Technology

Technology is our friend.

I often say that ironically, but today I really mean it.

My wife went out to fill the dog's water dish and water came out of the hose, but also out of the ground around the hydrant, which seemed like a bad thing. When I saw the water bubbling out of the ground, I grimaced, because there was literally no way this could be good news. It looked a little like the beginnings of the Beverly Hillbillies, except it wasn't oil and I'm not Old Jeb.

For those of you who live in a more reasonable climate, here on the prairies of western Minnesota, we bury our water lines about eight feet deep, to keep them from freezing.

No, I'm not kidding.

To get that non-frozen water out of the ground, you have a hydrant, which is just a long pipe with a rod inside it, connected to a valve way below ground. When you shut it off, the water in the upright pipe drains out into the ground. They work great, right up until the time they don't.

Because I'm an eternal optimist, I chose to guess that someone had nicked the pipe with the lawn mower and I could dig down an inch or so and have a problem I could fix with some tape and a hose clamp.

I didn’t really believe that, but a man’s gotta dream. Until, of course, his dreams are shattered.

But then I thought, “Well, there aren't a hundred pigs waiting for water AND I have a backhoe.”

I fired up the backhoe, and flashed back a half century or so to when we had a hydrant go out and a backhoe was too expensive to rent. Luckily, my dad already had a shovel, a bucket, and an underemployed teenager. The backhoe was much easier, not to mention faster. In my father's defense, he did most of the actual digging, I just emptied the pails he handed up out of the hole.

I went to get parts, and had a karma problem right out of the gate. I brought my purchases to the till and the total came up to $31. I had to say, “Yeah...that's not enough. It should be nearly $200.” The clerk peered through her bifocals, found the incorrect key she'd punched, and took an extra hundred dollars or so from me. I felt virtuous all the way home. If I need an extra hundred dollars in the next couple weeks, I'm going to feel some regret.

When I got home I had an unpleasant surprise – because it's been raining every half hour this summer AND the hydrant was leaking, I had two feet of water in my excavation. With a little time and thought, I'm sure I could have rigged up a pump to get the water out, but that wouldn't have done anything about the real problem, which was the mud under the water, so I shrugged, climbed down in and made the best of it.

Which is an underrated skill, in my opinion.

After I tested for leaks I filled the hole about halfway, having a plan to let the dirt settle for a few days before I topped it off. That night we had a thunderstorm with 4 inches of rain, and since the hydrant is directly under the eave of my shop, that meant there was roughly 17 feet of water running off the roof. So, compaction is no longer a problem. With a little luck, by the end of October the ground will dry off enough to enable me to finish back filling. But hey...now the big dog can drink out of the most convenient water dish and if we ever need to water the flowers again, we have the capacity. Thanks to the technology behind a backhoe I didn’t do any of the repair with a shovel.

So, that's a win.

Copyright 2025 Brent Olso

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