Rain Machines
From Quiet Waters
When Jim Clare, president of Stockton-based Pacific SouthWest Irrigation, first came north from Bakersfield, Delta farmers had another name for sprinkler systems.
They called them rain machines.
“Only people a lot older than us still use that term,” he said.
By the late 1970s, irrigation was changing. Sprinklers were replacing furrows, while plastic pipe and drip systems were beginning to change the way growers delivered water to their crops. The equipment changed, but the problem remained much the same.
Getting the right amount of water to the right place.
From Quiet Waters, a forthcoming book-length portrait of the California Delta. The full story appears in the book.
Award-winning photographer Rich Turner explored, photographed and aerial photo-mapped Antarctica as a U.S. Navy photographer, then spent 19 years as a newspaper photojournalist before opening his own photography studio in 1990. His Delta Grandeur exhibition toured California museums and libraries for five years, sharing his long fascination with the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta.
Turner founded Soundings in 2018 as a place for photographers, writers and artists to explore the landscape, people, history and character of the Delta and the surrounding region. His continuing work is rooted in the belief that this remarkable place deserves to be better known, understood and valued.
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