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| Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. |
For the first time in I can't remember when, there's water in the pond. Not nearly as much as there should be, you understand. And the water flowing through the main ditch yesterday looked like this. Normally, it's crystal clear, so clear that you can see every blade of grass, every pebble in the earth of the ditch.
So why is it so dirty? Because the other ditches that bring it down had been so badly damaged that they weren't routing the water at all, and so he had to shore them up while the water was flowing. One, that's not his job, but apparently no one could be bothered; two, combined with the drought we've had, the damage was exponential; and three, the person we've been paying to help out around did as he did last year and completely let us down the one week Wings needed him more than any other, and I am livid. Because aside from the fact that Wings should not have to be doing this kind of heavy labor, and after, just last week, we fronted the money to get "his" vehicle fixed, which turned out to be his mom's? We lost out on a lot of the water that would otherwise have flowed this way, which harms the land here.
We're also too dry generally, and we'll need much more water than is available this way. We got a hard, serious rain yesterday (and the mosquitoes with it, which now seem much more deadly than in years past), but one good rain only tamps down the surface dust. If we don't get this well drilled, we don't eat, and neither do the horses. I'm so tired. May's gone; June starts tomorrow, and we have to plant this week, regardless. There's just no end to it. And it's all too much; Wings says this is the last time, EVER, that he's irrigating the old way. It's gotten too much more physically difficult, and we're both too old to be doing this kind of heavy labor now.
We now have the beginnings of an estimate. Just to bring the rig out and drill down, nothing else, is going to be in the range of $6-7K, cash on the barrelhead. But it will need a pump and piping and so forth, because the whole purpose of this is to get the water out on the land, and wellhouse to protect it, and the whole shot is probably going to hit five figures. Again, cash. Wings is estimating around $15K overall, building in a little padding for the inevitable problems that crop up that no one foresees, but that's still probably on the conservative side before we're done. No, we don't have $15K lying around; why do you ask? And before all that (it's not like they can get out here until August, probably, which means that it would be good only for this year's last round of irrigation, but would be in place for next year), I've got to pay The Man, and I can't even cough up sales to do it.
Behind on other fronts, too, and I have to come up with a way around it. The pandemic is making sales impossible, and I have GOT to sell $3,300 worth this week. I've got to get first- and second-quarter taxes off my shoulders so I can turn my attention to figuring out this well problem. We're supposed to be getting monsoonal-pattern rains starting tomorrow, but we have no idea whether it'll materialize, and even if it does, whether it'll be anything like what our rainy season is supposed to be. If we can't bring the water down (and we likely can't), we're screwed for hay for the horses and crops for ourselves and the folks with whom we normally would share them. And this year of all year, we have to be able to get back to growing our own food.
I've got to make sales, I've got to bring in the scratch, and I can't do it without buyers. I can't create money out of nothing. I can squeeze that stone until the world ends, and the only blood I'll get out of it will be from the damage to my hands. We're looking at no return to anything like a normal rate of sales for at least a year, probably more, and I don't know what to do at this point.
So please. The links are here:
Note: At this point, it's getting to be impossible for us to get some of the things we need without using Amazon. We haven't done so yet, but I suspect we're going to be stuck very soon. If you can find any of the items on wishlist elsewhere, we'd prefer you purchase there instead of with Amazon (there's even a wishlist function where you can note that it's been purchased somewhere else), but I we realize that they've managed to make themselves essentially indispensable, especially for rural/rez folks like us who are isolated at the best of times. And these are most surely not the best of times.
Please share everything. Thanks.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
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