The saga of setting up a yard watering system

A few weeks ago, I shared how it took a tractor to pull a pipe out of the brush and up and over the hill because we decided to move the pump up here and put it in a ditch.

The last couple of weeks have been spent getting everything put together for a watering system up here. First, Rick found a transmission hose that would work and fastened a quick coupler on the end, and then we headed to town to find what we needed to form a ’T’ in the big pipe so we could put hoses and sprinklers on both sides of the yard. 

It always seems like a plumbing project takes several trips to town to get everything to finish it and this project was no different. To build the manifolds for the hoses, it took several pipe tees, several hose bib faucets and, of course, the hose clamps to hold it all together. A trip to two hardware stores yielded just two of the pipe tees and faucets; a trip by Angie to Worland brought us the three others we needed; the local parts house had the hose clamps. 

After we gathered our many parts, Rick got the pipes all put together with three hose bibs on one side and four on the other. We got the hoses out of the well pit where they were stored three years ago and which haven’t been used since — that in itself was a project, given the steps to the well pit are quite steep and not all that safe. Rick would get the hoses up far enough that I could get a hold of them and pull them on up and out. It was enlightening in a way though: I had stressed a little about not being able to find my sprinkler heads, but I think every hose in the well pit had a sprinkler already attached. At least we wouldn’t have to go buy more sprinklers. 

Finally, we were ready to hook it all up. Rick knew the pump would work because he plugged it in at the shop and the motor ran fine, so we got the suction pipe with the foot valve in the ditch and hooked up to the pump. 

Uh oh. It wouldn’t suck water. We unhooked it and soon realized that the gasket was bad. No problem — Rick always has more at the shop. Oops, wrong size. 

Now it’s Independence Day and we’re trying to decide what to do. We don’t really want to stay home, but the mountain was likely to be really “people-y” and didn’t sound all that enticing either, so we decided to take a desert drive. We headed to Worland, stopped at Bomgaars, picked up the gaskets we needed then drove on south to Gooseberry creek. We took the Gooseberry Creek Road west to Meeteetse, which hadn’t taken the time to drive for years.

I forgot how awesome that country is. The view from the scenic overlook is something from a different time. It is so rugged, so stark. It is not green at all, but is beautiful in a harsh, almost otherworldly way. After a late snackle-box lunch, we came out through Meeteetse and headed home.

We put the new gasket in the suction hose and presto, we had all the water we could want! Seven hoses, each running sprinklers, and I can water the whole garden and most of the yard in one go.

Three Ingredient Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

- ¼ cup semisweet chocolate chips

- ½ cup applesauce

- 1 cup quick oats

Melt applesauce and chocolate chips until mixture is smote and uniform in color. Stir in the oats. The mixture will become more batter-like. Scoop about one-and-a-half tablespoons for each cookie. Flatten and form into a cookie shape. Bake for about 10 minutes. Cool completely on cookie sheet before removing.