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See my car? At the bottom of the driveway? It’s a long, muddy hike back and forth. I got spoiled last week with our unseasonably warm weather. The driveway was almost dried up. I was parking at the top. No hiking! It was a beautiful dream!!!! Or so it seems now that, while our temps this week are still going to be mostly mild (what a bizarre February we’re having!), we’ve got rain. And rain means mud. Perhaps Spring decided to come early to the party. Too bad she forgot to bring the wildflowers with her. Just the showers. I don’t like slip -n- slide on the driveway, even though I have 4WD. So, it’s back to hiking.
And what’s more, hiking back and forth this morning after taking the kids to the bus (and then getting to hike back and forth later when I pick them up), wasn’t enough for today. An outdoor faucet was left running just a little bit, causing our water to run out. Unless I wanted to go all day without water waiting for the tank at the house to fill back up on the auto setting, I’d have to hike down to the well and run the pump manually to fill us back up at the house.
I explained our whole brilliant yet slightly odd water setup here. In short, water from the well (which is located in the meadow bottom) goes directly into a 120-gallon tank in the house, then from there to another 50-gallon tank and so on through the house, which keeps our water pressure steady. It’s controlled by an automated timer at the well that pumps water to the 120-gallon tank on regular intervals. (It’s set to run one minute every other hour.) The intervals are based on normal usage, and there’s an overflow valve that takes care of any excess water. If there’s excess use (or a “spillage” from a faucet left on), we have to go down and run the pump manually to force more water to the house to make up for the excess use.
This isn’t such a big deal when I can make it a quick 5-minute trip to drive down, run the pump a few minutes, then drive back up. It’s more like a 30-40 minute expedition if I have to hike it.
Dogs come with me, of course.
Dogs love a good outing.
It gets them all excited.
Boomer: “I’m as tall as you, Casper. See?”
I didn’t feel like sloshing through the creek, so I didn’t go over to the sheep.
But that didn’t stop Casper.
Miss Jacob and the babies came out to say hello.
Mr. Pibb is doing well, settled in happily with his buck buddies. He’s part of the boys club now. He’s learned how to play poker and he never has to put the toilet seat down.
Then I ran the pump.
And hiked back to the house, turned on the dishwasher, heard a funny noise about 15 minutes later, turned off the dishwasher, checked the water–none!–and investigated, discovering that the other outdoor faucet had also not been shut off properly (or the goats nudged it, which they do sometimes because they can just barely reach this one).
See ya in about 30-40 minutes….
Posted by Suzanne McMinn on February 23, 2011
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Why do these things always happen when we least expect them? Have another cinnamon bun. You deserve it.
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‘hugs from afar’
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And mud!
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Tina
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What a lovely site this is!
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I’ve had my share of carrying buckets of water to the house from the spring over the hill…
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I do lots of walking also though. Good exercise!
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