Ram Pump Update (written especially for geeks)

Having been out of commission for weeks while I spent hours on end tinkering with every part of the system in an attempt to isolate the problem, the ram pump is up and running again- and better than ever! First thing that happened was I replaced that bloody 2 gallon pressure tank (my third or fourth in 9 months) with a big beefy one, given to me by awesome neighbors James and Illiana, that sits on the ground and is plumbed in with pex pipe (yeah, I used a pex tool- with Todd's help of course). No more cracks in the pressure tank every other month!

The next thing I did was, having noticed that somehow the delivery line (from the pump to the tank) had been drained (red flag), I re-primed the line using a device that I constructed out of pvc. It allowed me to fill the line from the top using water carried up the mountain without having to climb down into the tank crouching ackwardly to do it.

I shut the valve at the bottom of the delivery line to make sure none of the water I was funneling in from the top was leaking out at the bottom. When the entire 600 ft stretch of pipe was filled, I went back down and opened the valve at the bottom to check for leaking. Sure enough, I detected a hairline crack in the check valve that is supposed to only allow water up the hill, not down. Bingo. Bango. Bongo. I got on the line and wrote to Harry*, the designer and maker of the pump to see if he could send me a new check valve, which he graciously did, and a few days later I retrieved the part from my new stark white mailbox and installed it in a matter of minutes. Works like a charm. That thing is pumping quietly and efficiently. It is a beauty to behold. The spring is giving about 5 or so gallons a minute these days, maybe a little more when it rains a lot, and the pump is pumping 40 gallons an hour up to the tank. The rest of the water splashes back into the branch where it supports a plethora of aquatic life, from salamanders to crawdaddies, to little water snails and a variety of water loving plants like jewelweed and green headed coneflower (sochan).

The only thing is, the day I fixed the pump, the line that carries water from the storage tank on the hill to the house developed a mysterious leak. This line is completely unrelated to the pump or the delivery line to the tank. Major coincidence. Sucky coincidence. And it also coincided with me coming down with a funky summer cold, which is just a side note, but I don't have loads of energy to go digging around hundreds of feet of pipe for the leak.

Following a brilliant brainstorm of my dear neighbor Todd, I devised a plug with a wine carboy stopper to stop up the pipe that is leaking. I am allowing the tank to fill up and then I am going to pull the plug and release the 600 gallons of water, hoping that a flood with show up in the spot where the leak is. Is is suspected by some that the leak is likely in the bulkhead fitting that connects the tank to the pipe down. We will see. Today is the day. Today is the day. Maybe by this weekend I'll be cutting on faucets and flushing commodes and washing the mountain of laundry that has accumulated. And my neck will get a break from the strain of carrying water up the hill to the house. But hoping is a gamble, so I'm just going to ride this one out and see.

* Click Harry's name to get a full description and lots of photos of the pump. If you're a physics or mechanical geek you might really like this...

Wrong

Having returned home last night from a long day out, I sat on the downstairs love seat and relaxed into a phone conversation with an old friend. It was raining, and I believe there was some thunder in the distance. It was a lovely welcome cooling rain, the first break from this horrific heat wave that has swept the better part of the nation, and the ambience was pleasant. After a while a sharp acrid smell suddenly invaded my airflow, and suffice it to say, my mellow was thoroughly harshed. My first thought was electrical fire. I got off the phone and walked around the inner and outer perimeters of my new house, sniffing everything for the source of the smell and looking for smoke. I phoned my awesome electrician/ neighbor/ friend who talked me through what to check. After about a half hour I verified that all the appliances and outlets were still intact and nothing seemed to be the obvious source of the burnt smell. The smell was so terrible and strong; it made my throat feel like it was being damaged by breathing in. I turned the fan on high to get some fresh air flow in, but sometimes it seemed the smell was coming from outside. After about 45 mintes of house investigations, I realized that Hopey, my trusty hound friend, had been frantically pacing around the deck, scratching the door to come in. I figured she must be scared by the storm, so I met her at the door with a towel to dry her drenched muddy self off.
Yeah.
I didn't have to rub that towel over her for too long to realize that she was the smell.
Yeah.
It was bad. It was strong.
Except the thing was I didn't realize what it was at first. It just smelled so intensely burnt, like a toxic chemical, that my first thought was that somehow she had been covered with some kind of terrible auto fluids or something- like bad transmission fluid- or even that she had been struck by lightening and fried a little bit or been burnt under the car. She was acting crazy- pacing this-a-way and that-a-way in the house, rubbing her eyes and face on the rug and acting hurt.
A quick "dog smells like burning rubber" google search and a phone call to neighbor RM cleared up the mystery for me. Skunk sprayed in the face and eyes. Poor honey.
It surprises me that I had never smelled the freshy fresh spray of skunk before. It smells nothing like a dead skunk in the road or a skunk scratch and sniff sticker. Only one word kept coming to mind last night when I was investigating the source of the acrid invasion- Wrong. This is just wrong. Something is wrong.
I was wrong.
It was just a skunk.

Dear Readers,

I have been working on a personal essay for you about water, but the problem is, I am too busy trying to get some (water that is) to work on it much these days. You see, I have been spending many multiples of hours troubleshooting and trying to iron out the ole kinks of my unique water system here at the house. It's been something else- an engaging process. Real engaging. Last night I found myself up on the ridge, down in the water tank (which is buried in the ground), calf deep in water*, sweating like a man, and attempting to re-prime the 800 ft water line from the top with a kitchen funnel and my wine making siphon. I went ahead and had me some gin and tonics to pass the hours- got drunk in the water tank. It was a coping strategy. I never ended up filling that line, but I had a pretty good time, all things considered.
Today I have been on to new and exciting possibilities for steps to take to move the water from the spring, which is below the house, to the tank on the ridge above the house. I am simultaneously troubleshooting issues with the ram pump while exploring the option of fixing an electric pump that neighbors J and I gave me as a back up.
I want to work on my water essay more, but getting the water takes the priority. I will hopefully get to it soon. Until then, I will chip away at the issues at hand, and find a way to handle it if a meltdown occurs in the process... Not that there have been any...
For now I will leave you with today's word of the day from Mirriam-Webster:
hydromancy: divination by the appearance or motion of liquid (as water)
I think I almost got there last night down in the water tank after my gins and tonics, by the light of setting sun...

Until next time,
Dana




*Note to yourselves, wait a couple weeks before drinking water out of the tap at Dana's house. She has stood and sweated and gotten drunk in that water.

We're not doing too bad for ourselves

Hopey's loot



Dana's loot

Breathalizer

They say we ought to make hay when the sun shines, and boy oh big big boy does the sun ever shine this time of year in the Southern Appalachians. There are yards to landscape, weddings to decorate, rivers to swim, people to visit, farms to start, festivals to set up big tents for, festivities to host and attend, and ram pumps to tinker with. Being a gardener and wildlife enthusiast, this is my prime time of year for working, making money and chipping away at big projects. I do this thing where I work pretty much all day every day, exerting copious amounts of physical and mental energy to take full advantage of the season and make enough metaphorical hay to last the entire winter to come. Problem is, even though I am enjoying better health and more consistent energy than I have in my life, sometimes I get tired. Darn it. The other day driving from one jobsite to the next (all of a 10 minute drive), I had to pull over in a parking lot and fall asleep for 10 minutes. I just had to. Apparently, I was rather tired the other night too after setting up lots of big tents for our local heritage music festival, because I found myself being pulled over by a state trooper in an unmarked car and questions extensively about whether or not I had been drinking. Read on: Trooper: Ma'am, one of the reasons I am pulling you over is that your registration is expired. Me (acting surprised): It is? Darn it! Trooper: Yes, ma'am. It expired May 15. Me: Oh shoot! I didn't realize! I'll get that taken care right away! Trooper: Also, ma'am- you were swerving all over the road. Me (genuinely surprised): I was? Trooper: Yes, ma'am. Have you been drinking? Me (honestly): No. Trooper: Why do you think you were swerving on the road? Me: I didn't know I was. I do know I am quite tired. Trooper: Did you have any alcohol to drink? Me: No. Trooper: Where are you going? Me: Home Trooper: Where have you been? What have you been doing? (series of probing questions, yada yada yada. I answer all the probing questions briefly and honestly.) Trooper: Your vehicle smells like alcohol. Have you had anything to drink today? Me (thinking to myself that my truck may smell like a hell of a lot of weird things but alcohol is not one of them): No. Trooper: Why do you think your vehicle might smell like alcohol? Me: I don't know. Maybe because I just ate a Tootsie Pop. (This was also true.) Then the trooper proceeded to give me a test where I had to follow his finger with my eyes only- no head moving. That trooper moved his finger so far over to the side of my face that it hurt my eyeballs to even try and they rebelled against my effort and shot back to center. Trooper: Ma'am, your eyes are quite twitchy. Because you were swerving and because you smell like alcohol and because your eyes are quite twitchy, I'm going to have to ask you to blow the breathalizer. (Oh god. Please don't let any old people that I like and respect drive by right now...) The Trooper brought out a weird device with a dirty looking mouth piece and told me whenever I was ready to take a big deep breath and blow out. I didn't want to put my mouth on that dirty looking thing, but I did to expedite the closure of this stupid roadside session, which ended shortly after I blew a 0.00. However, the Trooper did have one final word of advice for me, the swervy, alcohol smelling, twitchy eyed sober lady: "Ma'am, if you are that tired, maybe you should take a rest." Don't mind if I do. If only I can get home... Hey mister Trooper, whose finger went so far out to the side of my head I couldn't watch it anymore, and whose speech was actually slowed and slurred, not unlike someone who may have been drinking, and who gave me a breathalizer test followed by some hilarious advice: I raise my glass to you. Cowboy up!

Work cut out

I've been on my knees on the ground forming paths and beds. Wish me luck. I have a ways to go.

Honeysuckle on

Spring brings forth a most delectable array of tastes and smells, guaranteed to awaken the minds and hearts of even the most sluggish of lingering hibernators. Who among us can walk along a quiet evening, peripheral breezes of some distant thunderstorm wafting waves of honeysuckle perfume into her very breath, and not stop, eyes closed, breath deepened, and momentarily relive a lifetime of vernal memories? First love. Spring breeze. Great grandmother's quilt. Childhood back fence row. Soft cool. Pair of indigo buntings. Warm evening. Firefly mystery. Love resurrected. There is something about the honeysuckles. Was it growing up in the south, where the May air holds the strongest of perfumes- the honeysuckles that lift you up and out of your very chest and the southern magnolias that literally knock you dizzy? Or was it the shady back fence with my sister and the other neighbor kids- savoring drop after ridiculous drop of honeysuckle nectar- competing for the best technique of procuring the sweetest drop and not being able to stop eating them? A tiny drop of nectar on the tip of the tongue was more flavorful and alive than anything else we ate that day or that week at home or school, and we knew it. We knew it like we knew that we were going to be sent to bed before night was even done falling, and that we would have to whisper the last of the light away, lucky if sleepiness found either of us before we got checked on and had to hush mid whisper to expertly fein slumber. I used to stand out there at the back fence, between our yard and the Culps (the darling old couple whose house was dark and hot and always smelled like pickled peaches) and daydream about somehow collecting enough drops of nectar that I could take an entire sip. Or if I was really on a roll, I would fantasize that I could gather an entire cup-full of nectar. I would drink that and drown in its righteousness. These years later, I'm still on that same roll. I'm still trying to get that sip full or that cup full of honeysuckle nectar. May being arguably the busiest month of the year for a gardener, it is tricky to find the time to empty the blossoms of their precious nectar drop by drop, but somehow I can find the time to take a weekend and GET MY HONEYSUCKLE ON. This weekend found me lingering again at fencerows, dreaming of times other than now, and drinking in each spectacular and simple moment, adding them to my pool of honeysuckle memories. Read on...

1. I gathered a reasonable quantity of honeysuckle blossoms, carefully avoiding the poison ivy that often shares the same fencerows. 2. I cold soaked some of the blossoms in the refrigerator overnight in cream from the Mechos' cow. I also soaked some of the blossoms over night in some half and half (again from the neighborhood cow.) 3. With the majority of the blossoms, I cold infused them with spring water for 24 hours, then strained off. Saturday morning, I woke early and brewed my most favorite black tea- Barry's Gold Blend (strong Irish). What did I put in it? Honeysuckled half and half. Oh yeah. I think I'll have a second cup. Feeling pretty jazzed up, I set out to do some projects outside for the morning hours. The air was cool and fresh. The scent of honeysuckles and the buzz from the strong tea made me drunk but alert- a fine, fine combination. When I got a little hungry, I headed back to the house for guess what... A honeysuckle smoothy- maple yogurt, fresh strawberries, a banana, and some honeysuckle half and half. Oh yeah. Keep it coming. I decided to check on Friday night's project, opened the refrigerator and pulled out the bowl containing guess what- honeysuckle chocolate truffle base, which is honeysuckle infused cream incorporated with melted dark chocolate. Somebody help me- I'm getting carried away. Later on neighbor Moonie stopped by for a visit, and funny, but it was time for more tea with honeysuckle half and half, served out of a sweet and lovely assortment of tea gear given to me by various beloved- Austrian tea pot from Donna and Heidi, tiny yellow rose tea cup from Emily's grandmother... Tea with Moonie is always lovely, especially when accompanied by the viewing of some videos of the Daulton Quartet and other such male harmonizing awesomeness! Sunday it was time to pull out the big guns. I went over to Hot Springs and fetched my sister and brought her back to the house for a little honeysuckle mead making. Last year's sample gallon batch was pretty much the dream, so we decided to go a little bigger this year. Pulled out the five gallon carboy and dusted her off. Dissolved most of a gallon of local wildflower honey and handed Jenna the siphon. The day was perfect, a perfect May breeze with some perfect birds singing and perfect sunlight moving across the perfectly well-greened terrain. It was the right day to bottle and drink a toast to in a few months.

Come see me in about August, and we'll pour a glass and rededicate ourselves to never forgetting the beauty of this world we live in.