By Becky Nelson
I’m gazing out the window looking for some inspiration for my column.
The crows are cawing and talking to each other, which is always something to write about, but maybe another day. The grass is green and some leaves are starting to turn already, some sort of stress on the trees, but maybe another day. The fog is so thick that I can barely see the front field, with yet another weird shift of weather, but maybe another day.
It seems the well is dry.
Speaking of wells, we finally finished drilling our critter well. We had to go almost 700’ deep and still had but a trickle, so opted to have the well “fracked,” a process where high pressure water is pumped into the well, helping open any water bearing crevices and cracks by fracturing the ledges. The process is pretty amazing, and helped increase the flow of water into our new well that now has a much better recovery time when we fill the cattle troughs.
Part of the entire process of this project is aimed at soil conservation, as well. We work with six different pastures for our cattle, moving them from one to another to try to keep soil healthy and grass growing more efficiently so they don’t trample lots of paths into the ground or clip the feed too short to recover. Having the new system, we will have water available at each of the pastures, so they don’t have to travel back to the barn to the watering trough. We were pretty nervous when the drill kept going down and no water was showing up, thinking we might have to pay for a dry well with no return, but the universe was good to us and we found water.
There are several dry wells around the farm left by my ancestors before me. There was one in the front field that we filled in long ago when we planted the raspberry patch. The hole was almost completely filled in, making just a dip in the soil, but was recognizable by the artfully constructed stone circle that collected groundwater for whomever had a cabin or walked to the well for water every day. Just about 500’ from this well is another in the woods beyond the field. I remember this one being covered by a wooden cover when I was a kid, and we were always warned to keep away from it so we didn’t fall in. The stonework making a circle around the hole in the ground always amazed me. It was always full of water with a swampy area just beyond, and I imagine it hydrated lots of “my people” or neighbors well before us.
We used to hike and explore in the woods a lot with my father, who absolutely loved the outdoors and the woods. We found old wells all the time at abandoned farmsteads all over the county, and were well warned to watch where we stepped in the woods, looking for depressions in the soil and knowing these might just be wells … not all of them dry, and all of them holding the potential for a bad day if we fell in.
Most of these old wells are now filled with debris and soil from decades of leaves and sticks and limbs and crumbled stone sides filling them so they are no longer a threat and no longer a source of water for residents of the area. No longer a well, they are but a memory or even less, an unnoticeable artifact of times past.
Walking to a well with a bucket every day, not able to open a faucet for a drink or to wash your face, no daily showers or baths … those are hard times. I am glad to live in these times, with the convenience of water but a few steps away. We are spoiled in these modern times of huge water use.
We now irrigate crops, not relying on just the skies to provide rain. We fill our pools with enough water to provide a drink for a cow for weeks, without even thinking about the importance of water, unless filling from a dug well. We still have a dug well at our home, and hired a local provider to bring a big truck full of pond water to fill our pool. Something that was never even a dream of our ancestors. We water our lawns to make them lush and green. We use hundreds of gallons of water more than our ancestors ever thought of when we turn on the dishwasher or wash our clothes or flush a toilet.
A dry well is now an inconvenience usually easily remedied by drilling a hole in a ledge and a dug well is becoming a rarity and a thing of the past. And sometimes, just sometimes, the well can be dry and still lead to a column.
