Be careful around old homesteads

[BleuBijou]

Last weekend in Kansas my friends Llewellin setter fell into a hole while hunting. The hole was on the side of a 100 yr. old hand dug well. Erosion had opened up a hole for a small child or dog to fit easily through and drop 20 feet. We had trouble seeing down inside because the first 5-6 feet were at a angle. After a hour of rounding up ropes and chains and a ladder from a old grain bin, we tied off the thin ladder and lowered it down. Then tied off the skinniest guy we had and somehow he fit down that hole. The ladder was only 12 ft. so it was difficult to say the least. He climbed down and brought the dog back up as far as he could. Then we hooked another rope onto the dogs collar and pulled him the rest of the way. Surprisingly with no injuries and a bath at the doggie carwash he is back to normal. He was a little freaked out and would not get out of his kennel at all, but you could imagine how he felt. The property owner was with us at the time and kept everyone calm and to do the right thing for everyones safety. We were 15 miles from anywhere and glad are party had ropes and lights and a shovel. The next day the property owner filled that hole with 25yds. of sand. Be careful around those old homesteads. You can't see all the dangers all the time!!!

 

[Prairie Drifter]

It's not just homesteads. When I managed Norton Wildlife Area in NW Kansas I had a gent come into the office all white and obviously scared. He was hunting a patch of kochia on the creek bank and almost stepped off into a pit silo some 40 feet deep. He lunged to the side to avoid falling in and almost dove into the second one. I had a dozer out the next day and filled them in. Talked to the neighbor that had owned the land before the Bureau bought it and he told me it was two silos that he and his father had hand dug when he was a kid. I was surprised there wasn't a pile of guns and bones in the bottom as there was no way a guy would get out by himself with vertical walls. Yes, be careful afield.

 

[M. R. Byrd]

Glad all is well(no pun intended). That would be scary. The area I elk hunt in Colorado has one area with mine vent shafts and one has to be careful.

PD,
My grandfather hand dug a pit silo at our place. It is filled in now, but we used it when I was a kid. Being the youngest, it fell upon me for duties in the hole. First when filling it, I would spread and pack each load by foot. Then come winter, I went in the bucket and my father would lower me down with a Ford 8N tractor. I would stay there and fill the bucket time after time until the cows were fed, then my father would pull me out.

It was thirty feet deep and I would guess about eighteen feet in diameter. The walls were two inch thick concrete plaster. My grandfather said that when he dug the silo, near the bottom he started to dig into the top of a tree. That story has always made me wonder about when and how a tree would have been covered maybe forty feet deep with soil.