Water is something that is so common that we take it for granted but sometimes we have to work for it. If we want to drink it we have to make sure its not contaminated. To most people water is water but most wells have a flavor of their own and water from the municipal supply is usually flavored with a chlorine taste. People in town get used to it but when we from the country go out to eat and get a glass of that doctored stuff we turn our nose up. Some wells in the urban areas also has a special flavor. The one on this place has a very distinctive sulfur odder and taste. Many years ago when My dad and I came here to help put up hay I got my first introduction to it. The day was hot and it wasn't long before we needed a drink. It was a rude awaking to me to take that first swallow. I ended up holding my breath and swallowed as fast as I could to get as much water down before the taste hit me.
The old Peterson homestead had a kind of sweet water with a high iron content that would condense after the water came in contact with the air and then it would settle to the bottom of the container leaving a red scum . Our sulfur water here not only has a bad taste and smell but is also very acidy. It can eat a hole through a two inch pipe in as little as five years. This has resulted in several wells being driven and used for a few years and then abandoned because a hole had been eaten through allowing sand to come in. I know of four that was here before we came. and I have sunk down three in the forty years that we have been here. When your well stops on a farm it is necessary to get water soon as a big herd of cows soon start talking to you. It isn't as simple as going to the grocery store and picking a jug off the shelf. It was easy to tell when the well or the pump would give trouble. All I had to do is have a little money saved ahead for some special purpose only to have the water supply go out. either the well or the pump would quit, the special purpose would have to wait for awhile.
After we moved on this place we tried to doctor up the sulfur taste so we could use the water in the house but our success was very limited. Knowing that shallow water was available in our woods I decided to develop it. A point was driven down to tap into this supply. and a pipe laid with an electrical wire all the way to the house a distance of about nine hundred feet. A pump was set at the well site. This worked very well and the water was very soft, But during the dry time of late summer the water table went down to the point that we were sucking air instead of water. To solve the problem a crane was brought in to dig a hole over twenty feet deep and six feet in diameter which was filled with course gravel. The water flows into the gravel holding a couple hundred gallons as a sort of reservoir. It has been nearly forty years now and we have had almost a perfect supply. The water is only a couple grains hard so no softener has ever been needed.
The water for the cattle is still the sulfur stuff. We just recently installed a completely new five inch well with a submersible pump in an entirely enclosed plastic and stainless steel fittings. It should last for much longer than I will need. The well has a good supply so we are able to water the garden with it.
If the township should extend the public water supply down our way I probably would connect up with it but for the time being I'm extremely happy with the set up that we now have