Water!

I feel like we should be having a party - what an amazing thing to see actual water coming out of the ground - even pouring out of the ground for a while and running down the old stream bed towards the waiting field drain underneath Mike's maize. Eddie the borehole man drilled to 130 ft through the 'Mercia Mudstone' beneath our garden at Pengotton (and most of Taunton Deane) to two underground watercourses which had been earlier located by Eddie's wife and her mate with a pair of bent copper rods and a hazel stick. Yes we were sceptical, even after having a go ourselves and feeling the rods turn to cross each other, and a small part of me still wants to know if we would have found water anywhere else we might have tried.

Anyway, for now they are the experts and water is now apparently sitting at 40 ft down our pipe waiting for us to pump it up. That's a depth of 90 feet of water to the bottom of the hole from which we could extract 20 gallons a minute. That's 21,600 gallons every day - a lot of baths! Dad wants to know if he can pipe it over to the farm for the cows - no problem except the pipe might cost more than another borehole. I find it amazing that in this country private users can extract up to 20 tonnes of water a day without a license, and also that it's free apart from the electricity for running the pump. We still have to have it tested of course before drinking, and it needs to be pumped till it runs clear. I was imagining clear sparkling blue water shooting up like a fountain, but it was more a spurt of clay-red liquid. It's not quite an artesian well but it's definitely there.