The Back Story

If you’re anything like us, you’re living on a budget and don’t have $30k laying around to pay cash for a well. If you’re not like us and you do have a fat stack of cash, that’s wonderful and I’m happy for you.

We lived on water haul for FIVE years after we bought our acreage. We wanted to expand our garden and orchard. We knew we need a well to do that, but just couldn’t wrap our heads around the price tag.

I had planted a couple of fruit trees and our livestock and household water usage added up. We were fortunate to have a flat bed Mack truck to haul water 1500 gallons at a time. I usually had to haul water twice a week in the hot summer months.

Finally, I decided that if God wants us to have a well, which I believed He did, He would make that happen. One day, I started Googling water well grants and loans to see what I could find to help us get water!

I discovered the low interest loan program through the USDA to help rural homeowners get water wells for home use. This sounded wonderful, except that we didn’t fully meet the loan criteria at the time. The biggest hurdle was that we were still making land payments and didn’t have the property in our name yet.

The Loan

Fast forward a year or two, and COVID happened. We had paid for our property and gotten the deed in our name just before the shutdown. It was time to apply for a loan through Water Well Trust!

The loan terms were 1% interest for 20 years and a maximum of $11,000, which was fantastic! However, we knew that we needed to drill to 700’ in our area, based on our neighbor’s well and the best well driller in our area was charging $35/ft. We were going to need another $13,000+ and that was way more than we had in savings!

We went ahead with the loan application and move forward in faith and hope that things would work out. There was A-LOT of prayer involved too!

We were approved for the maximum loan amount at $11,000 and another non-profit group had reached out to Water Well Trust and gave us a grant for the remaining amount of our well! My mind was blown! I was so happy. I think and I cried! It was such a blessing to our family and a miracle!

Getting the well drilled

I freaked out when Water Well Trust emailed me the contract and I read the clause that the work was to be completed within 6 months. I immediately called our well driller to get on the schedule but it was going to be 9-12 months of wait time!

My husband and his brother ended up doing a concrete job for the owner of the drilling company and he bumped us up in the waiting list. We were able to get the well drilled in time.

The biggest miracle of all was that Brown Drilling was able to use PVC pipe for casing and didn’t have to use steel which would have doubled the cost of our well.

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