The unexpectected continues........

Just after daybreak 7/5/08

I never get tired of this view. I was out early this morning to work in the gardens before the heat of the day arrived. I prefer the early morning hours before everyone and everything is stirring. I love the quiet and everything smells so good. My dogs are great company and they were many birds around this morning.

Freshly weeded green beans

It's been a slow week. I haven't been able to blog or read much due to my injury on Tuesday. The bruising and swelling travelled down my face and settled into my left eye, making it difficult to focus. I had a terrific shiner for Market yesterday - a great conversation starter! Thankfully the swelling is starting to subside and the pressure is letting up. The colors are starting to dull as well. I sure won't forget this for awhile.

Steve & Dave pounding the point

Our fourth of July was spent digging up our water line to the house. We are very fortunate that our property and the property that surrounds us sits on an 8000 acre aquifer. Our soil is basically sand with a couple of inches of topsoil. A few feet down it is more like beach sand and the farther down you go, the courser that sand gets before you eventually hit small pea size gravel once you get through the hard pan. The water table is very high here, that being the reason we have a four foot crawl space under most homes instead of full basements. All that being said, you can drive what is called a sand point anywhere on our property and hit water. We have four of them. Each home, barn, shop, etc., has it's own water supply.

Sand Point

The point for our home is down about 20 feet. About every 10 years you have to pull these up out of the ground and clean the screen which is on the bottom 2 feet of the pipe. It gets built up with sediment, rust, bits of dirt,etc., which clogs the screen and prevents the water from coming into the pipe. Our pressure has been low and we have had air in the water. We pulled the point out with the tractor. Our neighbor came and dug a new trench for us to run a large water line to the new house. We cleaned the screen and all the section of pipe and replaced the point back in the hole. It's a slow process driving that point back in the ground. Manpower is the only way. Steve and Dave shared the load and in about half an hour it was back in place.

Thankfully all of this we can do ourselves so the cost is minimum. We did upgrade our water line to a larger size and a few new fittings but the expense was minimal compared to what it could have been if we had a conventional well with water problems. We are so grateful for the clean, fresh water that we have, and an abundance of it. My family teases me because I'm always squawking about not wasting water - I try not to take anything for granted and I don't want my kids to grow up thinking that they can either. They may not always live in a place where water is so plentiful.

Everyone was grubby and tired out and didn't feel like driving anywhere to see fireworks. We shared a couple of cold beers with our friends, The Kimball Family, and called it a night. Steve and I turned on the tv and enjoyed the fireworks and some good music with the Boston Pops.