From a Basement on a (small) Hill.

Our little patch of land is wet. Officially I think it all falls under the 'protected wetlands' gov't designation. There are numerous dinky springs scattered all over the place. When it rains it gets really muddy. A couple of the fields down in the valley need tile to carry away the excess water. As Peaches says with panache and style, "it's wet, wet, wet."

The biggest spring lives under this building:
The clever name we have for it is the springhouse. You can see the spring leaking out the back there and running into our crick, Job Run. When Dingo was alive, this was also her doghouse. We do things big on the farm.
Our old house sits about 5 feet to the right of the edge of this picture. In the mud-floor basement live the water pump, water air bladder tank for pressure, and hot water heater. These are all oversized, as they were installed when we were a dairy farm and dairying requires a great quantity of water. The basement is bricked in with unmortared and uninsulated sandstone. When the wind blows and the temp drops, pipes crack. Last cold snap cracked one again. And then the old Myers pump kicked the bucket. I spent a goodly portion of this last week wrestling with old pipes. A plumber I am decidedly not.
As this basement is holding up two very empty stories of house, you might be wondering why do I even need to worry about the water for it?
Because The Watering Hole.You see, our spring produces some phenomenal water. Peerless. Water of the Gods and all that. I don’t even like water, but this stuff is good. Leaving the farm in 2000 I found I had turned out to be a mean water snob. A few years ago my dad decided to see if we could make a little bit of money and do the water-poor surrounding community a favor by selling the stuff. He cut a hole in the garage, stuck in a hydrant, drain and coin slot, called it a business. Twenty-five cents a gallon, BYOB. Sold like hotcakes. Good water is a very hit-and-miss affair around Knox County. I live less than a quarter mile from this exquisite spring and the water from our taps is simply undrinkable. We’ve got our weekly regulars that show up with dirty station wagons stuffed to the brim with plastic (we recommend glass to preserve the true taste, but they’re hard to come by) bottles. We get a line of bikers filling their bottles when a couple bike races go around the corner in the spring. It’s not worth driving long distances for, but it beats Wal-Mart’s reverse osmosisified tap water. In the fall of 1999 some tin-foil hatist came and filled a five hundred (or was it thousand?) gallon tank for fear of the upcoming Y2K crash. My dad chuckled and refused his money.
Our water customers were left without recourse for a full 5 days. That’s too many. Sorry water customers.

Nothing to do with water:
The bulls will hereby be known as Franz (smaller one) and Ferdinand (the not smaller one). The down and now up and previously nameless calf is now known as Caeser. Coming up soon I’ll do a cow bio on my favorite calf! Yeah, I’ve been here long enough now to have a favorite.