Thanksgiving in New Hampshire

I decided to call my brother already. His memory is always better than mine but then he also spent a lot more time with our father and in fact in Canada than I did.He says there were three wells on the ranch, I only remember the one on the hill. He says he was sent to get the drinking water while we were there and he got it from the well down by the barn, not the one up on the hill. Pulled a wagon down with a five gallon crock on it and filled the crock from the pail, there wasn't a pump on that well though there was on the one on the hill. So apparently it had nothing to do with worries about contamination, though he remembers thinking he didn't like the idea of getting the water from a well so near all the animals.As for the well on the hill, he says the vegetable garden was on that hill and the well was probably used for that back in the days when the whole family was there. The garden was gone when we were there and I remember only a rhubarb patch on the other side of the house. I do remember climbing the hill and getting water from that pump in a tin cup.So there you have more than you ever wanted to know about the well on the hill.

Faith,You put open wells in places where surface water can not get into them, places where surface water drains away from them. This keeps them sanitary and the water potable.Also most people, at least those who didn't vote for Obama, know that the water table isn't a flat line and that it actually follows the topography. So if the water is 10 feet below the surface here it is most likely 10 feet below the surface on the surrounding hills.The geology can and does affect this but Theodoric's comment to you just shows he doesn't know shit about hydrology as he thinks the water table is a flat line.I'll bet he was stupid enough to vote for Obama as well.

The rhyme could have been "Jack and Joad went down the road..." if wells weren't ever dug on hills.

He did say all the wells were on ground that was higher than the surrounding ground and that the barn well overflowed in the Spring and filled the pond the cows drank from.

Ha ha, Theodoric is complaining about your remarks about him voting for Obama on the Discussion Problems Thread. Maybe I should go complain about his and Tanypteryx's snarky remarks about fairy tales and witching rods in a perfectly straight discussion of wells.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

Cute, but Ringo outdid my story with his quarter mile trek to the well and spilling it all on the way back.

Akshully I couldn't care less about the hardship angle, I'm just fascinated with how people used to live. It would be so easy to completely forget it so I'm glad I got to visit a farmhouse that operated without modern amenities. Sure I can also get into the stories of what hard work it was, and how cold it was. Those people were a lot tougher than I am. I love to imagine all the hard work my grandmother must have done for a big family, that my unmarried aunt who went on living there alone continued doing, though only for herself and occasional guests.It was my own family so of course it's particularly interesting to me. But I can get just as wrapped up in other stories about how people lived in "olden times." Like for instance how the kitchens operated in one of Henry the 8th's summer palaces that I saw in a video recently. That was when they cooked in huge fireplaces. I forget how many there were in the palace kitchens but quite a few, each manned by a poor guy sitting in such intense heat they allowed him all the beer he could drink. Each fireplace roasted whole animals and had a series of racks for hanging pots at different temperatures. I remember them saying Henry would show up with hundreds of guests and stay for weeks and they had to feed all of them three meals a day. I just love thinking about all that stuff. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm guessing that somebody else who was a little more efficient made up the difference. It must have been dad because mon had two smaller children to keep an eye on. Apparently we could be trusted not to fall down the well but we couldn't be trusted to babysit. Either that or we were expendable.

or she used that to get you out of the house

As I recall, I was always a perfect angel.

Of course, you have a horrible and selective memory, right?

Jack and jill is a fairy tale. Hill rhymes with Jill.'Jill and Jack went up the track ...'

I have an excellent memory. I can remember things that didn't even happen.