The author’s post by the water pipe. (Photo courtesy Doug Wright)
We had been having a wonderful week getting ready for the Fourth. We had a fun time at the fireworks store in Wiscasset and spent far too much money. Robin has been running a small, discreet overnight camping site, and some of our campers brought fireworks too. So everything was going smoothly when, suddenly, disaster hit the farm. The well went dry and we lost the gravity suction to the spring 1,200 feet away.
Well, I want you to know that this was a real butt-dragger, because though overnight the well came back, the suction has to be restored to the thing to work. So guess who gets to sit and pour water down the pipe whilst Robin gets to play hostess with the mostess? We will leave that one strictly alone now, won’t we?
Instead of drilling a well down here by the river, I decided to put the money into a ditch to lay a water pipe well below frost all the way up the hill along the edge of the woods to the family dug spring some 800 feet or more away. Pricey, but no water pump needed.
We have had the well go dry before, but we caught it in time and closed the valves, preserving the suction water in the long line. This time, the whole thing got totally dried out and I have been sitting patiently in my lawn chair, while pouring water from a pitcher into a funnel stuck into the main water pipe. Pour, pour, pour on water, pour on water.
Then one runs down to the other end to see if the water has made it yet, by opening the valve. So far I am getting rushes of water, lots of air bubbles, and then nothing. Pour on water … back up to the spring to pour some more.
I am more or less frantic because I need to water the big greenhouse. So I will take this to the papah and come home and pour some more.
(Doug Wright lives over Head Tide Hill in Whitefield. He welcomes feedback at douglas.wright22@yahoo.com.)
