Oh Well

Sand!

If only I were referring to the beach.  Despite not living in the desert or at the beach, our house gets its fair share of sand on the floor everyday from what falls off of Lulu Belle after even a brief run outside.  She invariably gets wet - she likes to drink while IN the ponds - and then lays down in the dirt next to the carport (the grass hasn't grown in yet) to sun herself before asking to come inside.  However, that's not our biggest problem with sand.

The well at Terrell's cabin had always been known to pull sand from time to time.  It was a shallow well, unlike the well here at our house which is about 450 feet deep.  This was something we were aware of from other relatives who had used the well.  We figured it would be fine as he lived by himself and didn't use as much water.  On the advice of a local well driller, we had a filter installed in the pump house.  It was installed in mid-November when the plumber was putting the final fixtures in our house.  We figured we'd have to check it and clean it about once every 6 months or so.  By February it was filled to the brim and sand was passing through into the cabin.  Time for Plan B.  Looks like we're going to need a new well for the cabin.

Our well at the main house.  Pretty typical for this area.
Large tank, exposed to the weather.

I called the well driller and he told me that while he'd gladly take my money to put in a new well ($5000 - $6000), he had a cheaper solution for me (I like that guy!).  He recommended a local irrigation expert to tap off the well at my own house and run a pipe about 1000' to Terrell's cabin.  Interesting...and a couple thousand dollars cheaper.  He knew my well configuration as he's the one that put it in about 10-11 years ago.  He said it had a powerful enough pump motor (1.5 HP) to handle up to 6 houses if I wanted to put that many on it.  Good to know, but I only need one more.

I stopped by the irrigation man's office and put my name on the list.  He (Brian) returned my call after about 2 weeks (spring is irrigation season!) and said he could get started in about 4 weeks.  Today is 4 weeks from then.  The trenching has begun!

I told him that seeing his crooked line down the field made me feel better about the
edge of the garden that I plowed last spring.  It's not easy to do without a line or string.

We're taking advantage of the situation to add some outdoor spigots for the garden.  As the water line comes off of our well, it's running across the road and splitting off to a corner of our barn for one spigot.  Brian told me that he had the workings for a second spigot and he'd put it in (no extra charge) anywhere I wanted.  So we're going to have it pop up in the middle of the pasture so we can have water on both ends of our vegetable garden.  The orientation and the location of the garden will have to change so we're not plowing/tilling over top of the water pipe, though it is about 18 or so inches deep.

View from our well.

Spigot at the corner of the barn.

Spigot in the middle of the pasture, looking back toward the barn.
The spigot will be attached to a post (we had) laying next to the trench

It's nice to know that at the end of the day Terrell will have clean water.  If he doesn't, we're all in the same boat.  On top of that, we can irrigate our garden from both sides, which will really come in handy when we start to get our plants and seeds established.

Despite a rain shower that last over two hours and stopped work, they managed to do all of the trenching, dig out out around both well connections, connect all of the piping, cover up and tamp down the trench, smooth out the dirt/grass and get everything finished by the end of the day. A very nice and hard working group of guys.  I'll certainly keep them in mind if I ever need more work like this done.  They know what they're doing.  This is the finished product:

Recent happenings

News of our demise has been greatly exaggerated.  We're still here, despite a nearly month-long layoff.  We're going to try to get you updated on stuff that we've been doing on the farm with the next few pictures and paragraphs.

Neta and I spent a weekend about a month ago doing some pruning of trees, bushes and the huge, overgrown grapevine behind the house.  Neta pruned back some of the blueberries, leaving enough bushes so we'll still have a decent crop, but getting about half of them under control.  I climbed the ladder and significantly cut back the pear tree.  It had gotten to the point that its limbs would bend to the point of breaking as they were so full of pears.  They're not the best of pears, sort of grainy, and they're better for cooking or baking than just eating whole or sliced.  There are plans for other varieties.

Trimming the pear tree

The aftermath.  It needed it.

We showed a before/after photo of the grapevine in our "Looking Back, Looking Ahead" blog post.  Below is a more recent picture after we burned up some of what we cut out.  We are still going to do some more clean up and cut back the vine that was in the fire (it survived) and see how it fares.

After a good pruning and burning (far end)

On a lighter note...this little guy was trapped in a rubbermaid container on the carport.  He was release unharmed near our small barn.

He's a cute little fella, isn't he?

In the spirit of pruning trees, one of our big pecan trees got the ultimate pruning.  If you remember back in October, after the hurricane, we lost a huge portion of one of our pecan trees.

A few weeks back, after a thunderstorm, we lost another piece of the same tree.

We already knew that it had a hollow spot inside and part of the remaining tree was tall enough and close enough to fall and take out the main power line that runs through our property.  We, and the surrounding folks, wouldn't be too happy if it fell and we lost power.  So we decided to call a company to come take it down as it's too big and too precarious for me to tackle alone.  And so it came down, piece by piece.

Crisis averted.

Once it was all down and cut up, he hopped on his tractor with the grappler and hauled it all over in the field where we had some pines cleared last year.  That's when the next guy showed up and turned it all into mulch and dust.

He made pretty quick work of that tree.  In about 20 minutes it was all chopped up and we had a field full of mulch, which has come in handy as we've planted some new trees (details in another blog entry).  The only thing left to grind was the stump, which was probably about 3 feet in diameter at its widest.  It was no match for that machine.

Before

Nothing left but wood chips the size of my thumbnail.

That's all for now.  We'll try to be more regular with our postings, but no guarantees.  The busy spring is upon us and we have lots to do.  We'll do our best to document our adventures with pictures so we'll have more to blog about.  See ya next time!