Well, let me tell ya, figuring out if your well’s dry ain’t rocket science, but it ain’t always a walk in the park neither. You gotta keep your eyes peeled and your ears open, that’s what I always say.
First off, the water, it just ain’t flowing like it used to. You turn on the faucet and it’s just a trickle, like a sick cow trying to pee. Used to be, you could fill up a bucket in no time, now it takes forever. That’s a big sign, a real big one. They say a well should give you about five gallons a minute, but who’s got time to measure that? You just know when it’s slow, you feel it in your bones. If your water pressure drops like a rock, that’s another bad sign. Like, you’re taking a shower and the water just goes weak, barely enough to wash the soap off. That’s no good.
- Water barely coming out.
- Water pressure is way down.
Then there’s the muddy water. Oh Lord, that’s a sight you don’t wanna see. You turn on the tap and it looks like you’re getting chocolate milk, not water. Sometimes it’s sandy too, like you’re drinking the bottom of a creek bed. That means the water level’s gotten so low that it’s sucking up all the gunk from the bottom. It ain’t healthy, that’s for sure. If your water starts tasting funny, that’s another clue. Not like a little bit of iron, I mean real strange, like dirt or something. Your nose knows, they say, and your tongue does too.
Now, sometimes it ain’t the well itself, it’s the pump acting up. Pumps, they can be tricky things. They make all sorts of noises when they’re going bad. Loud noises, grinding noises, like a cat fight in a metal bucket. If your pump’s making a fuss, it might not be the well, but you gotta check it out anyways. A bad pump can make you think the well’s dry when it ain’t.
Another thing you can do, if you’re feeling brave, is to actually look down the well. Now, I ain’t saying you should go climbing down there, that’s a fool’s errand. But if you got a long stick or something, you can poke it down and see how far the water is. If it’s way down, lower than it used to be, then yeah, your well’s probably dry. Or you can use a dipper if you’re fancy, like some of them city folk do. They got tools for everything, I swear. But a stick works just fine for me.
And don’t forget, sometimes it’s just the dry weather. If it hasn’t rained in a coon’s age, everything dries up, including the wells. That’s just nature, you can’t fight it. The water table goes down, and there ain’t nothing you can do but wait for the rain. Or dig a deeper well, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. But even if it ain’t rained, your well should still have some water, unless it’s really, really dry.
So, you see, there ain’t just one way to tell if your well’s dry. You gotta look at the whole picture. Is the water flow weak? Is it muddy or sandy? Is the pump making funny noises? Is the water level way down? Has it been dry as a bone outside? If you’re seeing a bunch of these things, then chances are, your well’s running on empty. It’s like a cow that ain’t giving milk, you just know something’s wrong.
And if you think your well’s dry, don’t go messing around with it yourself unless you know what you’re doing. Get yourself a well man, someone who knows their business. They can tell you for sure what’s going on, and they can help you fix it. Water’s too important to mess around with, you know? You need it for everything, cooking, cleaning, even flushing the toilet, Lord knows. So, pay attention to your well, and it’ll pay you back with good, clean water, hopefully for years to come.
But if it does go dry, well, that’s just life, ain’t it? You deal with it, you figure it out. Maybe you gotta haul water for a while, maybe you gotta dig a new well. It ain’t the end of the world, just another bump in the road. We country folk, we’re used to it. We know how to make do.
