Let's talk about Country Living

**Scrappah** · 08-12-2014, 12:09 PM

Originally Posted by sawmilleng

Scrappah made some very good observations.

Just one comment on them.....a swamp might be a great thing to have as a way of keeping neighbors away, at least on that side, but doesn't that kind of standing water equal lots of bugs and mosquitos? I've no experience with that kind of water but in my limited experience most people steer clear of those areas. (Unless a midnight cupful of oil in the right place can help kill the mosquito larvae)

Jon.

Ummm ... not one of my finest moments I'm afraid. It's got to be fifteen or twenty years back .... one day i got it in my head to drop a quart of vegetable oil in the swamp. It tamed down the mosquitoes but it also killed off the spring peep frogs.

After a long hard winter i sooo look forward to hearing their song in the spring. It's a sure sign that we're through the worst of it.

They eventually came back but the swamp was quiet for a few years. I learned my lesson never to do that again.
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We've got about an acre of lawn.As long as it's kept mowed short the bugs really aren't a problem. It's only when you get within ten feet of the tree line of the forest that they come out to greet you.

**Scrappah** · 08-12-2014, 12:50 PM

Water wells vary according to the local geology. There are different kinds.

The first is what's called a dug well. You know ... you walk the property and look for a wet area. You might even find a boiling spring where the water is bubbling up out of the ground. You dig a three foot diameter hole there and wall it up. That's your source of water.

Dug wells aren't used very much anymore. The water quality isn't very good and they tend to run dry in the summer.

(There are exceptions. I knew of one gent that was drawing 20,000 gallons of water a day from a ten foot deep well.)

The second kind of well is a drilled well. In this area we have anywhere between 1 - 12 feet of ground cover over the bedrock. The well driller will come in and drill a six inch hole straight through the ground cover into the bedrock. As he's drilling down through the bedrock he will hit and number of "seams" along the way. The seams are cracks in the bedrock that water runs through. You could almost think of them as being natural underground water storage tanks. Rain water from above eventually trickles down to refill the seams as well water is being drawn out.

Around here, your average well depth is about 100 - 200 feet into the bedrock. I've seen some as deep as 500' though. It's all hit or miss with the seams because they run in all different directions. You might get a dry hole in one spot, set over ten feet, and hit 20 gallons per minute at a depth of fifty feet.

The well drillers seem to develop a knack for knowing where to drill over the years. Some of the old timers even used to use divining rods or a forked willow branch to locate the best place to find water.

The third kind is what's called an artesian well. It's a drilled well with one or more seams under hydrostatic pressure. You don't really need a pump because the water will come bubbling up from underground all on it's own. They're not common but i've seen a few. They're usually at the base of a hill down near the shoreline.