Saving the Spring Salamanders

When your water source is from your land and "off-grid", there's a lot to learn about how it functions, and how to fix things when something goes wrong. In this case, how do you keep salamanders in the spring and out of the kitchen sink?

Here's a little background information about springs:

1. A spring is a place where the water table rises up and water bubbles up out of the ground rather than running underneath it.

2. The most basic way to get water from a spring is to dig a hole, put a barrel in it that has a pipe coming out, and use gravity to run that pipe downhill to wherever you want the water to go.

This is where the pipe comes out, with water constantly flowing in the sink:

 

3. A problem that can arise from this method is that along with the water coming down the pipe, animals may come with it too. For us, this means frogs and salamanders.




Although the opening in the lid of the barrel that allows the water to flow into it is tiny, there are some surprisingly flexible and tiny water creatures that seem quite able to get through the opening as well. Recently we've had a number of frogs and salamanders come through our spring pipe and find themselves disoriented in our kitchen sink. So we decided to put a screen on the pipe to prevent them from getting in.

The person who put the barrel in the spring did put a screen on it, but it had fallen off and we were getting at least one amphibian a week in our kitchen sink.






This was disturbing for everyone - especially the creatures that suddenly found themselves in a sink rather than a spring!

So, how do you save the spring salamanders??

 You put a new screen on the pipe!

Step 1: Remove leaves from around the barrel

Step 2: Take off the rocks and wood holding the lid on the barrel.

Step 3: Open the lid

(The white pipe is the overflow pipe, directing water out of the barrel and down the hill. There's a black pipe farther down that leads from the barrel to our sink.)

Step 4: Get S to document the process, so you can finally see me in my mucking boots :)

Step 5: Consult with S (or your resident engineer) about how to fit the screen and clamp around the pipe











Step 6: Loosen the clamp to go around the pipe

Step 7: Install new screen, and clamp it onto the pipe so hopefully this one won't fall off and let in more salamanders and frogs.

Step 8: Close the barrel and replace the wood and rocks to hold the lid on.

And that is how you keep salamanders from getting into the pipe from your spring barrel and ending up in your sink!

Neighbors helping Gaybors

Here in the country, people help each other. For instance, if you happen to try and drive an RV up a small hill without accounting for the possibility of bottoming out due to the slope of the land, someone will come over with their tractor to push your RV up the hill!

In this case, S and I were trying to park our “new” 1985 RV in what seemed like a good location, when the trailer hitch got stuck in the grass.

 

Along came J to lift the RV and push it up the hill with a tractor

while S drove the RV onto concrete blocks to park it.



 

Here's the video version.

In hindsight, I wish we had not parked the RV under the black walnut tree. Not only could we have avoided the whole bottoming out / getting pushed by a tractor situation if we’d chosen a different spot, but we also wouldn’t have had to listen to hundreds of loud banging sounds on the RV roof all fall long as each nut fell off the tree one by one... S had mentioned some concern about the walnut tree before we decided on the spot, but I really couldn’t imagine at the time why it would be a problem. And now, when the RV (that’s more trailer home than vehicle) is no longer easily moved, I know better… Next time I park an RV I’ll pay closer attention to land contours and nut/fruit tree locations before choosing a spot!

Interdependence

I have dreamed of living in intentional community for many years. I had visions of a tribe of likeminded, earth-based folks with shared values – a chosen family with whom to live and raise children. As an urbanite, this involved living at an Eco Village and in communal houses that were anomalies in the huge cities in which they were located. 

Living in these chosen communities, I encountered all the expected challenges to my ideals – the intrusion of capitalism and hierarchy, urban busyness and overextension, and deeply seated fears of interdependence and intimacy outside of romantic partnership. I met thousands of other urbanites who shared my visions and felt equally frustrated and jaded about our inability to realize these dreams together, dreams which reflect the powerful yearning of the human spirit for a tribe called home. 

 

Downtown shopping area advertising local artisans, collectives, and farms.

   

Now, I find myself in a place where interdependence, mutual support, and reverence for the earth are a way of life.

 

While there are many folks here living in officially labeled intentional communities and who otherwise identify as back-to-the land "alternative" folks, this whole town is deeply interconnected - farmers, ranchers, permaculturists, new-agers and all. People buy local not only for political ideals, but because they know the farmers, craftspeople, and merchants they are buying from.

 

 People tread gently on the earth because the land is what sustains them – the water they drink comes from directly below their feet, and the food they eat from their gardens. Even with those folks whose politics diverge from mine, the rhythms of our daily lives are aligned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Placing myself into a flow of interdependence and sustainable, slow-living makes it so much easier for me to live these ideals in a real way. People here spend less time detoxifying from stress and pollution, and more time making art and music than anywhere I've ever lived. And this culture supports me to do the same.