Rhythm & Roots

We rely on a spring for water. After four years of drought, we don’t have any. Our creeks still ran even in the driest part, so we didn’t have to worry about the livestock. And the garden has a pump that pulls from a branch just below it. But the springs that fed the house water system have been dry for months now.

We decided to design a water system around those springs because they never went dry and it was a lot cheaper than digging a well and we could do it ourselves. For many years, they ran year round. The only problem then we ever had was if a pipe that ran from the springs to the cistern would get plugged, we could sometimes run the cistern low before we noticed. But the springs, they ran.

I don’t remember which year was the first that we took to bathing in the creek in late summer but it was sometime in the late 1990s. The springs still ran as I remember, just not enough to allow us to wash clothes or to bathe. We could do dishes and flush. And in late summer, bathing in the creek is really a pleasure, not a chore. We became used to late summer conservation of water. After October the water would returned full force.

But this year, for the first time ever, after four years of severe drought, the springs went dry. Bone dry. Not a drop, not a drip. And it is December and they still are not back (although they are beginning to be wet on the bottom!). We have been on water conservation in the house since at least June. Since the springs went dry, we’ve hauled water from the garden pump to put into the cistern so that we can still wash dishes and sponge bath ourselves. Then we save that water to flush with.

Now it is so cold that the pump in the garden is frozen. So we’ve taken to getting water by the barrel out of the creek and hauling that to the cistern. It is actually easier to do this so that we might well be able to haul enough extra water for everyone to get to take a bath. The reason it isn’t our first choice is that the little branch below the garden is the cleanest water that we trust the most.

I wrote all that, really, to get to this:

Husband and elder daughter had business in town today. It was also today that we realized we were going to have to resort to the creek method to get water instead of the garden pump so the routine of how to do that would be new to us. After sending husband and daughter off, the rest of us bundled up and went to work. It was cold today. The truck was already in the front but the barrel was up here so we walked down carrying buckets and rolling the barrel. Every cat on the place went with us. Younger daughter and elder son dipped fifty gallons of water out of the creek one bucket at a time and I tipped it all into a barrel in the back of the pick-up. Younger son helped sort out the buckets and herd the cats.

While I said this before, it was cold today. And working in water was even colder. But there wasn’t a complaint. The sun was shining. The cats were funny. Daughter found it easier to dip without gloves on and son found it easier to tote without his coat on and I froze for them. The kittens evidently hadn’t been to the creek before and rock hopped and batted and sometimes made mistakes in their calculations. Noses and fingers turned red.

We had the best time.

When I hauled the truck up to the cistern, found the old hose, and tried to siphon the water out, I quickly gave up. I laid it down and went to check to see how low exactly the cistern was. 37 inches down. And daughter hollered, “Mom! It’s dripping!” and sure enough, it was so I took my end of it over to the tank and let gravity do its work.

Fifty gallons gives us about a day and a half of regular conservation use water. A little later I will go down to make sure it siphoned all right and also add a cup of bleach to the cistern. I will move the truck so the sojourners can get all the way home undeterred. I will finish the cheese and make a fresh loaf of bread and sweep the floors and dream of a bath. The kids will do their chores and resume their lives and dreamings. The sojourners will return with some treat for us probably.

We’ll feed the fires and stand around the stoves and warm our bums.

And tomorrow, we’ll do most of it again.