New Routine, Morning Visitors, Flowers

                          

                            The wells are somewhere down this road.

This my third week as a gate guard.  There definitely been ups and downs.  Hopefully there will be more ups than downs going forward.  This gate works a bit differently than the other.  The first one was a well that was just started, hence all the traffic.  There are so many parts to this drilling business, with so many different kinds of materials being brought in and taken out.  I am glad that I not part of that right now, however, talking with the workers, it is quite interesting as to what everyone does.

The gate that I am on is a production well, actually there are 3 wells.  There is no pump like the ones that you see along the roads that bring the oil to the surface.  These particular wells use the underground pressure to bring the crude oil into a storage tank.  Both crude oil and water come up and is separated into their own tanks.  The trucks that come to this gate are the water and crude oil trucks that take the oil and water from those tanks to wherever they take it.  There is always a safety man at the wells.Every 12 hours someone comes in to relive the previous person.  Sometimes they do nothing except sit in their truck for their entire shift. (now that is b-o-r-i-n-g.)  Someone has to be there when the truck drivers load up.  Usually the only other vehicles that come in are people that monitor what the wells are doing so that they can let the drivers know when to come to take out the crude oil and water. It could be anywhere from 0 to maybe 8 a day.

                         

Some time each morning, Hyme, the Ranch Foreman will come to get the totals for the previous day, otherwise the owner won’t know for several days by internet reports how much the wells are producing. It is just a check and balance for the owner.  We visit for a while so he can cool off and I can learn more of what goes on here.

                          

Occasionally there will be others that may come in on ranch business, for instance, a couple of days ago, Hyme met someone at the gate who would be stocking the pond with minnows and later will bring in some Bass.  This is a Hunting Ranch where the have high fences and gates so that the deer stay.  The owner has 2 other ranches and breeds deer and later in the fall, he will bring in some bucks.  The hunters pay by the points on the antlers.  I suppose all you hunters will know what that means.  I guess every week or so the owner will come by, but I haven’t met him yet.

                          

As to the number of vehicles that come, it will be 10, maybe 15 all day, however they can come at any time.  This morning one came in at about 2:30, the last one last night was around 9:30.  I normally sleep 5 hours at a time anyway and then maybe go back to sleep, but some times not.  So this gate will be good.  There is a big lull in the afternoon, so I can take a nap if I want to. 

I might even be able to post more often, if there’s any thing to post about.  Since I am so close to the road, I haven’t seen any wild life,except for some birds.

     

This fine fellow came to check out the bugs that are fried by the light.  I think that this is his mate.  It’s a bit smaller, but the tail feathers are about 9 or 10 inches long, maybe longer.  The closest that I can come to as far as identification, is maybe a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher.  Judy, what do you think?   He has come by each morning.  He’s the first one that sat still long enough for me to get the picture.

I think that I will close this for today and try to take a nap before the night crew come to visit.

Thanks for visiting

Susan and Angel