Okay, you’ve seen our main garden by the house, all mulched and pretty. I think it’s only fair to show you the new north garden, which is a mixture of pure white clay and 200 tons of rotted manure. (It needs at least that much more!) With all the rain, we haven’t been able to walk in it let alone till and weed it. So there are lots of weeds and grass in that garden. Fortunately, the vegetables are doing pretty well, even so.

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Will just finished another big project. He wanted another well to supply the barn. So he built a point on a 6 inch discarded well casing, dug that into the side of our spring basin with our $300 home-built backhoe then welded on another 9-foot length. It took several hours of pounding down with our tractor mounted post pounder, but it was finally down 18 feet in all. He stuck a tape measure into the casing and hit solid silt at 13 feet. The silt had filtered in through the slits in the point and packed the lower part of the casing solid.

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We tried to pump it out with our irrigation pump. No dice. So we rented a 2-inch trash pump and used that. Boy, what an improvement! But it wasn’t all a bed of roses; the discharge hose and pump clogged up with silt several times and the whole thing had to be cleaned out. By plodding on, it was finally all cleaned out right down to the point. Then Will set the intake hose down into the new well and turned on the pump once again. First the water was kind of muddy. But soon it cleared up. And boy was it flowing! Will measured after letting the pump run for awhile. It was putting out more than 20 gallons per minute. Heck, our house well only gives us 10 gallons per minute. The project was a big success! Happy, happy, HAPPY!

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Now he just has to put the pump in the casing and dig in the water line up to the barn. He isn’t going to put a check valve in the line so it will drain out after each use so the line won’t freeze in the winter. — Jackie

12 COMMENTS

  1. Great, thank you. On a odd occasion we need a back hoe but never could quite justify the cost involved. If I could just find a simple design it would be no problem to put something together. Inspiration is all I need !!!

  2. Reg,

    We bought our backhoe from our carpenter friend, Tom, who had purchased a “real” backhoe. I’ll stick a photo on the next blog. It’s part Allis Chalmers tractor and you pull it with a heavy tractor or our bulldozer.

  3. Tami,
    The trouble with our house well (375 feet deep) is that it runs out of water after an hour and we had to wait an hour for it to refill. That was hard watering an acre and half of garden and the orchard. I dragged hoses ALL day, nearly ALL summer. Now we irrigate from our spring basin. MUCH better for sure.

  4. Don,

    I’ll remind him to look in the new pump. Between the two of you, I’m thinking anything can be fixed. (Ever thought of running for President???? Our country could sure use some major fixing if all they can come up with is Trump and Hillary!)

  5. Laurie,

    Yeah, I hear you on the .5 gal well. We had to haul water for much of the year in Montana as our spring froze in the winter and went dry late in the summer. It sucks but you do what you have to do to get by.

  6. Zerilda,

    My dad was a fixer guy, too. My oldest son called him “Magic Grandpa” because he could fix anything Bill broke. I’m so glad Dad taught us to do a lot too.

  7. 20 gallons a minute? HEAVEN! At peak our well produced 3 gallons a minute. We have only one well. We have 2 pumps with a storage tank between them. We want to increase the storage. We shun tilling (which kills the soil!) and do raised beds (with LOT’S of mulch). We are water stingy. During the recent TX drought, our well might have produced 1/2 gallon a minute. We have horses, goats (dairy raised dairy standards), garden, poultry and other homestead type stuff. We grey water everything we can (due to circumstances, have not been hooked to septic for multiple years, black water is NOT grey watered……… it is hauled off weekly).

    Your “house well” would have been ever so much more than we are used to.

  8. Make sure my dad pulls the check valve out of the pump as lots are built with them inside. And If my Dad (Will) can’t fix it his oldest son ME can. Remember the bulldozer ha ha lol. Love you guys BTW seen our first geese 2 weeks ago heading south wonder what that means.
    Don your son in the frozen (80 degree) north

  9. Great job on the well! I’m beginning to think that where you live is ideal for homesteading. Just doesn’t have any mountains, though…

  10. I agree that you two make a great team! Our well only gives .5 gal/min., and it’s awful on several counts, so we’re using rainwater for the house these days, and irrigating with the pond. Congratulations on the new well!

  11. Your Will seems to be able to fix, build and do most anything. A multi talented man, great for a homestead. I think you make a great team. My father was like that.

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