Water Problems, and Garden Weeds

The Wannabe Farmwife got home from work yesterday, rushed upstairs to get into her weeding outfit (which is not, at present, the same as her work outfits) and used the rest room (TMI, I know). Much to her dismay, I went to turn the water on to wash my hands and...well, nothing happened. Not just nothing notable. I mean nothing, nada, no single thing, not a drip.

We have well water here at the homestead (which really isn't a homestead...yet...) and I reset the pump circuit, which wasn't tripped but I thought, why not, it *might* work.

And my efforts paid off, the water flowed plentifully through the lines again and I happily went on to start the dishwasher and some laundry and got dressed for weeding.



As you can see, the garden is protected by wire and fencing. This would be because we live in the woods and if it were not for the wire and fencing there would be *no garden*. 12-14 deer are found in my backyard every single morning, as well as countless squirrels and three black bears that make an appearance periodically. Though I have found no solution yet for the squirrels (but if those buggers take another bite out of my cukes I'm going to have a fit).

It seems that chickweed has taken over my garden in huge abundance, so that was largely what I was focused on. I took Obie out and tied him out there with me and he was puzzled as to why I was in the cage and he was out of it, which he didn't enjoy at ALL. So he spent the weeding period whining. Loudly. Chickweed is an edible weed, but I wasn't in the mood to be accommodating, so into the compost bin it went.


When I returned to the house, full of dirt, with the Reluctant Farmhusband wanting to start his laundry, once again, no water. This apparently occurred during the weeding process, and while the dishwasher was running so the Wannabe Farmwife had dirty half-done dishes, dirty hands and no water. The Reluctant Farmhusband was due to travel the next morning to do a kickoff meeting (another reason the Wannabe Farmwife is tired of the rat race) so yea, I panicked and called the senior Farmhusband (who actually qualifies as such, being the Wannabe Farmwife's father and having owned a farmstead/homestead himself. The senior Farmhusband was nowhere to be found, since he has now gone back to the rat race and given up on farming for other reasons, and so...panic ensued.

As it turns out, a bug, a very small bug was the cause of all of the problems. They somehow get into the pump and short out the circuit. This has happened before at the homestead, and ironically it was a lightning bug. However, the senior Farmhusband had not showed me how to de-bug the pump and so I had to wait for him to get home, with flashlights, to fix the problem.

However, once debugged, the pump ran and once again, the water faucets ran, dishes were done and laundry was accomplished.