The Comstock Bonanza
How Mother Earth News article no. 12 helped us buy a used pickup truck at auction. A Report From Them That's Doin'
Our place is located approximately five miles from the
towns of Grass Valley and Nevada City, two of the earliest
and most important gold mining centers in California. We're
about two and a half hours' driving time from Oakland and
Berkeley and another 20 minutes from San Francisco,At our
elevation of about 3,000 feet,we have a foot or two of snow
in the winter (up to five feet in unusual years) and summer
temper-
atures in the 90's.
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The area-especially the towns-looks a lot like New England
and is the scene of most of my watercolors Although we had
a large vegetable garden-about half an acre-last year and
will continue to grow a good deal of our food, we don't
intend to farm for a livelihood. Most of our income is from
my free-lance work as a book designer and artist, done by
mail for clients in California, Colorado and Hawaii. I'd
expected to have only a modest amount of such employment
when we moved to the country but the fact is that I've had
to refuse assignments to leave myself time for other
activities. Ardis (a newcomer to the graphic arts) has
helped me on some of my jobs and says she enjoys even the
tedious chores.
Several years ago we bought nine and a
half acres bordering Tahoe National Forest, and in the
spring of 1970 acquireda tract of the same size that
adjoined our land on the south. That same year we had a
well drilled on the first parcel (located water at 85 feet
and carried on until we hit bedrock110 feet down). In 1971,
just before we moved up here, Ardis and I built a pump
house over the shaft and installed the pump, storage tank
and electrical generator. The flow from this system is
hardly impressive (about 1-1/3 gallons a minute or 80 an
hour) but it never falters . . . even after nine hours of
steady pumping. We've had water here when other wells went
dry. (Of course, we spent some time with pump experts
beforehand to design a setup that wouldn't drain the well
faster than it can fill. Happily, the right equipment the
smallest unit made-was also the least expensive.) Our 5 kw
generator, which is mounted on a trailer, was purchased
secondhand from a newspaper classified ad for $500 . . .
and will not only power the water pump but provide enough
electricity for our house both during and after
construction.
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