Union Valley Project

The first order of business to expanding our farming into Union Valley is to get one of our best employees settled there.

This is Mike St. Louis's former home site. Here's a little history. There were two brothers that lived in Union Valley. Raf lived 1/2 a mile down the road and Mike lived here. Both were bachelors and both lived here all their lives as far as Bill knows. They were there when Bill was a kid.
The interesting thing about Mike and Raf was that they did not get along. Rumor has it that Mike set off some dynamite under Raf's porch. Raf didn't forget about it so when Mike ran off the road once in his car, Raf just drove right on past. Another little tidbit is that property where Raf lived belonged to Chris St. Louis, Raf and Mike's brother who was also Bill's uncle. Chris married Lavina, Bill's dad's sister. During the 50's through the 70's, Mike and Raf were two of only a handful of people living in Union Valley.
Henderson Highland bought the property in the 90's. Soon after, Bill's cousin Sari Agan and her husband Rick substantially upgraded the windows, plumbing and electrical. However, they moved out approximately 10 years ago and it has been vacant since.
Everything in the house is in remarkable condition considering the lack of occupants. One exception would the well house where a long line of rats took up residence.

Unfortunately, Bill and Rodolfo didn't have any pictures of the well house before it was cleaned, but Bill can tell you the whole house was full of twigs and stuff that the rats had brought in. Bill was most worried about this because you could not see into the well house, and he worried maybe the well was filled with twigs and rat stuff. This is what was removed from inside the pump house.

After several hours of pulling debris out of the pump house, Bill and Rodolfo were able to determine the pump house had a concrete floor. At lunch time Bill came home and got the 4-wheeler with the 15 gallon spray tank and the shop vac. He mixed 2 gallons of clorox with 13 gallons of water and headed back to the pump house.
After Rodolfo scraped and vacuumed the entire pump house, they sprayed  about 10 gallons of the solution throughout the house. After completing all of this they were finally ready to lift the lid to see into the well.

Drum roll. What were they going to find???? It's hard to see in this photo but inscribed in the concrete next to the lid was "MSL 1950." That of course stands for Mike St. Louis.

Much to their relief inside the well looked really good with maybe 10 feet of standing water at the bottom of the 30 foot well. The water was blue and clear enough to see gravel at the bottom. Bill and Rodolfo spent several hours trying to problem solve the pump and finally decided it needs to be replaced. Not too surprising considering it hasn't worked as a pump for 10 years.
On Sunday, Rodolfo mowed around the acreage and his wife Susy worked on cleaning inside the house.