Water « Crooked River Farm

Floyd is very blessed in one respect with water – all that flows into the county flows in from the sky. If we collectively work within the county to preserve our water, we are masters of our own destiny. We have a big problem, though, and that is that all the water in the county comes in from the sky. And there hasn’t been much of it over the past couple of years.

Water can be very iffy right now. Our spring all but dried up for the first time ever last June, producing only 75 gallons gallons per day up through late fall at least. I was hauling water in a 250 gallon tank in the back of my pickup truck a couple of times a week. Neighbors all around have been similarly reporting drying up wells, springs, and ponds. Despite being right on the river, Crooked River Farm has only a couple of springs on the whole 200 acres, so I’ve been worried about the availability of water. Reports abound of people drilling 600 ft, 800 ft, even 1100 ft deep dry wells in Floyd of late.

We picked a general spot that would be convenient to the house, but also 100′ or so from the area the septic field is expected to go in.

We hired the Eversole Brothers, Terry and Mike, out of Max Meadows, VA to drill the well. First off was the dowsing. This may seem anachronistic, or even superstitious, but just about everyone around here does it before drilling. Scientific research says dowsing is much like Ouiji boards, but it couldn’t hurt, right? Mike cut a fork of a cherry tree, and held it in his outstretched palms while walking around the site near where we picked. The fork pointed down along a line that Mike said indicated a seam of water that was quite narrow. So he stuck it in the ground where he found the seam and he and his brother Terry spent several minutes positioning the well-drilling machine directly over the stick and then commenced to drilling.

Well Rig

The first 60 feet or so of drilling just came up with first clay and then sand. Then we hit granite. Surprising to me, Terry said that he loved hitting granite. It’s slow boring, but it’s consistent. A well driller’s nightmare is hitting limestone, as there are often caves that will then take all a water seam will later give. Or sand that just keeps collapsing into the well.

At about 140′, we finally hit our first water – about 2 gallons per minute. Hurrah! That’s almost 3,000 gallons per day! Here’s a pic of the water coming out of the well at this point, along with a big pile of pulverized granite:

Water and Granite

We drilled down until we got to 300′ – the maximum amount of pipe Terry had. This builds a reservoir to draw upon – about 150 gallons for every 100′ of pipe. We ran into two more streams of water in the process, so the total yield of the well is about 5 gallons per minute or 7,000 gallons per day. The well reservoir is about 200 ft, or 300 gallons. If we ran the well dry, it would take only about an hour to refill the entire reservoir. Whew. I can’t even say how important this is. Like the old song says – you don’t miss your water ’till your well runs dry. Looks like we should be good for water volume.

But on top of it all the water tested out just about perfect – no iron, pH just about neutral, and less than 10 parts per million hardness, which is considered *very* soft. Couldn’t be happier. Terry asked for a thousand dollar bonus, but sadly he didn’t get it. Great guys to work with, though!