Thoughts on water

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink... actually last year and the year before it almost was true at my house. We've had some real significant flooding in my neck of the woods, luckily we're on top of a hill so not so significant for us, but the meanwhile all this abundance of water surrounds us and our well pump was quietly dying. Dad to the rescue (the man is a saint I swear he always comes to the rescue I don't know what I'd do without him) well pump replaced last sumer. But the lack of a consistent flow had me thinking of what I was going to do when I finally get the garden moved. I always knew I'd have another garden after my baby induced down time, frustrating as that was, so I was always thinking about these kinds of things.

We have 3 wells on our property, the new(ish) artesian well out front - butt-ugly blue and totally functional, a newer old well, which was put in round about the 60s by the lady who lived here before us because the health department said she couldn't drink from the well that was so close to the animals (horses and a cow at the time). This one has a very nice fitting concrete cap, though it also has a very decorative roof as well, but the cap makes it about as functional for my purposes as the artesian well. And finally we have the old, old well. You can see it in the background in the picture of the geese from Sunday's post. This well is original to the house (early 1700s). It's in magnificent shape save the decking on the "lid" which could use an overhaul. So this got me thinking. A. I don't have horses B. I want to irrigate with it not drink it and C.How could I cheaply use water without putting unecessary strain on my artesian well (not that I have to be careful anymore, but since I have an alternative...) Why don't I figure a way to use this water for irrigation and filling the geese's pool? So while I was down in the cellar coddling the sump pump for the umpteenth time (whole different post) I thought why don't I put a sump pump in the well, connected to a timer and have some irrigation hoses splay out from there to irrigate all my plants and I could manually override the system whenever I needed to fill the pool? Genius!


So you can see from the doodle. It's centrally located. Getting power to it won't be nearly as complicatred as getting power to the bus, and it would not touch the household water, and we'd be using water that would otherwise just be there (unusable). I think it's win/win. So now I have to design myself a PFD for the sump pump (I'm thinking with a lifeguard's ring maybe) and I'll be all set.