Bunnels Run, Oil and Gas Wells

Bunnels Run, Oil and Gas-1975

 

McDougal House and Gas Well
McDougal House and Gas Well

The leaves have all fallen so it is possible to see a ways into the woods now, and it’s not rifle season for deer yet, so I take a walk up the hill across the road from us. The two guys that pump the wells up and down the road on Saturdays have just finished shutting them all down so it is finally quiet. It is a beautiful fall day to take my sketchpad and park myself up from the well to draw it. Photographs cannot capture the details and feel of the place. You can barely see it from anywhere because everything metal is so rusty and all the wood is weathered grey and blends in with the tree bark.

When we first moved onto Bunnels Run, all we could smell was oil and gas, everywhere, all the time. It permeated the air, the soil, even the water. Now, after six months, we have gotten used to it and hardly notice the smell anymore. We are still breathing it though and I wonder if maybe it isn’t what’s making us so lazy and wanting to sit rocking all the time. It’s kind of hard to get anything done when you are rocking, kicking back on the porch, just watching things go by. We did get our garden planted and we weed it every morning while waiting for the mailman to come. Mail is darn right exciting when you don’t have a phone. Gives you something to look forward to. We get the  Mother Earth News, Organic Gardening, the Market bulletin and the local paper out of Harrisville so we have something to read. Plus seed catalogs, lots of seed catalogs, like Burpees, R.H. Shumways, lots of others. The Sears catalog is even entertaining and the non glossy pages will do in a pinch if you run out of toilet paper in the outhouse. You have to crumple them up and rub them between your hands first though, to make them more absorbent.

Although we have eighty acres, only five of it is flat bottomland, and it is situated right along the graveled county road. Everything we do down in the bottom is visible to folks going by on the road until the weeds get tall enough to screen us in late summer. We let the Joe Pye (Eupatorium purpureum) and Iron Weed (Vernonia) and Helianthus grow up along the creek so we have privacy down in the creek where we take out baths. The weeds grow way over our heads and the creek has five foot banks so we are well hidden down there. We use Dr Bronners Peppermint soap and rinse off using a bucket up on land in an attempt not to pollute the water too much. Someday maybe we’ll have a bathtub inside. It’s getting a little cold to be taking creek baths these days so we have started to heat water up in a bucket instead.  We pour cupfuls over us standing behind the shack on a rock and at the end dump the last over our heads. That last bit is the best part of a bucket bath.

It is kind of weird to be so far out from everything while at the same time being right on the road. When we get our house on the hill done it will be way different. It’s a long hard climb up there and I don’t expect we’ll get hardly any visitors. We had a new road cut by a guy using a D-5 Cat, but you first have to get across the creek, through a swampy bit on the far bottom, and then  about a half mile up a  really steep, turning road that gets real slick when it rains. We aren’t figuring on coming down much once we finally get up there. At the rate we’re going it will be awhile yet.

For now, we are busy hauling logs down one at a time with our pony, getting the square sills made at the sawmill, stockpiling rough cut lumber, and collecting windows and doors, an old iron bathtub and such.

New House Sills
New House Sills

And then we’ll be rocking awhile on the porch. And once in a while making the long, fifty mile trek to Marietta, Ohio to get better beer. The beer they sell in West Virginia is “near beer”, only three point two percent alcohol and tastes like water. Stroh’s -fire brewed, is the best we’ve got here and it is barely drinkable. Then there’s the visiting we have to do, while we are out that way, which takes the whole rest of the day, and then we get home late for milking and the goats are upset. And then it gets dark so early and all we have is kerosene light so we usually go to bed about two hours after dark. In the morning there is chores, milking, feeding and watering the goats and chickens, heating up water to wash the milk buckets, jars and breakfast dishes. Everything takes so much time, especially laundry. Haul water from the creek, heat it  up on the stove, haul it out to the washtubs, scrub the dirt out on the washboard, squeeze out the soap, rinse them in the other tub, wring out the water, shake the wrinkles out, hang and pin it all on the line, bring it back in before it rains. I don’t really get much time to sketch, or rock, or read, for that matter.

So, now I am sitting here looking down at the oil well. It surely smells stronger up here right by the well head. There is the thirty foot tall metal pole with all the guy wires holding it steady. I think it was originally used when they drilled the hole and now probably only needed if they have to pull something out for repairs. The most interesting part is the twelve foot wooden walking wheel, with the foot wide canvas belt going around it, connecting it to the pumping jack on one end, and the one cylinder natural gas engine on the other.

McGinnis Oil and Gas well
McGinnis Oil and Gas well

There is a thirty or forty foot long, dilapidated wooden shed with a tin roof over everything but the jack and a huge metal tank that the oil and water get pumped into. When they pump they don’t get oil at first. They pull up nothing but hot salty water for hours before oil starts coming up with it. It all gets stored together in the big tank and after awhile the oil rises up and the water settles down and then gets drained off. Eventually the tank will get full enough with oil for them to drain it into a truck down on the road. The wells around here don’t produce very much oil.  Nobody is getting much in the way of royalties, but the free gas is appreciated by everybody. We don’t own the Mineral Rights to our land, they were kept by some previous landowner, but we get free gas just the same. If there is a well on your land or within a hundred feet of your property line you get free gas and there are wells everywhere. When they are pumping, as they do every Saturday, you can hear all the old wooden wheels creaking and groaning with a long, slow rhythm and then you hear the huge one cylinder natural gas engines popping, loudly and slightly off beat, missing occasionally. There aren’t too many guys left who know how to maintain these dinosaurs and they are slowly being replaced with boring Briggs and Stratton gasoline engines. I like these old ones that put out a staccato beat resonating all down the holler that you can actually dance to. When there are five or more going at once it is awesome. Not quiet, like now.

My new little tri- color collie pup is sitting with me as I sketch. He is so

Ranza Puppy with a Pint Jar
Ranza Puppy with a Pint Jar

little that when he stands by the chickens they look bigger than he does. Even a pint jar looks big next to him. We named him Ranza from a name we saw on a mailbox and he is a good boy. He has been teaching himself to herd the goats and chickens and is doing pretty well at it. Climbing up here to the well has tuckered him all out and he is asleep next to me in the leaves. I put away my sketchbook and lean back looking up through the branches. Life is good.

©Wendy lee Maddox, Edgewisewoods.com, March 31st, 2014

Alta’s Mincemeat Pie

Working at the Midway Diner

It was really cold outside, somewhere in the low twenties, and I was shivering and trying to snuggle closer to the huge cast iron cook stove.  I was about frozen after riding the little Yamaha dirt bike into town wearing my cheap, white polyester waitress uniform. My fingers would not even unbend.

“Good morning, Alta. Is the oven cranked up? I’m freezing. How many pies do you think we’ll need?”

Alta worked the gloves off my hand and tried rubbing some heat into them with her own. It hurt. She fetched a pan of warm water from the back of the stove top and had me lay my hands in that instead. I was starting to thaw out when she handed me a hot cup of coffee, which finally did the trick.

We really did not have time to waste and needed to get cranking before  all the oil riggers and pipeliners showed up hungry at the door. We were the morning crew at the Midway Diner, midway  between Parkersburg and Clarksburg, West Virginia, on old Route 50.

The Pipeliner Guys

There was a whole bunch of guys, down from working on the new Alaskan pipeline, who had come into town these past few days, who started work real early in the morning, so we had to be ready. I had a little trouble gauging just how much food they were likely to eat on a given day.

Alta had a feel for this, though, as she’d been periodically feeding this group, or one similar to it, like the hunters, for the better part of going on forty years. She was a roundy,  plumpish,  good looking farm woman who had lost her husband quite a few years back to a tractor accident. Her kids were all grown and moved off somewhere else and she mothered me as much as I would let her. She still wore the old cotton calico, shirt waist dresses of the fifties and knee high, colored nylons with sneakers for everyday. Her homemade aprons had deep pockets and rick rack edging. I don’t think she ever got cold.

“Well, it’s bitter cold and damp out there”, she said. “I figure they’ll be eating and packing extra food today just to keep warmed up. You’d better figure on ten – twelve cream pies. Make sure there’s at least two peanut butter, one each of coconut cream and lemon meringue and five or six fruit. Better get the coffee started right away too as they’ll be needing to fill all their thermal jugs.”

After hanging up my jacket on the rack by the back door and washing up my hands, I headed out into the diner and bent down behind the long, red Formica counter to get the coffee makings out. That cup that Alta had given me was starting to kick in and before long I might be able to actually function something like a human. It was still only four thirty in the morning – not my best time. You might as well not even try and talk to me before I’ve had my coffee. You might get a grunt but the brain wouldn’t be in gear yet.

I was going to have to make- from scratch mind you- eighteen pies in the next what – two hours?  If I was lucky, and the other help actually showed up on time, I might actually get them done. Better make the coffee good and  strong.

At six thirty A.M I would unlock the front door to the horde of  ravenous beasts- Pipeliner men who smelled of oil and looked grubby enough to have been using crude oil to wash up in. They were always lined up and ready before opening time. We expected them to be working around here for six or eight weeks and they (almost all of them) left really good tips. Considering the usual five dollars a day I would get from the locals, the two dollars a plate I got from the pipeline guys would really help me out.

Pipeliners perked up the whole local economy by staying in our little run down motel, boarding in with some folks, eating at the local restaurants, and telling wild stories about well drilling and working on the Alaska pipeline. They were real friendly to me in the restaurant and sometimes, when the place just got too hectic to handle by myself, a couple of them would slip behind the counter to pitch in by making coffee and getting silverware set up.

They were on some kind of seasonal circuit and showed up every year in the late fall. I guess it got too cold up in Alaska to work outside about then. I enjoyed their company each year but I was also pretty glad to have them leave in the Spring so that I did not have to get up so darn early anymore. Places like the Diner got started later and moved a lot slower after they left.

Mincemeat and Scrapple

“You’d better get a move on girl, them pies aren’t going to make themselves and I am going to need help back here with this tater peeling before long”, Alta hollered in from the kitchen,  “Oh, and do you know anybody who’s planning on butchering hogs sometime soon? I am about out of mincemeat and really need to put up another big batch a’fore long.”

I finished getting six more pots of coffee going and headed back to the warm kitchen with two fresh cups.

“I’ll ask Chip about it when he comes in next time, should be soon. He’s got a whole mess of hogs about ready to go up there. Now the weather has turned seriously cold he is bound to start on killing some.”

Chip was a farmer two hills over from us that always gave me first dibs on the hog heads because he knew I would find some good use for them. His wife, Linda, wasn’t into dealing with that part after she had spent an entire two days cutting and wrapping all the rest of the hogs- they usually did three at a time and it was a big job. A messy, smelly, gross job, that when I helped them with,  left me unable to eat pork for about three weeks.

I usually made Scrapple (or Pon Hos) with my share of the heads- three heads will work up into about sixty pounds of Scrapple in the freezer -enough to last the two of us the whole year and have plenty to trade with friends. Some folks won’t eat it because they have heard it’s made of brains and eyes and such, but really, it is just good pork broth made with whatever meat there is, all ground up, with cornmeal, buckwheat flour and oatmeal, a little sage, salt and pepper.

You cook up a big pot of it just like cornmeal mush, until it gets gloppy-thick. Then you spoon it into bread pans or waxpaper lined shoe boxes and let it cool till it sets up. Then you turn the molds upside down and wrap the little loaves up with freezer paper. It only keeps about a week in the fridge so we have to freeze the rest. Since we don’t have electric at our house, we barter meat and Scrapple for freezer space at the neighbors. To cook it, you cut quarter inch slices, sprinkle some flour on both sides, and fry them brown and crispy in an oiled iron skillet.  Served  with fried eggs, it makes for a good filling meal- breakfast or dinner either one, and it’s cheap to make.

Alta wanted the hogsheads to make her mincemeat pie filling. I have no idea how she makes it-it is a secret recipe and she won’t tell anyone. Her mincemeat pies are by far the best around though. She always gets rave reviews at the church suppers and all her pies are the first to go. I have always made mine vegetarian style, out of green tomatoes and raisins. They are nothing like hers.

Hogsheads

Chip came by the diner for lunch later that day and told me he’d be butchering as soon as he brought in the last of his field corn which depended on it not raining for the next three days. He wanted to know if I could I help by driving the wagon?

“Sure, I’ll get done here about two o’clock. Just give me a holler.”

So we set it up to work on harvesting the last of the corn on Friday. Hog butchering would probably start the next day.  I told Alta  I’d have some hogs heads for her soon, but didn’t tell her exactly when I would have them. We worked steadily along the rest of the morning – we always worked well together.

The next Monday Chip stopped by my house on his way to the feed store with three big, lumpy black plastic bags for me. Inside were the three heads for Alta, all clean and scalded from the weekend butchering. I packed them into the old gas fridge we kept outside  under the eaves.

You couldn’t stand to have the gas fridge inside because it put out nasty fumes, We didn’t know how to get the burners adjusted right to prevent it. We usually kept the extra eggs and the goats milk out there too, and there wasn’t a lot of extra space, so I decided to deliver the heads to Alta’s first thing in the morning.

Three Pig Heads

I had the next day off but it was going to be really hectic. We were trying to build a house way up the hill at our place and we had a lot of work to do. It wasn’t Alta’s day off, though , so I figured  I had better get to her house before she left for work so she’d have time to find a cool place to put them.

When I got there at four the next morning, she was not downstairs yet, so I slipped into her kitchen and very quietly placed the heads, with their eyes and ears and snouts still intact, onto her kitchen counter. It was reminiscent of those monkeys doing “Hear no evil, See no evil, and Speak no evil” and they were all grinning grotesquely as dead pigs do.

Maybe setting the heads up on the counter like that was a bit much,  but it seemed funny at the time. I wanted to hear her reaction to this gruesome trio, so I sat down outside on the dark porch step, out of sight, and waited for her to come down. I did not have to wait long. I heard her slippers scuffing down the wooden stairs, the light switch click on and then,

“Aaaahhh! Aaaahhh!  Wendy! Where are you? You dirty rat! I am going to get you back for this!

I snuck away as fast as I could- she was a little too mad for me to want to risk her seeing me now. I would give her time to cool down. I knew she would, she always had a good sense of humor. It was just a little too early in the day to see it right now. I was  glad I had not caused her to have a heart attack or something.

Some other cooks I found with the same thought

Photo of some other cooks I found with the same thought!

Photo:http://www.freewebs.com/sulphurspringsseniorcenter/Hear_No_Evil,_Speak_No_Evil,_See_No_Evil.jpg  (Check out this site  for a funny video of seniors having fun as well.)

The next morning at work, Alta thanked me for bringing her the heads and told me she brought out the camera and got a picture of them all lined up on the counter like that. She was thinking she might have to send a copy to her kids along with her secret recipe for Mincemeat Pie.

She also said I would never see it coming when she finally figured out how to get me back and she was making it her mission in life. I reckon I deserve it. Sure is good pie though, and I still don’t have her recipe.

Wendy lee Maddox- https://www.edgewisewoods.com

March 29, 2014

 

 

 

 

 

Yard, Garden and Road Work at Edgewise Woods

Yard, Garden and Road Work at Edgewise Woods

Wendy lee Maddox – March 23, 2014, writing at edgewisewoods.com

It has been a productive few days. After digging up and moving all the daffodils last weekend we were finally ready to have some topsoil brought in to raise that bed. The topography had changed during the construction we had done on the house back in 2004 and water had been pooling there ever since. I could not get it delivered on short notice last weekend so set up a time this past Friday for them to come. I wanted to raise the bed at least a foot and it is about thirty feet long so I ordered seven yards of the topsoil Leafgro mix from Potomac Farms in Shepherdstown. The mix they brought me was excellent quality and the driver was able to spread it down the bed as he dumped it so we don’t have to move it around much. Leafgro is compost made in Dickerson Maryland from all the leaves they collect in Montgomery County. I have used it as a soil amendment for many years in my landscaping business and it is good stuff. I used to order it twenty yards at a time direct from the plant. Now all I have to do is decide what I am going to plant there and find the plants.

Seven Yards of Topsoil/ Leafgro ready for planting
Seven Yards of Topsoil/ Leafgro ready for planting

I am thinking either three hardy, red Crepe Myrtles or possibly some native Halesia caroliniana (Silverbells) or maybe Viburnums with an under planting of perennials and bulbs. I also thought about putting some HighBush Blueberry in there but their form is a little too scraggly for such an entrance bed. I want a neat appearance, blooms, fall color, and winter interest as well, so it will take some thought. At least I am finally ready to plant whatever I find.

We have a gravel drive about 600 feet long leading to our house. It goes through the neighbors’ property on the way to ours and is technically a road but since it is just the two houses and we share maintenance we keep it simple. Our neighbors used to put gravel on their portion of it fairly often, every few years. We however, have only put down gravel one other time in the last twenty years and that was right after we had some major construction done on the house about ten years ago. This winter has been a little rough on the road though, with lots of snow and serious bouts of freezing and thawing. It also did not help that we took a ditch witch last fall and dug a trench down the center to lay our new phone line. That brought some subsurface clay up to the top. So I started looking for guys to haul gravel, first on Craig’s List, then on Google and was not having a lot of luck. Gravel guys do not seem to do the internet thing very well.

Then I remembered to look in the “house repair” folder in my filing cabinet and actually found the receipt from ten years ago, for 18.75 tons of gravel. I called the number, which still worked, and left a message with C.W Gray Trucking in Martinsburg. They called back a short while later and we set a day for him to bring me out a 20 ton load and spread it. We both took Friday off from work, using our built up credit hours, and set the day aside for puttering about the yard. The driver called ahead to confirm the night before and the truck arrived only about 45 minutes later than he planned. There are always variables to consider in construction and trucking, such as how many are ahead of you in line at the quarry. I showed him the most important spots and he walked it to calibrate the speed he would need to drive in order to spread it at the proper depth and length. He set the tailgate chains so it would only open about a foot at the bottom and headed out the drive at a pretty good clip and did a really nice job of getting an even spread.

Newly graveled drive
Newly graveled drive

It looked so good I wanted to get another load and do the rest of the drive too. He was able to drive back to the quarry, pick up another twenty tons, and spread it for us an hour later. This time we had him leave about 3 tons of it in a pile so we could fill nooks and crannies and be sure to have a deeper area of gravel in the muddy spot where I usually park my pickup. The total cost  worked out to about $16.50 per ton and was well worth it.

Jeff spent Saturday hauling wagon and wheelbarrow loads of gravel to low spots, out to the mailbox, and in front of the garage doors. I raked the bits of gravel that had bounced into the grass back in to the drive along the whole length of it and smoothed out his piles.

Newly planted Early Veggies
Newly planted Early Veggies

I also managed to get in the veggie garden and plant ten pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes, a short row of Sugar Snap peas, a half pound of yellow onion sets, and some spinach and lettuce. I don’t care if it IS supposed to snow on Tuesday. I am calling it Spring.

Crocus
Crocus

We were both exhausted and sore at the end of the day and treated ourselves to a smoothie from Mellow Moods in town. We collapsed on the couch and watched an early movie, “After Earth” with Will Smith and his son, which was pretty good, and were in bed by 9:30.

It is very satisfying to have the whole drive freshly graveled and it will last another ten years I am sure.

Is Your Water Safe to Drink?

Is Your Well Water Safe?

-Wendy lee Maddox,© https://www.edgewisewoods.com

Limestone Water in Bakerton Quarry
Limestone Water in Bakerton Quarry

West Virginia has more than one area with a water crisis and you should not rely on your State Health Department to protect you. Here in the Eastern Panhandle where folks don’t worry about problems caused by the oil and gas industry we have a different water problem our leaders refuse to address and it can cause serious health problems. We are situated on Karst which means that those sinkholes that appear out in the pastures, along the roads, and maybe even in your backyard, provide a direct shot to the groundwater below. You may have learned in school that rainwater water is naturally filtered through many layers of soil before it makes its way down to our wells, but not in Karst. Our underlying rocks are made of limestone which is easily worn down by water, and especially by the acidified water produced by emissions of the coal fired power plants to the west of us. Our limestone is riddled with holes and active water channels, leading to underground streams and saturated ground pools, and our wells are drilled into this, even 300 foot deep wells. When a new sinkhole opens up it is often because the ground underneath has collapsed due to rerouting of underground water from heavy rain events, or large airspaces that have been created during droughts. Sinkholes can act like funnels channeling surface water and debris directly into our water table and into our well water. Our shallow septic systems can also leach into this underground reservoir, as can road salt, fresh manure from livestock and wildlife and pollutants from garbage dumps.

Garbage Under Sinkhole
Garbage Under Sinkhole

 

I was made acutely aware of all this when, after living in our house out Engle Molers way for 18 years, my husband and I both became sick with some kind of gastro intestinal illness. Numerous Doctors could not explain what was wrong with us. We are active people with a fairly healthy, low fat diet, not used to being sick and we tried everything we could think of to get healthy again. After spending a lot of money on Dr bills and many tests, landing in the emergency room three times, and being miserable for two years, we both ended up losing our gallbladders. They did not have stones or any of the usual symptoms, they just ceased functioning and died. Jeff’s gallbladder got gangrene and almost killed him, mine was caught and removed before it got that bad. After all that, I finally had an epiphany and thought to have our water analyzed. The results came back with large amounts of Escherichi coli (E.coli) which is the organism labs use for detection of contamination. If you have that, you generally have other mammal based fecal contaminants as well. When I told the Doctors, their response was that long term ingestion of bacteria laden water explained why we had all the symptoms of Giardia even though we had not been drinking out of creeks or visiting third world countries with poor sanitation. It also explained what had finally killed our gallbladders.

The fix was actually quite simple after we knew what we were dealing with. We installed an Ultra Violet filtering system on the water line coming in to the house. I had the water retested after installation and it is safe to drink now. I retest annually. I sent a flyer out to all my neighbors letting them know they might want to check their water as well and got this response from many of them, “Our house failed the water test when we bought the house and we had to install a UV filter system to pass inspection and buy it.” That was news to me! I contacted our County Health Department and asked why they had not let surrounding people know when the groundwater was contaminated and was told it was just my lines in my house, not the groundwater. I contacted the State Health Department via email and got no response at all, ever. I had a friend bring it up at a water control board meeting and they also refused to acknowledge that there was a problem. No one in government wants to accept responsibility or take action for a known and obvious health risk. Apparently it opens a liability issue for them, so we have to look after ourselves.

IMG_0837
Floating Garbage Underground

As to cause, I believe our local water contamination occurred when the neighbors who used to live across the road ceased their dog rescue operation and all the dog manure was bulldozed into the large sinkhole, just upstream (underground that is) of us. All the old barrels, vehicles and other junk in the hole got covered over then as well. There are other possible avenues for our groundwater contamination locally. For instance, Bakerton is full of open sinkholes that people throw their trash into which lands in the old flooded quarry below. The quarry is fed by underground streams and also feeds springs out in the Potomac River. All the water around here is connected and it moves quite fast without any meaningful filtering occurring along the way. Dye trace studies have been done to track the movement of our underground water here in Jefferson County This photo from:  http://www.slideshare.net/WVAGP/epan09-using-lidar-to-map-sinkholes

and it is well documented. Your own well could be connected to underground streams miles from you and may have picked up contaminants from leaking storage tanks, landfills or even correctly built septic systems. Don’t wait for the Health Department to protect you, have your water tested yourself by an independent lab. I have used the Fredericktowne Lab in Myersville myself. You can drop off a water sample and get the water results via email quickly.

http://www.fredericktownelabs.com/residential-services/

For more information, try the links below:

http://water.epa.gov/drink/local/wv.cfm

Local plumbing shops who install UV systems

http://www.vemauck.com/products/

http://www.comstockplumbing.com/water-treatment.html

 

Aquifer Vulnerability map:               http://www.jeffersoncountywv.org/uploads/planning/GIA/Aquifer_Vulnerability_Elements_JCGIA_Map.pdf

The whole Freshwater Institute report:               http://www.jeffersoncountywv.org/uploads/planning/GIA/GIAFinalReport04102008.pdf

 

Getting a word in edgewise through storytelling and pictures

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