Thursday, March 31, 2011

I'm Guilty

Yes, yes, yes, I am guilty! Guilty of taking things for granted. I am thinking of this as I sit here at the computer, typing away, as the sounds of the well drilling, deafening, house shaking, grating on the last nerve I have in my body. The only respite is the gale force winds we are having today, taking the deafening drilling sounds, south east to our neighbors no doubt. The driller has been here for 3 days now. Just as the person sitting in a cab watches the time clock as his fare goes up, I sit here listening to the time clock, the drilling, pushing the price up and up. We are already thousands over the first estimate.
Every morning before the driller gets to our place, he has to go and pick up 1500 gallons of water, to run down the well and uses it to spray out the tailings. As you can see in this picture, the water spraying out, the wind is carrying it away, hopefully not to the neighbors house, as our green gates are coated with the shale that is in this water. The black on the grass in the backgroud is the shale.

I have 4 goats that are due this next month. The earliest is April 19Th, I sure hope the noise and commotion of the drilling is not affecting them too much.

What am I guilty of???? Thinking that there would be no surprises in buying a per-existing house, as we would have no well to dig. A well only 6 years old???Surely they should last a good 50 years or more if done properly.
The driller that we are using, has done most of the wells in our area, but he did not do the original well here. It happened during the house building hay day, when banks were giving loans to people who could not afford them, the housing market was going crazy, and well drillers were coming out of the woodwork to get their piece of the pie. Our well was done to code, but minimal, and negligent for what was needed to sustain a well out in our area, out on the prairie. The driller we have, states that 50% of the work he does now, is fixing wells that were done in the hay day, and the majority of these well drillers are no longer in business.

And the water part, we have had to haul in water by 1 gallon milk jugs for going on 12 days now. Thankfully I had saved 20 jugs. Thank the Lord that it is not the dead of winter, where the livestock would need fresh water twice daily. I have taken for granted being able to use water, whenever, of getting used to a daily shower. Of having clean dishes. One would not want to eat off of our plates, I am afraid. I used to hate cleaning the bathrooms, but now I can't wait to do it.....One of my friends told me that fathers have killed sons here in Colorado over water. No homicides here, thankful to say, but it has caused anxiety.....sorry to ramble on so.

On a better note, I have been sewing to keep my mind focused and off of my problems. Here are a few of the things that I have accomplished. I signed up for a quilting class that meets once per month. We are doing a mystery quilt, meaning, we won't know what the quilt will look like, until we are done with it. We are just blindly making blocks. Now, I have several plaids left over from a quilt that I made my grandson, so I am using plaids. Don't know what the quilt will look like, but here is the start..


We also made a table runner, yep, used plaids again, Dennis thinks it looks like a tie.



I also made a tote bag, this one was really fun. I love the colors of this bag.


Here is a sewing table that I bought off of Craigslist. I really got a good deal on it, and it is solid wood with plenty of space on top to do all my quilting, and drawers to keep notions in.

Hopefully, the next time I post we will have water.
More later.....................

Monday, March 21, 2011

Bad, bad March

So far, the first half of March has not been very enjoyable for us. Both Dennis and I got the influenza A, with temps over 102.6, for a few days.. It is going on two weeks since I had my fever, and I am still not back to 100%. Dennis is 4 days behind me, and he is not 100% either.

Last night our well water to the house turned black. I called the well driller, and he came out this morning. This is a picture of the guys, advancing the pipes upward in 20 feet increments to see if the water would clear. Our well is 550 feet deep.
We may need a new well to the tune of $15,000. This is the color of our well water to the house. Not clear like it should be.
He also said the black is coal sediment, from the formation, and could have been caused by the oil well fracturing. Something they do to get the oil out. They are just less than 1/8 of a mile from our house. This oil well was put in 2010, and has lain dormant up until a few days ago when they started doing something to it.Here is a picture of the oil well from the alpaca pasture. You can see the neighbors farmstead between us.
Dennis and I went over and brought a sample of our water, of course the foreman was noncommittal, and was reluctant to give us his corporate office number, but I got it in the end. But when I called, was not the person who it was supposed to be. We also got out of him that the oil well goes 9000 feet horizontal, but he did not know which way, or did not want to share it with us.
Anywho......
Some good things also happened in March. My Wellington friends(formerly Red Hats) and I went to a Model Railroad Museum in Greeley Colorado. I was skeptical, don't really have too much interest in model trains, but I ended up taking 133 pictures, it was truly impressive!

It is modeled after the Oregon, California and Eastern Railway, of central, southern and western Oregon.(wishing I was living there right now)


They had real live dispatchers on duty, to prevent derailments, a total of 2000 cars and 150 locomotives. 14,000 fir, 6,000 deciduous and 3,400 aspen, all hand made.

A Colorado sunrise. Enjoy.


More later........