Our well ran dry this week. Not terribly surprising, given the lack of rain. In fact, it was quite amazing how long it did last.
Since the well is now completely dry, it was a good opportunity to dig it deeper. Earlier this spring, when we first dug it out, water had seeped in so quickly that we reached a point where we couldn’t bail fast enough to make further digging possible. Now, we can not only deepen the well, we can also widen it, so that the overall volume is much larger.
Of course, this is much easier said than done. When we left off last, we had dug about two feet into a clay/rock mixture with a concrete-like consistency using picks and mattocks. To further deepen the well, we must continue the back-breaking labour of chiselling out the clay and rocks. Four days of this work, and we had pretty much doubled the depth and width of the well. We had also pretty much worn out both our backs, and my hands were so sore I had a hard time closing them. And after all this work, not a drop of water. I hope the well will hold water when it rains again!
Now THAT is hard work! Really hard. We haven’t had to face that…..our creek gets low but continues to flow. Thank God! But we do have 2500 gallons of storage in our cisterns and that is easily two months of judicious use. So we have insurance. In the building years we lived on water totes and only 20 gallons a day. Strongly recommend cisterns.