Early in the morning clouds were forming in the sky but no rain fell.
Once again, the bulk of the rain fell in nearby municipalities. This time, it was the town of Tavernes de la Valldigna that suffered the floods as in the morning of August 19th, in just a couple of hours, more than 100 litres per square metre were unloaded.
The perfect irrigation for oranges and mandarins
If you ask a farmer how much water you need to give an orange tree to be well watered he will answer 40 litres per square metre. If it had rained in our fields of Naranjas al Día half of what it rained in Tavernes we would not need to irrigate for the next 15 days.
As it has not rained we are obliged to continue irrigating our fields. These irrigations suppose an economic expense (the price of the water itself but also the price of the electricity and the diesel necessary for pumping the water). In addition to the economic expense, the lack of rain also means that we are using water from aquifers, wells and underground streams with the risk of depleting this valuable resource.
