View from the North 40: Water, water everywhere; every drop to drink

As I write this, I am exhausted, sun burnt, sticky and salty with dry sweat, gritty and muddy, but I am here to say that one of the greatest marvels of modern civilization is indoor plumbing — water that runs from a well, through buried pipes to places like water troughs, sinks, toilets (for the love of sanitation, the toilet).

Regular readers might remember that the universe’s Christmas Eve gift to me and my husband was a totally unusable water system to the house.

Fortunately, we have a functioning toilet at the shop, and within the week we had a hot water heater and water lines to...