And here it is this morning: Poor old thing.

It’s not so bad from the back:

It was going to come down, one way or another:

I counted the rings: Three hundred fifty years old!

But we’d gone to the farm on another mission. The water from our “new” well had gotten a very bad report card from the testing service. Iron. Arsenic. Salt? Actually, we don’t yet know about the salt, because Jake, from Oregon Pump was going to re-test the water this morning. Not that arsenic and iron aren’t bad enough, but if salt, which had unaccountably not been tested, shows up too, we’re in for a huge remediation project.

Larry and I wanted to check on the creek, so turned off the electricity for the fence and climbed through the strands. I wonder how long it would take the cows to realize they’re out of jail, but they appeared to be unconcerned, lazily grazing in the lower pasture. Mark, Cow Guy, says they will know if the electricity is off too long, but how do they figure that out? It looks no different. Cows are smarter than you think.

So here’s Muddy Creek:

I said we should get a raft or canoe, and Larry gave me the look. “You don’t even like boats. And how, for instance, would we launch it, there being no discernible bank. And what, you think we’d go drifting along spotting birds, maybe having a picnic?” All of that in one look, but we’ve been married a long time and I got it. No, I’m serious. Doesn’t it look beautiful?
Well, click on the photo and you’ll see.

We walked the long way around the oak copse and up along the back edge of our property. Here are some of our neighbors:

Jesse, from Shonnards, arrived to discuss the siting for the elk fence. Seems they can start next Tuesday, so we wrote a check, shook hands and he left. And then walked down to see how the well testing was getting on. Found that it wasn’t. Seems the well pump was plugged with whatever and Jake will have to come back with the big truck, pull the pump, clean it, and then run water for the sample. Under the circumstances, he wanted to see the first, unsuccessful well. If, he tells us, that water is good (unlike 2nd well’s water) he would recommend developing a storage tank system for the 2 gallons-per-minute available there. So he will do a flow test on that water next week, too.

As you can imagine, Larry finds this pretty stressful! Somehow it feels like my fault when stuff goes wrong. I know this is irrational. But Larry stopped and bought a Stihl power saw, I came home and ate some ice-cream, and we both feel much better.

On Saturday, we go to a fruit tree pruning class in Philometh. We saw some tarps and equipment by the barn that make us believe that the sheep will be there soon. Stay tuned!