Drought hits home

[rodmaker]

  I noticed the sprinklers were not normal so listened to the pump in well and heard it breaking suction. The well was running dry. Went to town bought pipe wire and splice kit for wire. Came home and the only thing strong enough to lift the pump was an home made engine puller raised up enough to put pipe vise on to of casing and hold the pipe. I added twenty feet of pipe and wire and lowered the pump.Now have plenty of water. Oh did i forget to mention the well is 360 feet deep with 1 and 1/4 inch galvanized pipe had to lower it two feet at a time  and took me all day but the price was right. Around here the waiting time for a new well to be drilled is 20 months and just to check the well is one month and three thousand dollars to lower the pump. We need rain!

[riverbee]

so sorry rodmaker......know you need rain........we have had our share of problems with the well and pump...but not like yours.....i hear ya though, when it comes to wells, tanks and pumps, it seems it always is very expensive when something goes awry.....360 ft?!  wow!!!

[Jen]

Sorry to hear that my fellow Californian    we are on city water but serious water restrictions. If we are caught watering on the wrong day assigned, it's $500 fine.. per day. The yards of our town are pretty dried up and dead, except the gardens and plants in whiskey/wine barrels looking pretty good.

Glad to hear the well is back in the swing of it.

Are your bees making any surplus honey?

[rodmaker]

  No jen no surplus honey at home but outward made enough for me and to have some to feed bees at home and have some for myself. Total harvest this year was about 130 pounds from 16 hives not a real productive year for honey but i doubled my hive count.

[Jen]

Yes, I would say so      doubling your hive count is nice, let's hope next season we'll get more rain and less lighting fires 

[Perry]

Last year was dry here and goldenrod never really panned out. A bit more rain up here wouldn't hurt, and it looks like we're going to be getting some. Sorry to hear of your situation. Makes you think twice about 2,000 hives though, don't it? 

[Bakersdozen]

I read recently, maybe it was this forum, that some of the almond growers are cutting down their trees.  They can't afford to water them and the aquifers are drying up. 
Here in the "bread basket of America", all those fields of grain out in western KS are watered from the Ogallala aquifer.  They don't even know how depleted it is or how long it will last.  What a false sense of security!  All the old cottonwoods out in western KS are dying from lack of water.  Their root systems tap into the aquifer.
Here in eastern KS we have been blessed with rain this year.  I know of a farmers that counted 190 pods on one soybean plant.  Big harvest, lower prices.

[Riverrat]

Here in the "bread basket of America", all those fields of grain out in western KS are watered from the Ogallala aquifer.  They don't even know how depleted it is or how long it will last.  What a false sense of security!  All the old cottonwoods out in western KS are dying from lack of water.  Their root systems tap into the aquifer.
Here in eastern KS we have been blessed with rain this year.  I know of a farmers that counted 190 pods on one soybean plant.  Big harvest, lower prices.

Farmers out in western kansas are buying up farm land around here to move to when they are unable to grow crops in the dry arid desert climate of western Kansas.  They have driven the price of farm ground to $1000 to $3000 an acre around here.  First thing they do is put in an irrigation well and pivot

[rodmaker]

  Here the farmers are up rooting most orchards that are not almonds or pistachios . The only almonds being taken out are old trees that are not producing any longer. The valley farm land has grown by 500,000 acres over the last five years and it is all nuts. This land is only watered by 1,000 foot deep wells and all the home wells that are under 325 feet are drying up. Some places the water table has dropped 70 -100 feet in the last two years. In my area of the valley the water table is dropping 5-7 feet per year so lowering the pump only gained me two years . I am on the wait list for a new well . It will be 23 months before i see the driller.Our farm land is going from 5,000 to 15,000 per acre depending on what is farmed. A lot of this land that is now farmed has never been farm before.

[Riverrat]

Wow around here are wells are less than 300 foot for water if that. I know some places where they hit oil at 1300 feet in our area.  Up around bakersdozens neck of the woods a well hits oil as shallow as 600 ft. We got places here in town that are running water from a 12 foot sand point well.   I would have to go 65 feet at my place to get good water. And that is considered deep around here

[rodmaker]

  The wells here that drop the most are ag wells . When dry winters they don't get enough snow melt to carry through the summer. Typical irrigation season is five moths of ditch water after that its pump or rain. There are some wells in the south valley that are under 100 feet but a lot of those are going dry. The water table here varies greatly all throughout the valley. We are basically a desert area that has had water moved into the area to farm a lot of bureau of reclamation progects.

[Bakersdozen]

Rod and River, thanks for the updates.
Not to rub it in, but we got another round of thunderstorms again last night. 

[LazyBkpr]

Been a great year for rain here.    We have a drilled well that goes down about 385 feet.   Hit water at about 270, but I asked them to keep going because I wanted the reserve.  If the well goes south we have two ponds. One about 50 ft from the house, the other about 150 yards, and a crick about 400 yards. We shouldnt run out of water in a pinch..   Land prices here...   sillyness...   Watched GOOD farm ground sell at auction for $8235.00 an acre..  Thats just stupidity..   There is no way even a young farmer will be able to pay that land off in his lifetime..   I know they are not making more land, but there is a limit to stupidity..  I suppose, if your already RICH and want to leave something for your grandchildren.....

[Riverrat]

and a crick about 400 yards.

Now your talkin my kind of language "Crick" We might have to explain that one to the yankees

[Jen]

  I know what a crick is    I loved the cricks when they were running in the spring

[riverbee]

"Now your talkin my kind of language "Crick" We might have to explain that one to the yankees "

not this yankee rat, fished some CRICKS on vacation...........

[Gypsi]

This is an educational thread. I'm on city water, have never had a well drilled, hope to pick up some land, sounds like some headaches will come with it. But I am so sick of living in what is rapidly becoming a desert.

[Jen]

I know Gypsi, our lawn is dead, some shrubs as well. We live in the city as well. I would like a nice little piece of land on the outskirts of town. Living on a circular court with three neighborly deisels that start up every morning and left to idle for 45 minutes. leaf blowers make me nuts especially at 7am Sunday morning. And now we have families with 5 cars/vehicles/motorhomes parked on the street instead of in their garages or driveways. Serisously! I don't think an emergency vehicle could get into our court if need be. Never used to be this way. Our court was one of the nicest one's in town. But since the economy crash, these families grown children and their children have moved back home. I sure would like to get out of town

[Gypsi]

I want to buy land in a "yellow" state. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/04/3478274/global-warming-megadroughts/

I only barely live in city limits, neighbors are farther away than most neighborhoods. I am wanting to leave the drought, and Texas politics behind. I do not have a fracking lease on my land, although I own my mineral rights, but the water under my house, which technically I could drill for, and there is an old well up the road, will be polluted by fracking chemicals as they are on all sides of my neighborhood

[Perry]

How about a green province? 
We are right close to Maine. We also just banned fracking.