Practical Blog #4 - Water!!

Greetings, Living Earth Gardeners! This is Head Gardener Machei at Living Earth Garden Project. Last practical blog we went through the Secondary Elements/Support Systems of our Project. Let's begin this week by reviewing these 4 design elements:

Well - for access to clean drinking water

Compost Toilets - to capture nutrients & avoid waste

Solar Shower - to rinse off sweat & dust

Compost Piles - to produce soil fertility

This week we will focus on water access. Access to water is a primary consideration for any land project. There are many potential ways to provide for this need. Here is how we have approached water access on our land.

The hiring of a professional well driller has been the only job we have contracted out for. The drilling of a 100ft deep water well was also the very first job we had done. We gave water access top priority both for our personal needs & for what would be the future irrigation needs of our plantings. Jim Fennell, the well driller, said to me upon job completion: "First you got the Land, now you have the Water!"

When faced with the decision of what kind of well casing to install, we decided on steel, even though Jim was telling us that we could use pvc. We had researched the effects of polyvinyl manufacturing and found that factories producing polyvinyl compounds were primarily located in poor communities and contaminated these places with toxins. We also felt skeptical that pvc pipe was truly safe to drink from, despite EPA assurances. We paid ~10% extra for steel, but kept to our principle of low-impact non-toxic development, which includes caring for other lands, not just our own.

Groundwater in our vega [meadow] bottom land is high and, as a result, well water, even though it is coming up from 100ft, rises to just below the surface. This effect is similar to that of placing a straw in a glass of water. When I saw the well water at ~2ft from the top of the casing, I said,"that water looks easy to reach". Jim suggested trying a 'pitcher pump' to gain access. We did. We found a supplier in town and installed it ourselves. Pitcher pumps are short and pull water up by suction. As long as our well water stayed within reach of the drop pipe, and it did, we had access to our good clean drinking water.

After ~3yrs of continual use, the leathers on this short pump began to wear out. We needed to make a decision. After looking at different upgrade options, we chose another hand pump, a tall one with a bulb in its body to force pressure and a spout adapter to connect farm hoses. This amish-style pump also has different pin settings to adjust the lever to more volume & resistance per stroke or less volume & resistance. It works by pushing water up from below, from where it enters through a check valve into a brass cylinder, and is then lifted upward with each stroke. A fine example of sophisticated low-technology that we were also able to install ourselves. While pumping water up with the pitcher was not difficult, carrying the water to where it was needed could be tedious. This amish-style forced-pressure hand pump makes moving water horizontally easy also, and allows us to pump while standing up! Daily tasks become truly pleasurable when the tools needed are well made. We look forward to adding on more farm hoses in order to move water farther about our 3 acres of land.

Even though we have focused all of this week on water access, there are still many details that I have left out due to space & time considerations. If this approach to water seems like one you may like to try for yourselves, please do not hesitate to ask us follow-up questions. "The devil is in the details" or "God may be found in the details", depending on one's choice of deity.

With best wishes for this week,

Gardener Machei

Taos, New Mexico