Storey's Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance - Softcover

John Storey founded Storey Communications, Inc. with his wife Martha in 1983. He has three children and eight grandchildren. He lives in western Massachusetts and farm in Westport, New York.

Martha Storey lent her party-planning advice to Keeping Entertaining Simple. She has mastered the art of relaxed hostessing, whether giving small dinner parties for close friends or large corporate picnics, and she shares her secrets and inspiring ideas with readers. Country-living publisher for more than 17 years, Martha also draws on her country roots to bring you the time-honored classics of the American country kitchen in her book, Treasured Country Recipes from Martha Storey and Friends. Martha founded Storey Communications, Inc. with her husband John in 1983. She has three children and eight grandchildren. She lives in western Massachusetts and farm in Westport, New York.

REDISCOVER THE BASIC SKILLS OF COUNTRY LIFE!

Whether it's making ice cream or sharpening an ax, cleaning a chimney or growing raspberries, you'll learn how to do it in this treasury of time-honored country wisdom. Illustrated step-by-step instructions will show you how to milk a cow, tap a maple tree, clean a fish, lead a horse, and build the best chicken coop. You'll find out how to heat your house with wood or by the sun and how to de-skunk a country dog. You'll learn the proper way to put in a water system, rewire an old house, stack a cord of wood, and grow fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

Yearning for a more self-reliant life? You'll find the answers in Storey's Basic Country Skills.

From Chapter 3: The Water Supply Water Sources - Water Supply Systems, Wells, Pumps, Natural Springs, Ponds, Water Distribution
Water Quality
We started our publishing business in a converted motorcycle repair shop in Pownal, Vermont. One hot July morning, we ran out of water.
We called Floyd Patterson, the builder, who explained that there was a reservoir in the hills and a pipeline that ran down a mile or so. "Could be a break anywhere on the line," he said. "We could dig it all up, but why don't we try a dowser first?" Skeptically, we watched the dowser use a forked stick made of hazel. Within 20 minutes he had found the break, allowing the backhoe to dig in just the right spot. We were quickly becoming converts to the arts, crafts, and skills of country life.
--John & Martha Storey
Good homesteading land must have an unfailing supply of good water. As you look at land, find out all you can about the amount and quality that is available. An ideal site will have a reliable spring, but if yours does not, it may have a well. As a last resort, you may have to develop a new well.
Spring. If you have a spring, be sure it has an ample flow of 4 to 6 gallons a minute. Does it flow year-round or dry up during summer? Is it reasonably near your home site? If the answer to these questions is "yes," you probably have a reliable water supply. But you'll need to have the water tested for purity and hardness, too.
Well. Dug wells are seen on old farms that were in operation before electricity became common. They were dug with hand tools, and the sides were rocked or bricked up to prevent cave-ins. Drilled wells are common today, primarily because of the availability of drilling equipment. To create a driven well, a pipe fitted with a well point is driven into water-bearing sand.
Town water. Many rural areas have established water districts. If you live close enough to the town water line, you may have a choice of whether to dig a well or tap into town water. Figure the cost of both options over 10 or 20 years before deciding. Check with local officials, because sometimes you pay for town water anyway.
Non-drinking water. There are time-honored methods of gathering water for animals and for washing. One is the creation of the farm pond, usually the excavation of a low-lying, swampy area. Normal drainage should fill the pond to a consistent depth. Another method is catching rainwater from eave troughs in barrels. Some homesteaders in low-water areas provide most or all of their water needs from rainwater, which is naturally soft, by constructing home roof runoff systems that filter into very large storage cisterns.
Water Supply Systems
Five Kinds of Wells
Because groundwater moves in so many ways, at different speeds and different depths, the general term well is about as useful as the word aircraft. To say a well is any pit or hole in the ground used to extract water is a misleading oversimplification. Some shallow wells venture only a short distance from the ground surface. Elsewhere, wells penetrate deep into subterranean space.
Like groundwater, wells and well technology are complex and largely misunderstood by the public. Understanding begins with knowledge of the basic kinds of wells.
Dug Wells
Grandma's "wishing well," with its stone-wall top we could just see over, its little roof, and the bucket on a windlass, was almost certainly a dug well. Because it penetrated just a short distance into the water table, its water may have been polluted even in our grandparents' time. A very high percentage of today's dug wells are contaminated.
Dug wells are generally thought to be undependable as well as unclean. They're often known to fail during dry times. Still, in places where the water table remains pretty constant and groundwater quality is high, dug wells are common. They're rarely more than 50 feet deep, reaching just a few feet below the water table into soaked sand and gravel.
Digging the well hole, which may range from 3 to 20 feet in diameter, is normally a tedious, hand-excavated, pick-and-shovel operation.
Dug-out material is hauled to the surface in a pail on a rope. A clam-shell bucket on a crane can be used if the earth is very soft. Digging a well can be very dangerous because of the potential for cave-in. Seek professional advice on constructing a structure within which to dig the well.
The stone wall around the top of Grandma's well was actually the upper end of the lining. Today, fieldstone is used to keep the well walls from caving in, but brick and mortar or concrete blocks are easier to work with. More often, dug wells are cased with sections of 3-foot-wide, precase well tile that fit together at tongue-and-groove joints. Whatever the material, the lining should be as well sealed and watertight as possible.
A modern dug well should have a sanitary seal at the ground surface, which effectively keeps rainwater out of water below. It will keep surface water from contaminating the water table. Space between the well liner and the surrounding earth should be plugged with a waterproof cement grout.
Bored Wells
A bored well is essentially a dug well made with an earth auger instead of a shovel. If the auger is turned by hand, the hole will be between 8 and 14 inches in diameter. Power-driven augers bore wider holes-up to 3 feet in diameter. A bored well might be somewhat deeper than an
ordinary dug well, but rarely can it be expected to reach a water table lower than 100 feet in the ground.
Vitrified tile, steel, and plastic are the lining materials used most often. In some instances this casing is perforated where the pipe extends into water-bearing gravel and sand. These perforations receive water from the surrounding strata, and may need to be covered with screening to keep silt from entering the discharge line. Like all wells, a bored well head must be sealed and protected from surface drainage.
Jetted or Washed Wells
If conditions are right, a well can be jetted or washed. The two most important ingredients in this kind of operation-aside from soil with reasonably uniform texture-are a nearby water source and a pressure pump. A protective casing is driven into an augered hole and a riser pipe, fitted with a special washing point on its lower end, is inserted inside the casing. A stream of water is forced down this riser pipe and the jet from the wash point dislodges sand and soil below. As the point is pushed deeper and deeper, the muddy mixture is carried back to the surface in the space between the center pipe and the casing, and is discharged into a settling vat. Later, when the wash point is removed, the riser pipe becomes the suction line for water being pumped out of the well from above, and the top few feet of space between the two pipes are grouted to make it watertight.
Driven Wells
A driven well is quick, relatively inexpensive, and, unless there's an unlimited water supply near the surface, relatively undependable compared to the drilled well. In places where well driving is easy but the water table fluctuates, homeowners hedge their bets by driving a number of wells and connecting them to one pump.
Driven wells can be 25 to 100 feet deep, though most draw water from 50 to 60 feet. A well point or sand point, made of cast steel, is connected to lengths of threaded pipe and forced into the ground by blows on the pipe from above. This is the simplest and most direct way to reach groundwater, as long as there are no rocks in the soil to damage the wire mesh jacket of the well point.
The well point itself is only 1 1/4 to 2 inches in diameter, so it has little resistance as it penetrates. The necessarily...