Down and Dirty

So, just when things looked like they might finally start rolling smoothly, we've run into another time-and-money-consuming snag.

Jason, the very nice guy doing our excavation, was thinking the pad would be all ready for the foundation work to start in the next day or so, but that now has to be delayed. Why? Because in digging down around the pad, he discovered that there is quite a bit of clay on that spot, which is a problem for foundation work.

Jason working on the pad and finding too much clay.

We had our house designer/project manager, Mike Peterson, up on the site today to consult about the issue. He and Michael and Jason put their three capable heads together, and they decided that it would be best to get a soils engineer up there to figure out exactly what needs to be done to ensure that the foundation has no issues.

The Three Wise Men confer.

The "geotech" will be able to tell us how deep we will have to dig, and how much non-clay material we will have to bring in and compact to make it all hunky dory. If we have to go to about two feet, the estimated total cost (above what we have budgeted for this) is somewhere around $4000. If we have to go deeper, god only knows.

We had lined up the foundation guy to come out on Friday and to start working on the foundation on Monday. That ain't gonna happen. Looks like we will be delayed at least a week. Between the extra cost and the delay, that is two more likely nails in the coffin of the barn we both want and need.

Michael is now scrambling to try to get a pump going for the well so that we will have water on site (and not have to bring in a water truck) for the compaction process when the external material gets brought in. The pump will have to run off a generator, so he has to get one of those figured out too. Our landlord has one here in the garage...it might work, we shall see.

As for Lido, his wounds are still raw in places, which according to the vet, is not to be unexpected, given their severity. What is more concerning is the continued swelling around the tendons, and the fact that he is still lame if he tries to do anything more than a normal walk. Dr. Ruby said if that doesn't change in another week or so, she would suggest doing a follow up and some x-rays. One worry is that there could be a broken off piece of bone (called a sequestrum), which would have to be surgically removed -- something we definitely can't afford. Good times all around, eh?

Lido's poofy leg.

One brighter note today was the beautiful visitors I saw on the property as I was heading down the driveway.  Three wild horses, a red and white pinto stallion, a bay mare, and a gorgeous little black colt with very interesting markings on the side of his face were nibbling their way through.

Some mustangs sampling the local cuisine.

I've seen these horses before -- I think the black is the son of the red and white, but the bay mare might be the one I call Maya, whom I have photographed on several different occasions. She was never with this stallion before (I always saw her with a group of other bays I called "The Baydy Bunch"), so if that is her, things have changed.

The black colt, whom I call "Scooter Boy," is adorable and nicely built compared to most in the neighborhood, but like them, he is small and will likely stay that way. Too bad, because if he looked like he would attain any size as an adult, I would seriously think about adopting him. You are allowed to catch and keep any of the wild horses around here, but you have to report it if you do capture one, then the brand inspector comes out and makes it all official, and you are responsible for that horse from then on. If you were to ever turn it loose again and the government found out about it, you would get in trouble.

I have met Scooter a couple of times before and he always sort of scooted away from me -- hence the name. Today, however, he actually came up to me and sniffed my hand while I was taking his picture...

Scooter Boy saying hello!

I don't know why Scooter chose to do that today when he has always been so shy. Maybe he knew he was on  my property and thought it would be rude to just walk away from the hostess. A moment like that -- feeling the warm breath and gentle touch of a stunning wild creature -- kind of makes all the yucky parts of the day just disappear.

Another thing that can make a blue mood disappear: Photos of an insanely cute little donkey surrounded by insanely cute little girls in Fairy Princess regalia!  What on earth am I talking about? Well, the other day, I took Rogie for a walk  for the first time since my surgery. Probably was pushing it a bit, as I am still not supposed to do anything strenuous, and if he pulls on the rope, he's capable of a surprising amount of strenuous, tiny as he is! I decided to risk it, as he was looking sad and bored and lonely, heaping guilt upon me as only Rogie can. We got up the street a ways and I met the father of the family who bought the house the next lot over from where the horses live. He saw Rogie and came over to say hello, then told me that his little daughter was having a birthday party that day. I asked if the children would like to see Rogie, and he thought it would just make their day. His daughter, Skye, has already made pals with Rogie at the McGuffey's. So, I brought Rogie down the driveway, and out piled a gaggle of little girls, all wearing gossamer wings and colorful frilly skirts.

The Fairy Princess Court awaits.

  Let me tell you, it was a nearly deadly dose of cute as those tiny Fairy girls smothered Rogie with attention.

Birthday girl Skye with her wee buddy.

Rogie was very good about it all, I must say -- perhaps a little overwhelmed, but loving it nonetheless.

Rogie was a real trooper and was very gentle with the girls.

My only problem came when the girls were rounded up and herded back into their house, because Rogie did NOT want to leave: he wanted to follow them up the stairs and join the party! That was where the "strenuous" part came in as I did my best to haul him back up the driveway without giving myself a hernia. Totally worth it, for as an extra bonus, I got to talk with Skye's mother, Becky, a lovely lady originally from England who knows horses and used to be a fairly serious rider. She wants her daughter to learn to ride and would like to get back into horses herself, so we have been chatting about that, as well as about wanting to improve our fitness by walking, which we may start doing together (with Skye and Rogie along, of course!). I anticipate many more staggeringly cute encounters between that little sweetpea with the curly red hair and the Roginator!

Such moments of fun and joy really go a long ways towards helping me to balance the stress of this building project.  I guess such snags as we are now experiencing with our building pad are not uncommon, as Mike P. said today, "Until you get to the above ground parts of your build, you never really know what you are going to run into and things like this can happen, but once you are above ground, it should be pretty smooth sailing." Let's hope he is right!

The Little Things...

While everyone knows how stressful it is to build a house from scratch, Michael and I are also finding an excitement and joy, partly from the satisfaction of taking what was only a dream and making it manifest, and partly from the sheer beauty of the piece of  land we were so lucky to find. Now that the gut-wrencher of finding water is over, we are both finding ourselves wanting to be up on the land pretty much every day, whether we actually need to do anything there or not.

Yesterday, we spent some time figuring out where we might be able to put a riding arena in the future, as we want to know where everything will eventually go so that we don't end up moving fence lines and having to rearrange things. Does this have to be done now? No, but it gave us an excuse to head up there and walk around.

Michael using the measuring wheel to figure out the dimensions of our future arena.

As Michael was walking dimensions, I started noticing that our recent smatterings of rain have brought out quite a few wildflowers. Many of them are easy to miss, as they are miniscule, but they are there if you take the time to look -- which is exactly what I felt like doing.

Some of the tough little wildflowers on our land. The pink blossom third from the left measures less than 3mm.

You can't compare these sparse little blooms to the massive riot of color that blanketed the hills each Spring back where we used to live in Redding, CA, but when you realize how harsh the conditions are here, you gain a definite appreciation for these tough, if mostly tiny, survivors. There is also a sweet smell permeating the air in the neighborhood right now, though I have not yet identified the source. Up on our property, that lovely scent is mixed with the aroma of pine and juniper -- so fresh and nice.

Now, you may have noticed that whenever I talk about our land, I use the preposition "up". The reason is that we currently live in a house that has more of a valley floor location, while our property has a definite hilltop view feeling. There is no doubt that you are heading "up" when you are on our driveway, and once you get to the building area, which is on a plateau, the airiness of the views is elating. Kind of makes you want to pause and take it all in, which is what we tend to do up there.

Michael taking in the view. It was about to rain, but we loved every minute of it anyway.

I have actually made myself a little stone seat on the rock pile where we plan to build a gazebo someday.

My little rock seat.

For now, that area is just a heap of flat rocks, but even there you can find color and beauty...

Brightly colored lichen on the rock pile.

...as well as some new friends!

One of the many lizards who scamper around the rock pile.

So, I hope this post gives you an idea of why we are finding ourselves drawn to visit the property so often. Sometimes it is hard to imagine that we are actually going to get to live on that remarkable spot, but with the well in, we are starting to truly believe.

Well DONE!

The well is now officially "in"! It has been fitted and cemented and capped and logged and reported -- and all we have to show for that heap o' mishegas is an unassuming bit of pipe coming out of the ground.

Michael with that all-important little pipe.

The drillers also finished up with the "abandonment" of the first hole, and I was glad to see that it will not have any kind of above ground component to forever remind me of that colossal mistake. It is all filled and cemented in, but the cement is a bit below ground level, so once the dirt is scraped back over it, you will never know it was there. However, in case future generations should stumble upon it, I decided to scratch a little message on it, as you see here:

A cryptic little note for future archeologists.

Now, let's get this damn thing buried so I can forget about it!

As for what comes next, we got the well report in to the building department, and they are doing their best to rush through our official building permit, but they are temporarily short staffed, so what would normally take them only a few days could take up to two weeks. They know we can't afford that kind of delay, so they very kindly gave us a verbal okay to go ahead and do the foundation work, so we are trying to spin that up. We still need the excavation guy to do a bit more before any cement work can be done, but we hope that will all move along briskly. In reality, I think nothing to do with construction moves along briskly, but we must continue to hope. The guys in the building department are great, at least, and that certainly helps.

For those of you who are also tuning in for the Lido saga, I did his second re-wrapping yesterday, and the wounds were significantly less goopy, so that is good. Still some swelling, but the vet said that everything I have been seeing is fully to be expected, so nothing appears to be going awry with his recovery -- touch wood. 

The medial side of Lido's leg.

As of last night, Lido is done his course of antibiotics, for which I am grateful, because not only did it mean an extra trip to the barn each day, but Lido was starting to take a hike any time I tried to come near him with his halter, as he knew very well that I was going to squirt yucky stuff in his mouth. I had to start bribing him with some of Michael's chocolate chip cookies or I would never have been able to catch him. I will have to make a point of catching him and only doing nice things with him for a while to undo that association in his little blond mind.

Overall, I must say that I have been exceptionally impressed with how cooperative and patient Lido has been with all of this, as besides walking away from the halter, he never fought me at all. Stood like a trooper for the laborious, multi-layer wrapping, and took his meds like a man, er, horse, which was a great relief to me, as I would not have been physically able to struggle with him in my current state of post-surgical recovery. I know very well that had it been Gryphon who needed blechy oral meds twice a day, it would have been a full-on war, and I would have had to get Michael to do it.

I will let you all know how things go with getting the foundation work started...more soon, I hope!  : )

Hell or High Water...

The last couple of days have been quite a roller coaster. Thursday was pretty much the day from hell, as the drillers went down to 400' and came up with bupkis. When I heard this, I went into some form of shock, as our worst nightmare was materializing before our very eyes.

Here lies a very expensive and useless hole in the ground.

The hard choice at that point was to either stay on the same hole and just keep going until we either hit water or ran out of money, OR, move to another spot and start all over again with no guarantee that we would be any better off in the new location.

I felt so scared and sick that I basically zoned out at that point and told Michael that he would have to figure out what he wanted to do, and I wouldn't fault him either way if it ended badly. He spent hours looking over well logs from the neighborhood, studying the lay of the land up on our property, and finally decided to move the location of the well. The 400' of clay on the witcher's site just didn't give him any good feeling at all, so he ditched it. Now there will be expense to officially "abandon" that well, as they have to fill it, get 20' of concrete into the top part of the hole, and cap it -- and then we will have a lovely, permanent reminder of the HUGE mistake we made in putting our faith in a dowser!

So, yesterday morning, Michael told the drillers we wanted to move the location. This took major cojones, as the drillers were recommending staying on the same hole, plus they weren't jumping up and down about the new site Michael had picked. Even with all that pressure, Michael stuck to his guns and told them to move the rig and start all over again. I don't think I could have done that in a million years.  Like I said, cojones grandes!

Problem was, we needed a new waste material pit dug before they could proceed. Enter our neighbor across the road, a retired contractor who has a backhoe. Thankfully, he was available and could come right over. However, the Evil Construction Gods were not through toying with us just yet. Five feet away from the new location, the neighbor's backhoe broke down -- completely stopped running. And, his machine was now partially blocking the road. This spurred a frantic flurry of phone calls to various backhoe operators around the region, as we scrambled desperately to find someone who could come dig the stupid pit. It was also going to cost a whack of money to make that happen, which we needed like yet another hole in the head! Fortunately, the neighbor managed to get his rig going again and dig the pit.

We went up to check things out a bit later, and when we left, I waved to Carlos, the foreman of the job, then made a praying gesture with my hands. He threw up his arms in a "Who knows?" gesture back.

Getting started on the new location,with the pit that almost didn't happen today.

I was about as scared as I've ever been in my life, as another dry hole could sink the whole project and take every penny we had with it. I kept trying not to go there in my mind, but wasn't doing too well.

So, try to imagine how I felt later that day when Michael went back to the site, then came home and said they hit water somewhere between 140'-175'! Carlos estimated it was about 8-10 gallons a minute -- not a ton of water, but enough to get a building permit and certainly do-able. All I could say was "Halle-freakin'-lujah!" Michael was running on pure adrenaline at that point, as he had not been able to sleep much at all the night before -- which tells you just how stressful the situation really was, as Michael is one of those people who can sleep just about anywhere, anytime, no matter what is going on.

I found myself walking around for the next hour or so saying, "Wow" at odd intervals. The relief was huge, but I was so exhausted that I felt like I had been knocked screwy with a sledgehammer.

What happens next? On Monday, they will keep drilling and see if they can get a bit deeper. The hope is to find a bit more water, as it would certainly be preferable to have more g.p.m. However, they sometimes have trouble drilling much past where they hit water, as the water itself can erode the column they are digging, creating voids and causing problems. Keeping the well shallow has financial benefits for us right now and would help offset the cost of the abandoned well, but a shallow well has more chances of running dry in the future. We are currently going into a fifth year of drought in this area, so we would like to think that normal weather will soon return and that we might be safe, but who knows...we could have years more of drought to come.

Once they finish the well, we have to get it tested for both g.p.m. and water quality before we can get our building permit, so we will be getting on all that ASAP. Every day of delay is not good.

As for Lido, he seems to be doing well, although Thursday morning he was not. I went over to give him his medication and saw that he had not eaten his breakfast, did not appear to have had any water (despite my having given him a salted mash the night before to encourage him to drink), and he was listless. He seemed depressed, though whether that was from pain, medication side effects or just being cooped up in a stall, I didn't know. My guess was that it wasn't pain, as he was bearing weight on the injured leg quite well. Since Gryphon and Rogie were not keeping him company at that time, I was thinking maybe he was just upset at being locked up.

Lido, much perkier after being sprung from the joint!

I called Dr. Ruby at Comstock Equine and asked her if it would be better to keep him in the stall or to turn him out and see if that perked him up. She thought it would be better to turn him out, but hoped he wouldn't run or move around too much. She thought his depression was most likely from being locked in, and she thought it was important to get him eating and drinking. We let him out and he immediately went to the outdoor water trough and had a huge drink. Then he went over to the outside feed trough (we had put some hay out there) and started to eat. He made it very clear what the problem had been!

Today, we had to take the vet's bandages off, cold-hose the leg, then re-wrap it. The wounds look okay, considering, and though there was some swelling around the tendons, there was definitely less swelling than there had been the first day. He is bearing weight and walking pretty normally, so I think he may have avoided serious damage other than to his skin.

This new wrap -- accomplished only through the help of dear Dona -- is supposed to remain on until Tuesday. I don't know if it will, as I am no pro at wrapping horse wounds, especially with so many complicated layers! I am thankful to Lido for his patience and gentle temperament, as he let us mess with him for a total of about two hours before we got everything done -- oral meds, old bandages off, hosing, drying, etc.

Lido, sporting his new hunter green bandage and getting some love from Dona.

He seems comfortable in the new bandage, so here's hoping all goes well for the next few days!

All's Well...?

Stop the presses! It's a miracle! The well guys are actually out on the land as I write, drilling away on the spot the dowser picked out.

The drilling rig all set up on our land. A thing of beauty, is it not?

 What a loud, dusty, dirty job those guys have, at least in the beginning. As they just explained to me, the first 25 feet is drilled dry, which kicks up a lot of dust, but after that, they add water into the hole, which speeds up the drilling considerably. Guess they need that first 25' of hole to have somewhere for the water to accumulate. I'm sure it is a loud process all the way down, but I hope they're not breathing in all that gritty dust all the time. The younger guy had a mask on, but the older guy did not. I wonder what his lungs look like...

No mask!

 They had only reached a depth of about 12' down when I was up there at around 3:00, but hoped to get somewhere between 25'-50' by the end of the day. All depends on how hard stuff is down there.

The older gentleman, Carlos, told me that he hopes to hit water by about 280', but when I told him that was also our hope, yet even if we did, Michael wants to drill down to 400' as a safety measure, Carlos said that may not be possible. Something to do with whatever may or may not be down there and how it affects the machinery once they've hit water. If I understood him correctly (which I am not at all sure of, between the noise of the drill and his heavy Spanish accent), the bottom line seemed to be that they are often only able to go about 20' past the water, or the drill gets stuck. Something like that, anyway.

So, am I still stressing out about the well? After the morning I had, I am honestly hardly able to think about the well. After not a whole lot of sleep, I woke up to the phone ringing at 7:00 -- very early for me. It was Patricia, the lady who has my horses at her house. She wanted to let me know that my little palomino, Lido, had hurt his left front leg -- it had been bleeding but was not at that moment, and he was favoring it a little. Knowing that I am not up to snuff, she very kindly offered to try to clean it up and get a better look at it, but I said I would head over, as I knew she had to get to work. She also told me that a section of the pipe panel fencing was all cockeyed and part of it was sticking up in the air (a section in the interior of the paddock meant to keep the horses off of a steep bank), but she did not know what had happened. From her description, the wounded leg didn't sound too bad, so I wasn't hugely worried.

I did get up, though, and as Michael was out of town (which means my truck is out of town with him, so no way to haul the horse trailer), I called my ever-wonderful friend Dona and got her and her husband to meet me at the barn. I'm still not supposed to be handling horses or moving anything heavier than ten pounds, so I figured I would need some help to clean and dress whatever little wound Lido had.

Got to the barn, and the wound was much worse than I was expecting -- and Lido was laying down, both front legs bloody, the uninjured right one having "transfer" blood from the wounds on the left. I took one look at the damaged leg, which was swollen and looked kind of shredded on both sides just above the fetlock, and knew this was a vet call. No way to haul the horse in to the vet: no truck, and I wouldn't have been physically able to hook up the trailer in my post-surgical state; plus, I wouldn't have wanted to make Lido stand in the trailer for the winding trip down Geiger Grade Road anyway. So, I got "broke in" to Pat and Jack's house (thankfully, I know how to get in), got on the phone, and called for the vet to come to us.

Long story short, the very nice young vet got there in about 45 minutes, then Lido had to be sedated, shaved, thoroughly cleaned, examined, carefully bandaged with multiple layers doing different things, and medicated. The good news is that the vet is hopeful that poor little Lido got away without serious injury. However, she said it is hard to tell at this stage, as there is so much edema (fluid/swelling) around the tendons that you can't get a sense of any damage. The fact that he was able to bear weight on the limb, albeit painfully, was a good sign. He was clearly more comfortable after she wrapped his leg and the pain killers kicked in, and later in the day, he was even resting a back foot -- another good sign, as it means he is willingly bearing more weight on both fronts.

Resting a back leg...a good sign!

 The bad news is that Lido's skin was so shredded up that there could be some damage to the blood supply, which is always a concern in the lower limbs -- and infection is also a concern, not to mention the possibility of "proud flesh", which is the old horse world name for the formation of excessive granulation tissue in a healing wound. No way to stitch anything with a wound like this either. The key is to keep pressure on it with the wrap, but not too much pressure. So, we will have to figure out a way to rebandage him on Saturday, and meanwhile monitor him and hope he shows improvement with how he is walking and standing. He is confined to a stall -- not something he is used to, but Gryphon and Rogie have been hanging out in the stall next to his (their door is open and they could leave if they wanted to). When he had first arrived, no horses came to the fence to greet us, which was highly unusual. Turns out that as Lido was prone and injured on the ground in the lower part of the paddock, neither Gryphon nor Rogie were willing to leave him there.It was touching to see how they were quite literally guarding him, one standing on either side, when we went down there to find them. They simply weren't about to leave their injured friend -- how sweet is that?

Rogie and Gryphon hanging out in the stall next to their injured buddy.

As for what actually happened, I did find some blood and hair in the upper connector between two of the pipe panels. No idea how Lido could have gotten his leg in there, but in there it clearly was. Truly, there is no such thing as "safe" horse fencing!

Overall, not the best day I've ever had. The stress and expense of this incident were the last thing we need right now, but if Lido recovers from this uneventfully, I will be very grateful. It is not going to be easy doing the bandaging and medicating he requires in my current state, but I will have help from Michael, and Dona is more than willing to do whatever is needed. She is an absolute gem and truly loves my boys.

I will try to post more on the progress of the well tomorrow, and I'll be sure to include an update on my little golden boy patient, too. VERY tired now.

Well, Well, Well...

Yesterday was the day (we thought) that our nervously anticipated well was supposed to start becoming a reality. That didn't happen, as the driller's equipment was still tied up at the previous job. This is the story of our life when it comes to well drillers. We have learned that getting them to actually show up on a specific day (or week, or month) is impossible. It is not their fault, really, as they have no way of knowing what kind of material they are going to hit on most given jobs. The drilling could go fast or slow, depending on what is in the ground.

We are trying to be patient and understanding, but this isn't the first driller we tried to deal with, and since we actually switched over to the new one because the last one's delays were simply getting to be way too much, we had high hopes (based on the new company's promises) that this time, it would be different. This time, there wouldn't be delays. This time, we would actually get that darn hole in the ground dug! Yeah, right. We have everything ready for them -- rushed like mad to get the trees cleared and the road roughed in so they could access the site, etc., but still no drillers and not one piece of equipment has yet been brought to the site. Feels kind of like being on set at a movie: the old "hurry up and wait".

We rushed to get the road roughed in...Now it is just waiting.

It would be a lot easier to be Zen about all this if the well itself wasn't such a frightening specter. What, you say, can be so scary about digging for water? Around here, plenty! Although we did our due diligence by talking to TWO different drillers before buying the land, and only buying it because we were told by both that there was "plenty of water up on Castle Peak" and that we "shouldn't have to go down more than 300 feet", we are now quaking in our boots, praying that they were right.

You see, now that we have been living in the neighborhood for some months, we have learned the following:

• It is totally impossible to predict where one will find water in this area
• It is impossible to predict how deep you will have to go to hit water on any given spot you choose to drill on.
• Well drillers don't know a whole lot about how to find water -- but then again, neither does anybody else, so you can't blame them.
• Our next door neighbor on one side drilled 600' through nothing but sand and clay, and ended up with a well that is so low producing (2-4 gallons per minute) that we can't believe they were given a building permit -- yeah, your well doesn't come in, you don't get to build your house. Them's the rules in these here parts.
• The house on the other side of us originally had a good producing well (25 gallons per minute) and wasn't all that deep, but the people who own it now say it no longer produces anything like that. In fact, they are terrified that us putting in a well might make theirs yield even lower. We can all only hope that doesn't happen.
• Hiring a driller is not always easy. We had originally called one company who said they would be happy to do it, but by the time we were getting closer to actually drilling the well, that guy had retired and sold his equipment to another guy. So, we called that guy, who said he would do it. Delays on our loan pushed us back a couple of months, and by that time, the second guy had sold out to a third guy! Third guy seemed fine and actually came out to spec the job. He is the one who ended up getting jammed up by a tough job and had too many others before us. Clearly, he is overbooked, as everyone who used to drill up here is selling out! This is how we ended up with driller number four.
• Drilling is HELLISHLY EXPENSIVE. Forty-one dollars a foot. Yes, that is PER FOOT, plus set up costs, pump, water treatment system (necessary in almost all homes around here due to horrible water quality).

So, this is why we are quite literally losing sleep over this little exercise.

We did, at the urging of many people (friends, neighbors, and a couple of university-based hydrogeologists), hire a "water witch", also known as a "dowser", to try to increase our chances. While science says there is no statistical evidence that water dowsers do any better than sheer chance in locating water, long-timers in the neighborhood swear up and down that most good wells around here have been found through this ancient "art". We decided that since no one else could give us a good clue, me might as well give it a shot.

Did we feel silly shelling out $350 to have some lady come out and use her little copper rods to "sense" where the water is? Well, since so many had used this particular lady and said good things about her,

The dowser (or "Water Witch") doing her thing.

we bit the bullet and hired her, silly or not. She claims to have a 100% success rate having witched over 400 wells. Naturally, one neighbor popped up when the lady was pretty much on the way over to tell us that he had hired her and she had NOT been accurate -- he drilled where she said and it was completely dry.  Told her about this and she said she never heard that from him. Whatever!

Did she find water on our place? We still don't know. She definitely found a spot where she says there is water, and she was specific enough to state that we should hit it around 240-260 feet down. She says there are at least four "lines" of water converging on that spot, and she says we'll get something like 65 gallons per minute! That is a LOT of water! She also said we must drill on that exact spot -- not one foot over -- so we staked it and marked it, and we told the drillers to drill on that exact spot.

As for driller number four, when we first called them a week ago and asked how fast they could get to our project, the guy said, "Tomorrow!"  We were very pleased, but then during the next conversation (after they had received our deposit and we had signed a contract) a day later, "tomorrow" turned into "Friday or early next week at the latest."  Well, Friday came and went, but yesterday, which was Monday, had them saying they should be up there in the afternoon or Tuesday morning for sure.

Here we are now on Tuesday morning. They called an hour ago to say that their guys had a flat on the rig truck and some rod blew on something, so they had a late night and can't get there this morning. Should be this afternoon. If I were a gambling type, I would look at their track record thus far and our experiences with other drillers, and I would have to bet that they are not going to get up there this afternoon. There will be some excuse, no doubt.

Are we frustrated? You betcha. Are we starting to get really pissed off? Yup. Is there anything on earth we can do about it? Not a thing. Our project has been delayed weeks already because of these drillers, and in our case, every day counts. We have a nine month window on our loan in which everything has to be completed, or there will be big problems. We can't start the house until the well is in, so the builders are stuck twiddling their thumbs. If we don't get the house done quickly, there won't be time to order and build the barn we are so hoping to get. That means no shelter for the horses, no place to store hay, and winter will be coming at that point. So, this pretty much sucks!

We will also lose the ability to build the barn if the well ends up going deeper than we have budgeted for. Michael had already decided to drill to 400' instead of 300', as a deeper well is less likely to run dry in the future. But, what if we don't hit water at a reasonable depth? Do we keep going in the same hole and hope it shows up soon? You need to drill past the point where you hit water -- how far down do you go before abandoning that hole and trying somewhere else? There are wells around that are 1100' deep -- which would cost over $45,000 for the drilling alone! The current driller says that he tends to recommend that people stay on the same hole rather than start over with another, where there will also be no guarantee or real clue about how deep the water will be. Perhaps you are starting to see why this well thing is so scary.

However, as my sister-in-law wisely reminded me the other day, all of this is really minor compared to some of the problems people have to face in life. She was referring to a cousin of mine who at this moment is dying of cancer, having fought it valiantly for five years.  This does indeed put things in perspective.

But darn it... I'm still losing sleep over the stupid well! All I can say is that I hope the people who swear by the water witch are right. The guy who came up from the current drilling company doesn't believe in witching at all and says anyone can look up well logs in the neighborhood, get a sense of how deep they typically are and if they are located in any kind of "line" that would give you an idea of where you might want to try drilling. I told him that I didn't care HOW she finds water, as long as she finds it!

Hopefully, driller number four will actually show up this afternoon and get ready to start drilling tomorrow. Not the "tomorrow" we were originally told, but the best we can hope for at this point. We'll keep you posted. : )