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["roxann" <roxann AT ancientearthwisdom.com>]

Gene,

Those that feed the house, camper and our neighbor (3 different springs) run 
whether there has been rain or not. The old folks tell us that if our spring 
ever goes dry, we are all in for a heap of trouble because in their 
recollection, it has never gone completely dry even in the worst of droughts. 
The other springs on our place do slow to a trickle during droughts, but 
haven't completely dried out either. I've sampled it at the low tide and it 
shows too low of pH to sell as bottled water, around 5.7, I think it was. 
We've tested for all trace metals and minerals and it shows nothing of any 
significance at all. We've also tested for volatiles and it shows nothing for 
the commonly looked for things in our lab (tri-halo methanes and other things 
related to gasoline, but that's not my area of knowlege), but I haven't been 
able to check for pesticide residues because we don't have that capacity. So 
far it seems to be a completely 'blank' water. The other spring we use at my 
parents' camper shows slightly more calcium/mag, but still not high enough to 
compare to city tap water, not even approaching 1 ppm. Our house spring 
appears to be running through sandstone more than lime. 

Not sure what the source is. It's not the same source as other springs down 
the road, because theirs all taste different or go dry and are rainwater 
dependent. Ours also comes out at the top of the mountain, which to me would 
indicate a deeper source, otherwise where would the pressure to get it out of 
a crack that high come from? I have not been able to find much helpful 
research on determining water sources for springs...do you have any sources?

The base source doesn't appear to be rainwater, but it does flow more heavily 
during times of good moisture levels, like right now in winter. I call what 
we get during the driest time of year, august, the baseline water. anything 
extra is likely coming from rainwater. But there's also no turbidity in it, 
no color, and no taste, so if it is rainwater, it is filtering pretty good 
before it comes up the mountain. i would guess that the source is somewhere 
south of us, because all the rivers run north around here.

But i like the idea of checking the rainwater too. I'll do that next week if 
it rains enough through the weekend, and I'll post the results. Typically, I 
believe rainwater should have a lot more aluminum and zinc than my water 
shows. It'll be interesting to find out.

Roxann, NW AR
http://blog.ancientearthwisdom.com (Ozark Musings from the homestead)