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California farmers turn to water witches


Still Waters

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Vern Tassey doesn't advertise. He's never even had a business card. But here in California's Central Valley, word has gotten around that he's a man with "the gift," and Tassey, a plainspoken, 76-year-old grandfather, has never been busier.

Farmers call him day and night - some from as far away as the outskirts of San Francisco and even across the state line in Nevada. They ask, sometimes even beg, him to come to their land. "Name your price," one told him. But Tassey has so far declined. What he does has never been about money, he says, and he prefers to work closer to home.

http://news.yahoo.co...-145325572.html

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It is nice to know that he does not take money. Who knows maybe it works :unsure2:

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It is nice to know that he does not take money. Who knows maybe it works :unsure2:

On this Wednesday, Tassey was charging the Wollenmans just $100 — his usual fee — to look for water in one of their orange groves. They’d been working with him for years — and before that, they’d used another witch to help them find water, just as their parents had when they first came here in the 1940s as one of the first citrus growers in Lindsay.

damn $100 a sucker, go get that money old timer.

Edited by Iron_Lotus
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damn $100 a sucker, go get that money old timer.

oh dam, guess thats what happens when I skim an article

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Dang its expensive to get a well drilled in California, $50,000, here it costs between $5 and $10 thousand. Which here you will pretty much hit water no matter where you drill.

Wonder what they will do when their aquifers go dry. They are getting there. Some are polluted from fracking. Wonder if that polluted water will hurt crops.

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Considering it's a severe drought the 'water witch' guy could most likely charge much more than 100 bucks. If he can actually find water then the folks paying him aren't really suckers. However, if he can't find water then he's basically just a crook. Seems rather odd though that he'd be so popular if he's just conning people.

Edited by Lilly
poor syntax
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I was born and raised in the San Joaquin Valley, and I still have family and friends who have farms there. It breaks my heart to see what the drought is doing to the farmlands and agricultural community. :( :( Fortunately some of the richest Ag. land in Calif. is fed by the Delta, which is the biggest estuary on the West Coast of the US, which connects with tributaries leading to Suisun Bay through Antioch.

Hundreds of thousands of acres of marshland had been reclaimed for farming via a complex system of levies. I know some farmers are having problems with the salinity of the water because of water demands in the region, some of which is fed via the Sacramento - San Joaquin river system. Saltwater intrusion from the Pacific Ocean has always been a delicate balancing act for farmers in the region.

Now back to dowsing - When we first hired a company to drill a couple of wells on our property, they sent a guy out to do a groundwater survey to see where the best places were to drill. I was totally surprised when he walked around the property a couple of times, and then went back to his truck to retrieve 2 copper rods. He walked back and forth with the rods in his hands, and every place they crossed he planted an orange surveyors flag. I often wondered if what he was doing was just for "show", but I did find it very entertaining!

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Considering it's a severe drought the 'water witch' guy could most likely charge much more than 100 bucks. If he can actually find water then the folks paying him aren't really suckers. However, if he can't find water then he's basically just a crook. Seems rather odd though that he'd be so popular if he's just conning people.

I wonder if he accepts the money if he is unsuccessful.

I suppose $100 isn't too much. I would like to have someone picking the place for me to drill who has experience rather than picking it myself.

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What a scam. Always was.

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What a scam. Always was.

It may be. Does it matter though. If he can pick the best place to drill for water, isn't $100 worth it?
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my grand father did this for a living and people used to pay him good amount of money and his expense to come at their house like 6-8hours from his home. he can't be lucky during 30years

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Water-witching has about the same credulance as holding a pendulum on a chain in one's hand.

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you sounds like someone who have something against it, im sure you did a lot of research and tests

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Well maybe it will work and for the folks out there I hope so. But after a while they will use that up as well and if they don't get some rain to refill the underground rivers and such it's all going to be desert.

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If it has good accuracy, it has good accuracy.

TonopahRick made an excellent point though, it's just trapped groundwater, nothing more. You should learn to trap the water up to the vegetation, to have the kinda ecosystems that can keep the water there. Oceans will carry the water in form of clouds eventually, but it's not gonna help if you use too much more than you recycle & store.

Big-leafy plants like rhubarb, trees & bushes and plants of different heights & different root-shapes. Mushrooms help to form the initial biomass & life if starting is the problem. Consult experts.

Relying on dowsers, whether they work or not, is NOT a long-term solution. It wont last many years.

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you sounds like someone who have something against it, im sure you did a lot of research and tests

There is zero scientific evidence or rationale that dowsing-rods work.

Well, unless you carve them out of rhino horns. :passifier:

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I did read that the aquifers are contaminated with fracking water, but not due to the fracking, but because the water was recycled from the fracking and put back into the groundwater aquifers.

http://www.rt.com/usa/194620-california-aquifers-fracking-contamination/

I do agree that from what I've read that well drilling experts often say that dowsers are not any more accurate then a half trained geologist might be. I think the water witches with good results simply know in what kind of area to start with, and then really given +/- 100 yards (or whatever) it really doesn't matter where the well goes down.

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There used to be an old guy in town who claimed he could dowse for gold from a helicopter. We all figured that he just liked helicopter rides. :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

We were taught various methods of "dowsing" in survival training in the special forces, it's very much down to the individual, some of us were completely useless (me included) some were hit and miss and managed to identify the odd water pipe, but there was one guy who could really do it, 100% accuracy, you could burry a bottle of water in the sand and he would never miss it! I guess some are more sensitive than others, as to how it works i have no idea, im a huge sceptic when it comes to this type of thing which is maybe why i cant do it.....maybe you have to believe

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We were taught various methods of "dowsing" in survival training in the special forces, it's very much down to the individual, some of us were completely useless (me included) some were hit and miss and managed to identify the odd water pipe, but there was one guy who could really do it, 100% accuracy, you could burry a bottle of water in the sand and he would never miss it! I guess some are more sensitive than others, as to how it works i have no idea, im a huge sceptic when it comes to this type of thing which is maybe why i cant do it.....maybe you have to believe

Well, he is more observant than the others... Like hunters-gatherers (still roaming some places in Africa) can tell whole story just by looking at footprints on the ground...
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Guest Br Cornelius

Its probably not an answer for California, but experience from India shows that replanting trees on the uplands and coasts can have a significant impact on groundwater.

There is a strip of forest in the south of India which runs down the coast and was peace-meal clear-felled over the last century. This turned the whole area into a barren desert with aquifers down by 10 meters or more.

A bunch of hippies bought up a tract of this worthless desert and started making swales and planted trees along them in order to restore the native forest. In less than a decade the water table had risen by at least 5meters.

It seems to me that more trees represents the solution to most environmental problems, so its a real shame that we are still cutting down trees at an alarming pace.

Br Cornelius

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you know, that is really strange that climate chnage people do NOT go about planting trees everywhere. Trees along a power plant lessens the pollution around the area. Do you see them doing anything with that knowledge? I have not, and I watch.

The ogallala aquifer is said to be seriously depleted. Strangely the ones that are boohooing about it are the corn farmers, ... those who admit that they make maybe a cent a bushel of corn. I asked them WHY CORN? My dad was a master farmer of a abnormally large family farm and he never ever grew corn. He said that it was too expensive to grow corn. Ironically, when he died, he left mom with millions in a$$ets, while everyone else thought we would have to sell the farm.

Advice to everyone: Don't show your wealth. Be humble and unassuming and smart. And conserve water.

I took a dowsing class once. Do it in my yard from time to time. But where I live, there is water just about everywhere.

I love trees.

Also, no one public talks about the effect of Fukushima. However it is my understanding that radiation, like the unchecked radiation still coming out of Fukushima, tends to dry things out a bit. CAlifornia get hit hard with the first few waves of radiation.

Edited by regeneratia
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  • 3 weeks later...

What a scam. Always was.

It seems to be until you take hold of a witching branch or dowsing rods. Then it becaoomes something else. I don't scoff that the earth has energies coming up from it, moving thru it. Heck, even scientists are measuring the particles traveling thru the earth. The earth has energies. The sun has energies. Space has energies. There are more energies out there than we presently know how to measure.

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