Plumb Tickled

More Ketchup from April 1 and 2.  We're just plumb tickled that we finally got the plumbers out here to put in two new water lines and frost-free hydrants.  We decided to have it done late last fall, but then the winter of 2013-14 intervened and the polar vortexes (because vortices sounds too pedantic!) dragged winter on into early spring.

Finally--and they weren't pulling my leg--the plumbers arrived on April Fool's Day.  They started at the water main for Kara's old house, which has been shut off ever since it was torn down in December.  They dug all the way along the lower road, through the Orchard, to the first fence between the Orchard and the Lower Pasture.

Here's a photo I took today to show the completed work now that the dirt has been packed down a bit by a heavy rain.

I'm standing in the orchard here looking at the new frost-free hydrant which will fill the tank in the Lower Pasture and one in the Orchard if we choose to graze animals there.  There's a second tank at the far end of the Lower Pasture that we can use again now that "Kara's water" is turned on.  (It's officially ours, along with the bill, but it's easier to distinguish which of the two water lines we're talking about if we call it Kara's water.)

Up in Kara's Pasture where her old house was torn down, they dug a second line.  They started at the broken-off water pipe coming out of the old house, which we were able to locate easily by turning on the water main and waiting to see where the water bubbled up.  That's where they started digging and headed over to the fence.

Here's the new cut-off box (which will be bizarrely located in the middle of the new pasture because that's where it broke off at the house) which they finished on April 2. They had to dodge around some buried concrete foundation blocks, so the line zig-zags a bit getting over to the fence post with the birdhouse on it.

Here's the area today after a good rain made the grass turn neon green!

Here's the second frost-free hydrant where a short hose can be used to fill a tank on both sides of the fence.  Do you see a theme here?  The reason we placed the new hydrants where they are is so each hydrant will supply two pastures with one hose and one trip to turn on the water.

One more advantage of siting this hydrant for the Middle Pasture (the far side of the fence) up on the hill, besides it sharing a hydrant with Kara's Pasture, is that it will bring the animals uphill for water instead of encouraging them to congregate down on the flat part, which they tend to over-graze.

We're excited that we no longer need three or four hoses from the house to get water down to the first location.  We're excited that we'll be able to fill those tanks in freezing weather straight from the hydrant.  And we're excited to already have water for the new Kara's Pasture before it's even done being fenced.

We now have a water point and shade for each of our seven pastures or sub-pastures.  We're that much closer to our goal of getting things running smoothly so that one of us can handle things alone when we need to.  I'm going to dread it a whole lot less when Herb has to be gone for several days of conferences.

Yep, we're plumb tickled!