Going Back to the Well

We’ve been down at the farm, digging out the well. We had to go down another two feet to ensure it's deep enough. We just want a little more insurance that it’s at a depth where we’ll have water all summer long. It’s about 15 feet now. The hole I’m in is about five feet deep, and the well goes down about ten feet more. We’re lifting wet, heavy sand out with a shovel. Click the picture for a bigger view.

The earth here is very sandy, because the farm is on an old lakebed. I have no idea when the lake was formed, or when the lakebed became dry land, but it’s surrounded by the Great Cedar Swamp (Thoreau knew of it), so it might not have been that long ago. It’s sandy loam, which is very good for farming; it drains well, which means that you don’t wind up with standing water, and during the spring, it warms up sooner than other kinds of soil, so you can get to it earlier.