Drilling a Well - and Camping and Bird sightings

Drilling a Well - a  hole and a hole.

Doesn't look like much, but this is the beginning of what I hope to be one of two water wells on Die Weide. This first one is next to the water harvesting shed and half way between the orchard and the garden. Although the water harvesting shed will go a long way towards watering the orchard, it doesn't provide enough water for the garden too. I stumbled upon a video on youtube from this site: drill your own well which has a relatively inexpensive way to drill a well to get to relatively shallow groundwater. Several of the neighbors around us have groundwater wells with the water table at 19 ft deep. I expect the table to be deeper as a result of the drought though. I'm planning to drill a 50 ft deep well and case it with 4" PVC. 

After doing some research on groundwater hydrology, I plan to put the 2nd well at the edge of the pasture, much closer to one of the four wet weather creeks that runs through the property. This should be a shallower well according to groundwater hydrology and less likely to dry out. This well will be used to provide stock water for the 2-3 cattle we plan to have and the donkey we already have.

Inge brushing her donkey, Herbert

Today I had the pleasure of seeing two new birds on Die Weide. Within an hour of each other to boot! I went out around 10 this morning with my folding chair and a cup of hot tea and had a seat on the back (West) of the property to be still and see what critters showed up. This area always gets lots of deer traffic and Inge and I saw an Armadillo here last week too. Anyway, a pair of noisy small birds were pecking on food on the ground about 4 yards from me when a large greyish bird swooped down to try to snag one of the little birds. I thought, "hawk!" but when I swung the binocs over I was staring eye-to-eye with a large owl! After a minute or so it flew up into a nearby tree and I spent the next 20 minutes studying the owl. Online I found that its grey and tan horizontal striped markings and size indicate that it was a Barred Owl.

A few minutes later I headed back to pack up the campsite, walking slowly along the Western Trail, when a large brown bird flew away from me and I thought, "Hawk!" But it landed on a branch ahead of me and I snapped up the binoculars to see a Great Horned Owl staring back at me. This time I didn't get to study the owl as he flew off as soon as we made eye contact. But there is no doubt that I saw the "ears" on a very large brownish owl head.