Western Irrigation District Memories: Mark Stoodley

By John Godsman Times Contributor

The Stoodley family name originates in Somerset, England in the 1800s. In 1909, Mark’s grandfather Ernest Stoodley read a CPR ad in an English newspaper offering irrigated land in Alberta. He purchased land at Berta Vale, now known as the Nightingale area.
In 1913, the CPR moved them to a new piece of land because the original land was too sandy, and built them a new house and barn. In 1918, Ernest began a lifelong work, planting over 20,000 trees and bushes including pine, fir, fruit trees such as apple, pear and cherry, and bushes such as red and black currants, gooseberry, etc. He constructed windmills to pump the badly needed water from nearby canals to the trees.
The main feeder canal from Chestermere passes the Stoodley farm about four miles north, and a branch canal, known in the past as the Stoodley ditch, passed about one-half mile to the east. Ernest Stoodley was the first irrigator of this land, obtaining water from CPR until the early 1940s, when Western Irrigation District acquired all the rights.
The Stoodley ditch provided water to the Stoodley farm, and as the years progressed, it provided water to new farmers who moved into the area to raise cattle.
Mark’s first memories of the ditch are going swimming in the mid-1960s with other children from the area, including his own siblings. As he grew older, he assisted his grandfather digging ditches for flood irrigation and moving the canvas ditch dam in the late 1960s. In the early 1970s, his father Ted purchased a quarter-mile wheel line for irrigating hay. In the early 1980s he replaced this with a volume gun which could shoot water 200 feet through a 1½-inch nozzle. The volume gun was mounted on a skid attached to a 1,000 ft. hose. With 400 lbs. of pressure coming out of the nozzle, it shot up to five inches of water in a 180-degree arc over a 12-hour period, but less on hot or windy days due to evaporation. There was a turbine on the hose reel that brought the skid into the machine, and when it got to the end it would automatically stop the reel. The operator/farmer would then shut the water off, and move everything to the next riser, before restarting the process of irrigating.
Pumping water from these ditches required farmers to run large V-8 engines, which cost a lot in fuel. But, about five years ago the ditches were filled in when a new water pipeline was installed. This was a big bonus to users, as they no longer needed to purchase fuel for the engines, water consumption was greatly reduced and the labour intensive ditch digging was ended.
Gradually, between the 1980s and 2003, Mark took over the farm from his father Ted. His first project was to replace the volume gun with three ¼-mile wheel moves, which he still uses today.
He said that without irrigation, the Stoodley farm would not exist. They would be unable to grow crops or raise cattle. Irrigation is their lifeline.