Long Hot Summer Part 2

 

This is our well.  Conspicuously placed in the middle of the front lawn (mowed meadow).  The stones are temporarily piled as I harvest them from points in the lawn to save the John Deere.  Eventually they will form a surround to hide the rather unattractive lawn art otherwise known as "the well." 

And I'd like to say that this is where our story begins...but it doesn't.  It actually starts about 500' fee away in this direction. There beyond the garden shed to the right (which you can see more clearly by clicking on the photo to expand it).  

500' up there in the woods is a spring house.  It looks like this

 If you look carefully you can see seepage around the outside...wasted water.  As I mentioned in Part 1 the line had ceased dripping due, likely to a blockage of some sort, whether a kink in the line or some obstruction.  So our spring house is overflowing rather than draining.  The plans are to replace this spring house with a 3 foot wide plastic tube four feet high which will be sunk into the ground.  The pipe will have holes for the spring water to seep into the housing and of course a stone bottom for settlement of any matter and a new heavy three inch line running toward the well. The picture to the right shows the path (roughly) to the well.  But while my new friend Bruce (who has also offered to teach me the fine art of excavation work) and I are in there excavating we've got another spring that we're going to put a spring house on for future use, in case it is needed for the house (or the one room log cabin to be built at Eliza's Rest).

There are actually four springs that we will be tapping in all.  The queen mother is this one to the left.  These will eventually flow, or overflow as the case may be, into a pond that Bruce is kindly offering to help with as well.

We've identified a wonderful, already low area into which the springs, when properly channeled will easily fill.  It's located behind the garden shed.  Topograhpically it is the ideal setting.  It sits just below the springs, is fairly level, has sufficient shade to reduce some of the challenge of algae formation and has sufficient sun to be enjoyable.  

We'll manage to stock it with fish for fun times, place a dock for "the wonderful one" to spread a towel on and lie out, and ensure it's deep enough (12 feet or so) for a nice cool swim.  This is probably the most exciting work that we'll do this summer...

Stay tuned for updates...

Long Hot Summer Part 1

So the long hot summer seems to be here to stay. We're experiencing significantly warmer temps than normal and drought conditions.  But that has not stopped work on this "homestead" project.

I've been busy with little things like putting screen doors on the house to increase the circulation.  I had to replace a rotten window in the master bedroom.  While lumber prices continue to be almost unimaginable ($10+ for one 8' 2x4) I bit the bullet and started work on the closet which is near the back door and the living room end of the house, including a wood box and craft storage area for "the wonderful one." We're trying to maintain some of the "hunting cabin" elements so (inside the closet - click on pics to increase size) I left the 2x6 flooring and the "wainscoting" walls with the pegs used for hanging up the damp hunting clothing.

Keeping up with the lawn hasn't been much of a problem since it's not growing much. 

I've also been tackling some of the fields around some of which we had brush hogged last fall but needed to be addressed with the John Deere this summer.   The X580 Garden tractor has pretty much been pushed to the limits but I've managed to open up another 1/2 acre or so...

We put in a "test" garden which seems to be doing reasonably well.  It's got just the essentials, sweet peppers, zuchinni, cukes, brussel sprouts, lettuce, tomato, and kale. I opened us the area behind this which will eventually be home to the future garden planned to be about 30'x70'. 

We're grateful to our son and daughter in law for the gift of the drum composting bin, which has already begun to be used to make that yummy compost for next year's garden goodies.

To save on space I'll not include pictures of the brush piles from the roughly 30-40 bushes and trees that I cleared to open up more space in what I recently posted would become "Eliza's Rest."

And now to the issue of the drought.  Being on a spring fed water system, water is always precious and we limit our use as best we can. Over the past month or so we've watch the level of the well into which the spring feeds go down about 10 feet.  (It's a 25' storage well).  The other day I noticed that the supply line had ceased dripping.  After numerous checks, a trip down into the well, and the help of my new friend Bruce we have uncovered the reality that the original line is simply inadequate.  It is an old 1" flexible plastic line which is subject to punctures, sagging, and other issues.  And so a new line will be put in, along with another more exciting project...(but that's for the next post).