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...