I was born & raised on family farms near Muleshoe, TX. where row cropping & methods of irrigation were part of my upbringing. Together, with two older brothers, digging ditches, setting row water tubes, moving side-rows & monitoring circle sprinklers to installing drip-line, I quickly learned just how much our livelihoods depended on water from the Ogalala Aquifer.

 

Time went by & land values rose due to the dairy industry migrating to our area. A coal powered plant had also been built which stimulated the economy with jobs & then, there were the feedlots, all of which depended heavily on the Aquifer. 

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To accomodate the stress on our water source, farm irrigation wells were often combined into pipelines in an effort to increase their gallons per minute. Sprinkler heads were renozzled & hose lines extended further into crop beds, creating draglines, to minimize evaporation & loss of moisture.

 

Our family farms began to incorporate no-till practices & increased our dryland acreage. We grew more wheat & also began custom processing & grazing cattle. We also grew silage & alfalfa hay, which was baled in early morning hours when the moisture levels were good.

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Cold weather days were spent in the barn with dad overhauling engines, repairing equipment & learning to weld & build things.

On the homeplace, we ran a grain dryer with storage bins to reduce the corn's moisture content before taking it to the elevator. The family also started custom harvesting corn, cotton, wheat & black-eyed peas which was, once again, all about timeliness & moisture levels.

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As time went by, our older brother went more into the cleaning, processing & marketing phase & the middle brother & I took to pulling & setting irrigation pumps to incorporate diversification & be able to service our own irrigation wells.

 

Eventually, we all had individual operations, but we still helped each other.

 

Long story short, all the above led to my earning a pump pulling license & the rest of the story led to even more diversification.

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From helping design a water flow system for a family production company with my mom in Fort Worth,

to obtaining a water well-drilling license near Houston.

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And lastly, from spending time in the rocky areas of Utopia with a friend who I apprenticed as a driller, to putting together the knowledge of everything I'd experienced about land & moisture to establish Nickels Water Well, LLC.