See that small roofline right there on the right of this picture, in the foreground, that is the top of the well, 88 feet down from there dangling on the end of a long long rubber hose is a little submersible pump.
Right when I was half way through the washing and the watering and the filling of animals troughs. The pump stopped. 
What will you do the Kiwi Builder asked.
We need a lot of water out here.
Guarding the newly seeded fields from the guineas is thirsty work.
Not to worry, I said. I have these ugly things.
The rain barrels. One day I shall paint them and turn them into artworks but for the moment they are full of clean cold rain water.
So we had water for the animal and the milking and the neighbours filled up a few water jugs for the house, and John has a guy, and the guy has a plumbers truck and the guys father is called Joe so it is called Joe’s Plumbing .. and he and John took the little well house roof of,f pulled all 88 feet of pipe out, fixed the wire that had broken, replaced the little pump with a bigger pump, fed it all the way back down into the earth, and once again the water flowed. It is flowing black, the well has been stirred up with all the activity, but after a while it will settle down. The well house roof has been put back on and 1,200 dollars poorer we are set to go again.
Good morning. The things we take for granted. Without water, we are sunk. The rain barrels would have covered our water requirements for about three days. It is a shock when I am reminded how much I rely on machines and electricity to survive out here.
Is that sustainable?
Have a lovely day.
love celi
PS The essay over at the Parents Space today is a story some of you may have read before. It has been edited and improved. (I hope I improved it anyway) It is called Balloon Girl and it is the story about the time I bit the man with the newspaper on the plane when I was a teenager. I used it to illustrate how we collect experiences throughout our lives that will be useful to us when we are parents, grandparents and loving carers of children. That our past is important, even the hard unexplainable bits are important to who we are.
c
The Kitchen's Garden 
78 responses to “And then the water stopped flowing”
So glad the water is flowing again — and that you had the rainwater barrels full!
i think having your own well is a lot more sustainable as being hooked up to the water system/grid. what we would like to have is a rain harvesting system that collects all the water that falls on your roof and stores it in a big tank/cistern. i find it very interesting but it is also a bit expensive i guess to set up the system. and completely without electricity… i guess then your rain barrels are the best solution =)
In NZ .. on the farms, all the water is collected from the rooftops and into a big tank it goes, in times of drought a water truck comes out and fills up your tank for you, it is surprisingly efficient though..I could see that investing in the tank would be terribly expensive.. morning cat! c
good evening miss c. i guess thats how it makes most sense. i wonder why not everyone collects their rain… it is a bit like here in israel: why on earth dont they use photo voltaic more? most houses have a small solar heater on the roof for hot water, but just think what you could do with sooo much sun all year round.
but then i also wonder why not everyone wants to live on a farm, bake teir own bread and grow their own food… i wonder a lot 😉
good night miss c.
All our roof water is stored in a 3000 litre underground tank with a submersible pipe. It was not very expensive as it was all done as part of the house design. We also have 1000 litres in a tank on blocks, to collect the roof waer from next door’s barn (with their permission of course, they have a similar one the other side which Jock installed for them. We don’t need a pump for that: gravity fills the watering cans via a tap at the bottom of the tank. Power is more problematiic. We heat the house with geothermy (pipes a metre down under the garden) but that still needs some power to operate the heat esxchanger.
.My daughter has solar panels for hot water and photo-voltaic panels for electricity, selling any surplus back to the grid. When we can afford it, that’s what we’d like to do.
I’m sorry you’ve had to spend all that money, Celie. The book will maybe fill the bank account!
Love,
ViV
Your set up sounds so clever, I wish all house builders had such forethought, especially your gravity fed tank, we are hoping for something like this for the future, off the garage which has a brand new roof, of course for all of this we need rain and there is not a lot of that out here.. however, storing the rain water in a bigger covered vessel is our next objective! I wish john and jock could get together, just imagine! c
You would be envious of the huge amount of rain we have here! Jock is pining for a project even now and he will be 80 in November.
hi viv, do you use only the water you collect? and do you filter it somehow? i heard if you filter it correctly people drink and cook with it. sounds very smart your set up =) do you only heat your house with the goethermy? all very interessting!
We only use the roof water for the garden, washing the car etc. But we could drink it if we fitted the right equipment. The geothermy provides enough heat via underfloor pipes, ground and upper floors, but we do light the woodburning stove in the winter for the pleasure of it, and to economise on the electricity to run the heat pump, which is cheap anyway.
One of my biggest fears is the pump going down…I have a rotary hand-pump, but it could only be used for siphoning out of the pond, as our well is too deep. Even without livestock, it would be hard-going if the pump couldn’t be fixed quickly. There’s an older, shallower well somewhere on the property, but it pre-dates my arrival, and Hubby can’t find the well-head.
City boys. What are you gonna do with them?
Glad yours was fixed quickly – even if it did lighten your purse by a LOT 😦
We were lucky that the 24 hour plumber guy was not on another job, but I would have managed for a few days i think, but only a few days, without any rain in sight. Maybe I need a pond, I quite fancy a pond.. c
Do folks build ponds in paddocks up there?
yes there are quite a few ponds actually, but mainly for fun, they don’t run a lot of stock on this land, it is all corn and beans! c
You need a dowser (a water-diviner) to find the old well.
If only…
We had lots of old folks who practiced dowsing in the South where I grew up, but not up here in the Northeast. That, or they just don’t tell…
Thanks, Viv!
Ouch that’s expensive machinery. But a reminder about how much we need water
It is impossible to farm without huge amounts of water.. morning claire! c
Glad there was a happy ending. Pumps not working are bad, and that goes for humans too.
are you priming your swimming pool pump yet? c
Good morning Celi do you have a hand pump if not you need to get one if there is ever a fuel or electrical problem with the system then you are not left without water just a thought SAINTS
it is a good thought and i have requested one on many an occassion, but I am told that i would need two wells for that to work.. is that right?.. c
From what i understand if the electric pump goes out you pull it out and stick the hand pump down. Then when the power comes back on or the pump is fixed you swap them out again. I think the handle part can stay on all the time. There is also a thing called a well torpedo or a well bullet. You lower it down on a rope and bring up water. Its skinny for those pump holes. That would take a lot of work on a farm, but in a pinch you do what you must.
Oh my gosh. Celi I have this feeling of “oh good lord what next!” but that’s probably brought on by the renos here and running into unexpected problems, (like wires hidden in walls which need an electrician, who costs me $140, called before anyone will continue to do any more work even if I have a voltage meter and can prove that the wire is not live). I guess when you live sustainably or with stuff that isn’t up to the minute new, or even just a little off the grid, then you face all sorts of little annoyances here and there. Well, I’m glad you have lovely neighbours who will come to your rescue and a plumber whose father is Joe and your John and blue water barrels.
yes we do shuffle along quite well, fancy them stopping because of wires, ah well, hopefully you did not lose too much time.. am I right in remembering that you are doing your laundry area -that side of the house?.. c
Yes laundry room and no, not too much time, just 2 hours of electrician’s fees because it seems electricians have a two hour minimum fee even if the work takes five minutes! Oh, just remembered, we live in a village, not a town, in OXON, but Oxfordshire is a hugely overcrowded county, and still we wrestle with outdated and broken sewer pumps in the main pumping station, who no one, (Thames Water or the owner whose land the station is on), wants to take responsibility for, and they’re supplying service for the whole village. Robert is the one always being asked to investigate the pumps because he designs innovative special one-off race car engines…no idea how that figures!
Hi C! Yes, we take so many things for granted… I think your way is more than sustainable, but you could always hang a bucket from that well, just in case… 😉
Have a lovely day!
The bucket would be marvellous! even a hand pump would be great, but evidently i can’t have two systems! and it is a long way down!! c
I can imagine…! Well, let’s hope it works for a very long time then 😉
same!
I have three of those type of barrels, although mine are plastic and green … I don’t mean environmentally green; I mean the colour green, although collecting rainwater is fairly green…golly, I think my brain is suffering from hypothermia. Good morning, c., and to the all the farmy!
yes mine are plastic and blue and not in a green way, but heavy duty enough to last my lifetime i think and that is pretty green!.. hope you warm up Misky, we were very cold again this morning but the sun is out! c
s.s.s.s.nowing again
I think that any time you reuse an item that has already been called into existence, then you are very green, Celi. The alternative to the blue barrel’s reuse would have been placement into a landfill, or having it pile up in an unsightly mess somewhere. Nope, you are wise to repurpose the blue plastic barrels. 😉
Our water ran out two days ago. It was fixed in a couple hours but you would think the internet was turned off with all the fuss my kids made……it was like a Zombie Apocolypse. No wait…they are more prepared for that!
Johns teenage son was told as he came home from school that the water was off and he paused, hefted his bag back onto his shoulder and said i am off to Nannys..and was gone before I could say another word!! morning connie.. love your sexy kale salad by the way! c
Aw man! But glad it is fixed. I love my rain barrels too and they’ve been a big help this spring.
our water pump is in the basement and cost $650 to replace this winter! But, you gotta have water even if you don’t run a farm. sigh.
Well I hope yours keeps running for a long time too.. morning joss!
I only use rain water to make my tea and to cook with so when my tank had a leak and nearly ran dry I got most flustered so in a small way, I understand what it must have been like for you C. Thankfully though my fix was way cheaper.
I don’t think we could be totally without electricity and a few machines, then again, don’t the Amish still live without it all?
Love your first pic – such a warm and inviting homely feel.
🙂 Mandy xo
I like that idea, so I am going to create a designated kitchen rainwater barrel.. I am sure it will be so much tastier than the ground water.. c
Absolutely C, no comparison. 🙂
Is that a photo of Queenie? So cute!
That is bad Daisy mooing for the camera? she does not look like herself does she.. c
Oh, don’t get me going about machines. I know, we all need them in this modern world. How did we manage before? What I’m curious about are governments who prattle on continuously about sustainable power, how we need to do our bit in being greener. But there’s never any mention of how we should cut down on our GADGETS! Industry (and farms) need electrical machinery, but how many labour-saving/entertainment devices do we have in our homes? Are they all REALLY neccessary? When I clean our guests’ rooms, the place is littered with wires and adaptors re-charging a whole bundle of electrical paraphernalia! We are a species who will never be green I fear. Sorry about that! Sorry too about your unexpected large bill – I HATE those things!
Christine
An excellent rant Christine, we are getting more and more dependent on stuff that can be gone in the time it take to switch off the electricity. And electricity is not that dependable out here, i need to find a way to get water without depending on power! very very good point! c
I can sympathize with you there. Power cuts are not uncommon here either.
Christine