Golden Acres Ranch

So you don’t think climate change matters? Let me count the ways. The Mayhaws weren’t plentiful this season with too much warm weather. It was not cold enough for the trees to go dormant, and then to boot, no rain. I’m told this can affect the peach crop too. According to a 2012 Hydrologic Conditions Report  (PDF) this is one of the worst droughts since they started keeping records in 1932. Now this lack of water has created the next issue at our place.

Last Saturday we noticed there wasn’t any water coming from our faucets. Strange thing. Fred and I immediately went out to check our water source to see if the electricity had gone off or if we had a major break and all the water was running into a pasture somewhere. Oh, nothing that simple. In the pump house, the motor was purring but the water wasn’t filling the tank.  Fred found he could shut off the well pump a short while then turn it back on and the tank would fill which then gave us water into the house. We did this little trick for the remainder of the weekend.

Our faithful well repair guys came Monday morning and cut a hole into the roof of the pump house with a chain saw. They had to do that to get the heavy duty well pipe out of the ground. There are seven of them going down 160 to 180 feet total. The motor and pump are at the bottom of the pipes. No using a rope and come-a-long for that task.

Anyway, all went well (no pun intended) for just a little while. New motor and pump assembled to the bottom pipe and each successive pipe attached as it all went back down. Everything going great so far. Fred and I are guessing how much it was going to cost. They really hadn’t been there all that long. Two thousand, twenty-five hundred – just a drop in the bucket – or well in this case. Now the clinker.

The last pipe wouldn’t go all the way down. The guys worked hard at it. Clink, clink went the big machine, wrench, turn, wrench, turn, went the guys with a sprinkling of cuss, cuss. None of these efforts helped. It just wasn’t going to go back down. The tested the well to see if they could get water and got a limestone and sand slurpy (really slurry) instead. Whoops, well walls collapsed.

Here are our choices. Tear down the existing building so the “big” machine can get in to ream out another hundred feet or dig a completely new well. New well, hmm! What does that entail. We get to play with a ditch-witch to lay new power source and new pipes after we figure out where the new location should be.  Tearing down the building sounds better all the time. Check in for the next edition of this saga and we’ll tell you our decision. Probably have photos too. Ah, the country life.