Spring development

[webfoot]

Fall is spring development time.
1. The tire trough in the approximate location it will be set. Along with a few plumbing parts stacked on it for the time being.
2. The trail down which the pile line will be dug. You can see that blue dam that is by the trough in the top center.
3. The machine used to develop springs. A D3 with a backhoe.
4. A little too much side hill here. Levi slid off the trail into the mucky bottom. Sort of got stuck for an hour. Not stuck in one spot, just couldn't get out. He said that was an hour he will never get back.
5. The hole where he was stuck filled up with water. This much water in September on a drought year. This spring is going to run 3 or 4 gallons a minute.
6. Where our drain pipe will be set to capture the water. Note cattails in the bottom of a draw in the middle of the dessert.

We will put in a piece of drain pipe down on the bottom. Surround it with some gravel and cover with filter fabric. About 250 feet of 2 inch pipe in a trench to the trough. Gravity flows to the trough 24/7/365. An over flow pipe with take the excess back to the draw 50 feet or so away,

 

[leanin' H]

It's always a great thing to develop those springs and get them into a trough. Lots of work for sure, but sure worth it. Amazing how much water ya can have available if ya can catch it and have storage for it.

 

[webfoot]

Classic dessert spring. A hundred yards up and there isn't a sign of water. Down stream and there is signs of water running in the spring for about 200 yards. After that dry as a bone. Where Levi was in the mud with the cat there is a solid rock bottom. The water must be coming this way. Hit that rock and gets pushed to the surface.

 

[leanin' H]

It always amazes me how those little springs come up on the point of a ridge or in a draw. And just like ya said, dry as a bone everywhere else. We've developed more than I can count. Without the water, all the grass isn't worth much.

 

[Faster horses]

It always amazes me how those little springs come up on the point of a ridge or in a draw. And just like ya said, dry as a bone everywhere else. We've developed more than I can count. Without the water, all the grass isn't worth much.

You are so right. Water is the first nutrition requirement; without it nothing else in the system can work well. It's great that so many ranchers have developed springs and pipelines. In E Montana, pipelines service a lot of country that wasn't useable before.

 

[Mountain Cowgirl]

That is wonderful that you will get that much flow from one spring in the fall. When I lived a bit north and west of you, I had 2 springs that flowed about a gallon each in the fall. Do you still have to file for rights? I had to way back then and let all overflow go to the creek even though both springs were on my property

 

[Evans]

We have community wells here. I believe they are fead underground from the mountains. If the two wells that I'm thinking of ever dried up it would be a real disaster for a lot of people. So many of us hauling water now a days. Most always a line up of trucks. I can wait hours in the line up.
A lot of creak's dried up this summer that never do or havnt since the eighties.

 

[webfoot]

That is wonderful that you will get that much flow from one spring in the fall. When I lived a bit north and west of you, I had 2 springs that flowed about a gallon each in the fall. Do you still have to file for rights? I had to way back then and let all overflow go to the creek even though both springs were on my property

This spring doesn't flow over ground to the river so as far as I know we didn't have to file anything. The conservation district who is paying for part of the project never said anything about filing. Where it is located the only one who will ever see it is me, the neighbor who is helping, and the cows.