Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Water, you either love it or need it.

I woke up this morning at 0445 to our chocolate lab ringing the bell to go outside and go potty.  I had not kenneled her when I went to bed because she looked so comfortable on her dog bed (I had forgotten about having to get up and let her out so early).  So naturally, since I was awake I used the bathroom, flushed the toilet and being thirsty went to get a drink of water from the sink.  Just a tiny trickle of water came out of the sink.  I knew this was bad, but come on, it isn't even five in the morning and it is still dark outside.  I went back to bed and did not tell Annmarie about it until she woke up at 0530.  We waited for Donna, mother-in-law, to call saying there was a problem.  She called before Annmarie was ready to call there.  When the pump guys came out to the houses we walked all over the orchard looking for water to surface.  We couldn't find anything.  Now it was kind of difficult in the middle of the orchard due to the fact that the front creek was still diverted out of the ditch.  We didn't get the ditch dug out or the culvert bank repaired this year.  Will need to make it a priority next year along with the rest of the fencing, the barn and some more fencing.
So Annmarie and I pulled out the tarp diverting water and filled in the two small channels diverting water into the orchard.  Then we dug out about 20 feet of the ditch next to the channels to make the water flow faster.  Nothing like a ton of water vegetation and some decomposed cow crap.  Smelled wonderful!  We were hoping the water would dry up and we could spot the leak in the orchard.  No go.
Since we couldn't find the leak they went off to get a small backhoe to start digging holes in the orchard.  Annmarie's brother came out to tell the guys were to dig.  They went across the orchard in an attempt to catch the pipe faster.  They ended up digging four trenches and about 60% of the width of the orchard before finding the pipe.  Matt, kept telling them to dig over near the ditch.  It turns out that it is actually in the back half of the orchard and is not in a straight line between the houses.  (In Matt's defense he was 10 years old when he saw the line go in.)  Now the fact that Matt had water witched three different water spots prior to them digging and one of them was the actual water line, but Matt repeatedly told the repair guys it "could not be that spot, dig closer to the ditch".
They capped the line to see if the leak was on our side.  It was.  So they came up to the house and dug right outside our fence.  I knew were the pipe was (so I thought).  They found it (it was only three feet to the left of where I said it would be).  There were lots of roots so it was hard to tell when they hit the pipe, it ripped out an eight foot chunk of pipe from under the fence into our yard.  They capped the line again and pressurized it. The leak is in the orchard.  So I had to move a couple hundred bricks I had stacked next to the fence to make room to repair the line in our yard.
I also went out and worked on the chicken coop during this fiasco.  They didn't have any food, so I fed them, cleaned up the coop, raked the deep litter and added another 80# of wood pellets, raked up the feathers and generally straightened things out.  I used almost 70# of food just to fill my two feeders.  I dumped another 80 pounds in to the food trash can (metal can to keep the mice out of the feed).  I think I am going to start counting the bags as they go into the food trash can and keep it filled.  That way I don't lose track of how much feed I am using for the chickens.
Since I am on a chicken rant, remember those fancy chickens that were supposed to lay blue eggs?  I had to get straight run (unsexed) chicks because they were just that cool.  Not so much.  The damn things are laying GREEN eggs!!!  I don't care what they look like, if they lay a green egg then they are an Easter Egger chicken.  So I am going to give up the blue egg dream for a while.  The next breed I get is going to be Brahma.  Oh well... I was really looking forward to those blue eggs...

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