Remembering the Farm: Water, Wells and Dugouts

 Potable water in adequate amounts was a problem on many Saskatchewan farms. Bored or hand dug wells 3' in diameter could only go down so far. If there was water, it was usually Ok for drinking but amounts would vary from place to place and year to year. Surface water could be collected in dams or dugouts but spring runoff was undependable and if the level got too low, quality was terrible.  Drilled deep wells were not a thing until I was a kid. You could always hit water if you drilled deep enough but for example south of Kindersley towards the river, you hit Bearpaw Shale and the water was so hard you had to cut if off the tap with an axe.

The availability of water and one's willingness to pump it by hand were initial determinants of how many livestock were kept on the farm. Some farmers bought a pumpjack and used a gas engine to pump water. My father pumped by hand prior to getting electricity in spring of 1953. I do not know how many cows or horses we had when I was very small but I remember him filling the trough in winter and letting the animals out of the old barn to drink. 

Diagram of a hand operated piston pump

Our well was about 100 feet from the house and down hill from the barn however runoff was not an issue, thank goodness. It was about 30' deep and had a wooden cribbing that extended above the ground. The pump was a cylinder type as shown. The cylinder could be any distance from the pump that you cared to lift water but could not be more than 15' from the water surface as it required atmospheric pressure to lift the water to fill the vacuum created by the piston. If the check valve at the bottom of the cylinder leaked, you would have to prime the pump to make it work.

The farm well, long retired 

We kids carried water from the well to the house in 3 gallon pails. While we were milking cows (up to 1960) the well also served to cool and store cream which was in long 5 gallon cans lowered almost to the water surface on chains. 

Dad bought a pumpjack finally and ran it with an electric motor. That made life a lot easier for all of us. The barn yard used to come down to where the fence is now and a trough was located just inside the fence. We would carry water to animals that could not come to the trough, eg pigs, chickens, or cattle in the other barn. 

Dad wanted a pressurized watering system that he could trench to the house and other parts of the farm. So in the early 60's he had a well drilled about 50' SE of the old well. It went down 200'. He sent a sample to be tested and the results came back not fit for human or animal consumption. It was high in Magnesium Sulfate, Calcium Sulfate, Iron and what else. Too late. Advice ignored. It was duly trenched to the corrals and barn and eventually to the house.

Using an air compressor to pump water

We used an air compressor to pump water with for the longest time. That is the simplest cheapest trick I ever saw. Half inch pipe going down, inch and a quarter coming up. The deeper the well the better it worked. It would take a while to build up enough pressure but then the water would come in spurts. Before we had the water trenched to the corrals and barn, we just had a plastic hose coming out of the well. When you were done pumping in winter, you had to drain the hose thoroughly or it would freeze up. Pressure would build up until the pop valve on the air compressor would let go. Then you went to the house and got a kettle of boiling water which you poured into the end of the plastic hose and lifted it so the water would run to melt the ice. 

One day I looked into the end of the pipe, just as it let go. Chunks of ice hit me in the forehead at 100 psi. Missed my eye by so much but I had a great gash. Hauled into Wilkie Hospital. "How did you do that?" "I bit myself."  "How can you bite yourself on the forehead?" "I stood on a chair." Sometimes you wait your whole life for someone to feed you straight lines like that. They almost left me to bleed to death but it would have been worth it.

The water was not fit to drink. How it affected the animals that were forced to drink it, I can't say but I am sure it reduced their productivity considerably. The worst was the iron content and iron bacteria. It ate metal faster than it could be replaced. It stained everything yellow rusty. Two iron filters wouldn't even touch it. Mom could not use it to cook or wash clothes. It was used for dishes, bathing, and flushing toilets. They hauled drinking water from Landis 7 km away. They did laundry in Wilkie. Mom used it to water her garden but I don't think it was very good for that either.

We had 240 acres of pasture north of us. Cattle depended on sloughs for water but it wasn't always there. there was an old well about a quarter of a mile north of us in a low spot surrounded by a slough that dad hand pumped to water the cattle in summer on occasion. It wasn't the best well but it was there. PFRA was paying a major portion of the cost for farmers to build dugouts so in the mid 50s, Dad had one dug in the same location as the old well. It served us well for many years. When it was new the water was clean and soft so we hauled it for mom to wash.

It didn't stay clean for long. The cattle drank from the ends of the dugout in summer and tramped mud down into it. Starting in 1960, Dad wintered the cattle in the bush not far from the dugout. We hauled feed to them and cut ice on the dugout for them to drink. After many years of this the dugout got very fouled with manure and if the spring runoff was low, the water was so thick, you could almost shovel it.

Eventually it needed cleaning out. I'm not sure of the year but it was after Mom and Dad died that a backhoe came in and dredged it out so the water would be clean and the holding volume of the dugout restored. Dugouts should be fenced and the water pumped out to the cattle. Improved productivity of healthier cattle pays for it and then some. However...

Dugout prior to cleaning.

Dredging out the muck

Good spring runoff

Exceptional spring runoff