Story Code: M/F, Family Sex, Incest, Impregnation, Voyeurism, Exhibitionism
In 2011 there was a drought, just a minor inconvenience to most domestic water users but on a farm, not being able to water your crops can be financially ruinous. The field at the head of the valley was called 'Spring Field' on the farm deeds so my father-in-law asked my husband to do a little digging through the parish records to see if there had been any mention of an actual spring in that field.
There were some references to archaeological activities in the top corner of the field where Roman artifacts had been found. Johnny deduced that there could have been a spring in that corner of the field because the Romans in the first century often made offerings to their gods at springs. A working party was set to the task of trying to track down that spring. The farm had a tractor mounted auger drill for fence posts and the like so that was put into service, drilling test holes all over the top edge of the field. At the end of the day they had peppered the highest corner of the field with over a hundred holes five feet deep and nothing had come to light.
The family had a meeting over dinner; they could buy an extension for the auger drill, in theory, they could dig holes to any depth they wanted just by adding extensions as they went down. Once again, the job was given to Johnny to cost out the extensions for the drill. Ron Jr. Johnny's eldest brother was collecting the cows in for milking when he noticed that they seemed to be gathering around the drill holes.
After taking the herd into the milking sheds Ron Jr. phoned his father and mentioned the cow's unusual behaviour. The herd was usually very well trained and being long established, twice a day, within minutes of their usual milking time, all of the cows would gather at the gates to the various fields, just waiting to be let out for the walk down to the milking sheds.
My father-in-law took a ride up to spring field on his quad to see why the cows had congregated by the holes; it could have just been curiosity but he noticed that the trough in that field was dry so the cows would have been looking for water, and that was exactly what Ron was looking for too. The grass was more trampled down around five of the hundred holes; Ron couldn't see anything but something about that group of five holes had attracted the cows. Ron was walking back to his quad a very disappointed man, there was always the prospect of drilling down deeper and finding water, then he felt the small change in his pocket bang against his thigh. Ron fished through his loose change and found four pennies, he returned to the hole, got good and close to the ground and dropped a coin down the hole, there was the sound of a splash.
Ron took a small saw from the quad bikes tool box and cut a long, straight branch from one of the trees in the hedgerow. Ron dipped the hole; there was water just a foot below the surface. The valley, like most of Northamptonshire was basically just a thin skin of rich loam sitting on top of heavy clay or loose gravel. The heavy clay was what made Northamptonshire the centre of the brick making industry during the industrial revolution but it held back water wonderfully in dams, lakes and canals.
Ron called his farm labourers back to the spring field with all the heavy earthmoving equipment they could find. Because the field was basically a slope running from the line of drilled holes down towards the rest of the fields, the quickest and simplest option would be to cut a ditch straight to the bottom of the valley and allow the water to flow down the slope but Ron knew very well that the bottom of the valley was glacial deposits of sand and gravel, that's why the house was built down there in the first place.
There was a quick conversation, two guys were detailed to lay a water pipe down the field in a trench while the rest all started to cut a cistern in the heavy clay, the clay they took out of the ground was pushed to the downhill side of the cistern to form a dam wall. The heavy clay would be totally waterproof, after all, it had held back the spring for over a thousand years already but Ron had a butyl rubber liner fitted into the hole, it looked just like an Olympic sized swimming pool once it was finished and the clay wall was broken through to where the head of the spring was.
The cistern was dug to around five feet deep with a slope at the dam end. By the next morning there was ten inches of water covering the bottom of the pool. Johnny did a quick calculation, roughly twenty-seven thousand gallons in around twelve hours, far more water than the farm would need, they would be self-sufficient in water for the farm with plenty to spare. The top of the dam was planted with a stand of hawthorn saplings to keep the cows away from the cistern.
During that autumn the surroundings of the pool were concreted with a slight fall to the pool to capture any rain water and to stop mud slipping from the apron area into the water. They had to pay to have the water regularly tested as it was going to be fed to the livestock but worryingly there were imbalances. Over winter a wind pump was installed above the cistern, a drive shaft that worked through a gearbox powering an air pump that fed into a piped micro defuse system in the bottom of the lake to oxygenate the water and a pump that drew water from the lake and passed it through a carbon filter.
This summer while at a family Sunday lunch, Ron Jr. told his brothers that the water had finally passed the test as fit for human consumption, not that there were any plans for the family to drink it but at least they knew that it was totally safe to give to the animals. Simon's girlfriend, Rebecca, asked if that meant that she could swim in the pool now that it was safe to drink.
Rebecca's comment got my sisters-in-law chattering like excited chimpanzees, "Why don't we all meet up there on Friday morning and go for a swim?" was voiced by Ron Junior's wife Mary. I was walking through the kitchen doorway with my arms full of dirty dishes so I didn't think for one moment that she was talking to me.
On Friday morning my sisters-in-law and Rebecca were all at my door, Mary was driving the Land Rover 90 from the farm and Sara was knocking at my front door wearing nothing but a bikini, "You're not ready yet!"
"Not ready for what?"
"Swimming, Mary said ten o'clock sharp."
"I'm not going swimming, I can't swim and I don't even own a swimming costume."
"But Paul and Ron have spent ages getting things ready up at the pool, there's a picnic waiting up there for us and everything!"