E’s never ending world of problem solving turned to wiring this week. When we last left you in the fall, on the topic of our well pump, it had stopped working for no reason. With rainy season upon us, we decided to ignore it and deal with more crucial matters like pipes vulnerable to upcoming frosts. We use rainwater for water in the winter and if need be can get by without pumping from the well.

What little water we get from our well helps us in the summer. We can pump enough for the basics of life while depending on the water stored over the winter for luxuries like bathing and washing our clothes and watering the garden.

Pollen season is coming up and we will have to shut down the rain catchment system and close the water tanks to protect them from pollen sludge. Solving our well pump issue was moved to the top of the urgent list as we won’t be collecting water from approximately mid March to the end of April. Heaven forbid we deplete my gardening water supply.

The well pump was causing a short circuit error whenever it was turned on. We really didn’t want to have to pull up the pump or, worse yet, have to replace it. So E got his multimeter out and tested for problems. Thankfully, the pump itself seemed to be fine from the readings in the control box, so the problem had to be somewhere in the 200 feet of wire. Long story short, after testing the various connections and uncovering a great deal of the buried wire, he found a small nick in the wire outside the gen shed, half way between the well and the house. He used butt splices to fix it, and now we are pumping water again.

We will begin by pumping 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes a night. There should be lots of water down there and are hoping to maybe capture 120 gallons a day.

Meanwhile in the garden….. Our island rodents love to eat pea seeds so we soak the peas for a couple of weeks before planting, as critters don’t seem to eat them if they are already sprouted. The first of the year’s peas were planted yesterday and the next batch are now soaking between two paper towels.

Starting to see some signs of propagation success. These are two baby flowering currant which I started in the fall.

It should be mentioned E is wearing his “good” work jeans. I burned three other pair yesterday which were much worse off. It is always a good day when E can solve a problem in a couple of hours and it didn’t cost us a cent ‘cause we spend all our extra

pennies on Levis