My weekend off was great fun… but it’s high time to get back to work!

Vernon wanted help installing some spring boxes on the neighbor’s place… in joint cooperation with them, of course.  I’m not too much help, but Vernon and his excavator do most of the work anyway!

If you’re lucky enough to live in a place where there’s plenty of water, you probably look at this and go… why?????

Well, Wyoming is DRY country… and we like taking care of our wonderful Rocky Mountain spring water!  If you develop the spring, you’re putting the water through a catchment system of some sort… and then letting it continue on its merry little way… Convenient and safer for people, cows, and wildlife, it benefits everyone!

The spring is dug out to see where it’s actually coming from… this one had a couple of little spots where the water was bubbling up. We thought it might be coming out of the hillside, but nope… just percolating from the ground!

The spring box is then placed.  Now, old timers would have built a wooden box, put a removable lid on it, and dipped out the clean water.  Since we’re piping the water away from the place of origin, to reduce the trampling of the spring itself, we cut a section of large blue pipe to use.  It may have some inlet holes drilled… and clean washed gravel around it, and even a plastic dam to catch extra seepage.  Then it’s buried back with just the top exposed.

A lid will be placed on the “box” and later we will come back and finish developing the spring… adding black poly pipe to the end of the white rigid pipe where the spring water is now running.  A stock tank will be plumbed in, then the overflow will let the spring water continue on its journey.  But that’s for another day!