I don’t even remember what Sunday was like it must have been uneventful. That’s right I went to Roswell. I wish the rest of the week followed suit, but oh well here’s how it all played out.
Monday (I think) I had water issues again, only this time I couldn’t even get the water to turn on. I played with the power box, and finally pulled out the fuses I insisted were fine (Rudy thought otherwise), and replaced them. That didn’t work so I looked at the points, and sure enough one wasn’t firing even with the new fuse. Back up to the house because of course I didn’t have any sandpaper in the gator. I’m getting too much like Rudy. I go to clean the point, and it falls out in my hand. Yes they were dirty, but falling out was a bit much. There is a little tiny pin that holds the points in, and it was gone. So was another part, which is why I couldn’t get the silly thing to fire.
Rudy calls a neighbor while I try to get our 65-gallon tank in the truck. I search around for some tie downs, and find one in the box Rudy said they would be in, and another under the seat of the truck. Down the hill I go. Well George’s water is even worse than ours, and he can only give me the one tank full. I am grateful for anything I can get. While we are waiting for the tank to fill, we sit and talk a bit about this, and that. Mostly we talk about water, we are in a drought after all. I started the conversation about our new neighbor. He is fencing his property, sad but predictable. Our property is fenced because of the livestock, but a lot of our neighbors have done the same. It’s the ATV’ers that cause people to fence their land in, and I understand them wanting to keep unwanted guests out. Rick (the neighbor) also said he wanted to get some animals, namely donkeys so that’s ok too. What I didn’t like was all the cut trees, and limbs he left along the roadside. He told me it was to keep the water erosion down, but if I wanted them cleared just because I thought it was a fire hazard fine. He was quite perturbed at me (I’m being nice). George asked me if I knew he (the neighbor) was putting in a pond, and I said yes. Then he tells me how big it is, and I just about pop a gasket. It’s at least as big as his parking lot (George has a studio), and he’s putting it in because he likes to watch the deer drink at the pond, and then he’s going to put in some goldfish I guess, which will freeze come winter. We are in a drought, people are having to drill their wells deeper, and his comment to George when he asked him about the well going dry was, well I’ll just drill another one, or as many as it takes to keep the pond filled. I couldn’t believe my ears, then I got angry. George’s comment was he’s from the city, and he doesn’t understand. He has money so he doesn’t care how many wells he has to drill. I said, what about the people below him that will have their wells go dry? George told me he was already expecting to have his go dry. I was livid.
Ok that was Monday. I should have known that I would not like the rest of the week either. Tuesday I was off to Roswell to pick up my parents. They were having a mattress delivered between 1:00 and 2:00 in the afternoon, which was fine since I had to do what I could to get things squared around at the ranch. I had tried calling the well guy the night before, but no luck. I called him, and he was booked solid until next week. I tried the other well guy, and he never answered. I called the last well guy, and left a message while on my way to Roswell. He called me back, I told him what the problem was, and he said that he would go by, and fix the box. At least he knew what I was talking about. No one else understands my layman’s terminology. Hey I’m an accountant, what do you want. I only became a full time rancher a year, and a half ago. I was on the way back to Capitan when he calls me, and tells me it wasn’t just the box. I need a new pressure tank too. Moan, and groan, that’s a cool $1,000 just for the tank. Like I told him what can I do, I have to have water. I don’t know where God thinks I’m going to get the money to pay for all this, but He’s in charge so I’ll let him worry about that.
By the time I get back to Capitan the guys were at the pump house putting in the new pressure tank. Then things got dicey. At first they thought there was a leak so we looked everywhere. The kid even went under the house to see if he could find a leak there, but there were no leaks. Then Chad (the owner) came over and tested the pump. He told me that the pump was fine (so they would not have to pull the pump), but he thought there must be a leak somewhere since I was getting air in the pipes. He also told me that he didn’t think the pump was all the way down because the wiring showed him that we only had a ½ hp motor on the pump, and that could never pull from 750’. Personally I think that the water table is too low, and the reason I get air in the pipes is because when I pull 150 – 200 gallons of water to fill the big water tanks I deplete the water, and all it can do is suck air. The good news is that if I do have to go down deeper at least I won’t have to drill deeper, just get a bigger motor, and drop the pump to the bottom of the well. Of course that is assuming that they can pull the pump out. The last guy that looked at the well said he wasn’t sure that it could even be pulled the way they put it in with too small a pipe. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
Oh is it only Tuesday? Wednesday, ah yes I had to get up at 2:45 am so that Father can be at the hospital at 6:30 am. I get up, take a shower, get dressed, and get Mother, and Father up. We manage to get out of the house close to 3:30. It’s a long drive to Albuquerque but we get there not too late. It takes a couple of hours, and many cups of coffee before the doctor comes in. He closes the door, and says we need to have a discussion. Mind you we were just there two weeks ago. The long, and the short of it is that again they did nothing only this time we talked about it, and he gave Father some new medication to help with the symptoms he has been having. If he gets worse we can have another discussion, and perhaps then he will put in the stints. He showed us where the blockages are, and they are in really nasty places. It would not be an easy surgery, two surgeries actually. So we will wait. Not quite a wasted trip since we understood better what was going on.
Back to Capitan, and yes I’m exhausted. I lay down for a little bit (didn’t quite sleep), and then fed the horses. I left the water at the barn on so I could see if I needed to fix Sierra’s waterier the next morning. Father needed to get some prescriptions filled, and I needed to get some money in Rudy’s account. This was the plan, go to the post office (to see if there was a check in the mail), go to Wells Fargo, go to Walgreen’s, and then go eat. Well after the post office Father informed me that he was going to get his prescriptions filled in Roswell. Well we go to the bank anyway, then to Farley’s for dinner. I love Farley’s. It’s about the only restaurant in Ruidoso that I like that doesn’t cost an arm, and a leg to eat at, and trust me I ate plenty.
Next morning I check Sierra’s water, and yes it is leaking badly now that we have good pressure. I take Mother, and Father back to Roswell, hurry back, and miss the meeting I was supposed to be at. Needless to say, I go to bed early not having recovered from the previous days of constant driving. Next day (I think we’re up to Friday now) I go to the Mercantile, and get the parts for the water tank, and a float for the arena pasture tank. The arena pasture tank was actually easy to put in, but I’ll have to take it out during the winter when it freezes unless I can figure out a way to keep the float, hose, and pipe from freezing. I’m working on that. Then I go back to the house, and die for a while. Tomorrow I will fix Sierra’s tank. It’s an easy fix (having done one already) or so I think.
It is Saturday, hay day. First stop is the Mercantile for grass hay only I discover there is no grass hay, and there won’t be until maybe Monday. Wonderful, I get beet pulp, and go to Mark, and Penny’s. Penny has had just as bad a week. Their hay supplier said he was going to charge them winter rates, and she wasn’t sure they would be able to stay open. They were frantically trying to find some stripped alfalfa at a reasonable price. I got 24 bales of stripe, and 5 bales of green alfalfa. I’ve never carried that much hay in the truck, but I had the straps in the truck from carrying the water tank so a very nice gentleman from Arabella strapped the hay in for me. I don’t know what we would have done if he hadn’t been there since I couldn’t have done it myself. He had a time of it since one of the straps was shorter, and it took all his strength to get it tied down. Yes, thank you Lord for that, you did good.
I get the hay unloaded, and get everything together to fix the waterier. I was uncertain as to whether or not I could get the top off, but that turned out to be the easiest thing I did that day. I take the float off only to discover that this tank has a ¾ inch valve. Of course they couldn’t be the same size. Back to the Mercantile for the third time, I had to go back earlier to get plumbers tape since I forgot that I used the last of it. I got a male ½”, and a female ¾” piece which was cheaper than buying the ¾” valve. I have to take the ball apart to attach it to the new float mechanism, and it breaks. I call Rudy, and he tells me where his tool, and die kit is, and I proceed to try to re-thread the end of the rod. After I don’t know how long, I finally get the broken end attached to the ball, and the good end to the fitting. I put everything together, and of course it doesn’t work. The converter I built not only leaks, but the ball can’t come up because there simply isn’t enough room. Quickly I call the Mercantile, and thankfully they are open until 5:30. Yes it’s now 5:00. A fifteen minute job has taken all day, ok not all day, I did get hay unload it, and put in new pallets. It took all afternoon. I make it to the Mercantile by 5:25, and of course they all say I thought you weren’t coming in again, I scowl at them. They don’t have a rod I can replace the old rod with so I settle for exchanging the ½” float for the ¾” float mechanism. It’s 6:00 by the time I get home, and the horses are all screaming for food. I get everyone fed (except me of course), and call Rudy. He called when I hadn’t quite finished feeding the dogs.
I tell Rudy all my woes, and he comments that he wants to see what I come up with since I seem to have shall we say creative ways of fixing things. We talk for about an hour and a half and then I sit down to eat some food of my own. It has been a very tiring, and expensive week. I’ll fix the float tomorrow provided that something else doesn’t go wrong. I have two other tanks I want to replace the floats on, but they will wait for another day when I’m not so tired, and frustrated. Well not exactly frustrated, just frazzled I guess. If the tank only takes a little while to fix, I’ll move Sere into the big pasture with Sadie, and Lizzie, and I may even play with the horses a bit. They have been sadly neglected this week. Who knows, I may even take that ride I keep saying I’m going to take. That would really be a nice treat. We’ll see what tomorrow brings, it might be nice things for a change, after all that very nice man was in the right place at the right time to help out with loading the hay. That was very thoughtful, thank you Lord for that. Now can you work on the bigger problems, please?
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