The Tales of Two Farms
across the Piedmont Sole Source Aquifer region, these changes have significant implications for wildlife and the broader health of our watersheds. Groundwater feeds our streams, replenishes drinking water supplies, and connects entire landscapes through an unseen but essential network.
The Tales of Two Farms
From the Little Monocacy Bev and Dick Thoms of Tiewyan Farm write:
We built our farm home in 1974( before the creation of the MoCo Ag Reserve). At that time, we dug a well( with the help of a divining rod) deep into the Piedmont Sole Source Aquifer. It has provided water for our household( four kids) and various farming endeavors including an orchard( 3000 trees), horses, sheep, cattle and various veggie & perennial gardens. The farm also has five springs and two seeps, one of which is at least an acre in size.
Our home sits on a forested hill overlooking what we have always called“ the lowland.” The lowland is actually a large seep— too mushy to even walk across. There are two very active springs just above the lowland seep that channel water into a small pond at the lower edge.
Every spring a deafening cacophony arises from the lowland seep as spring peepers and American Toads celebrate their mating season. We also hear the calls of barred and hoot owls, wild turkeys, various birds and raptors, coyotes and foxes. We see evidence of a large deer population, opossums, raccoons, ground hogs and later in the season, adolescent male bears. Summer nights bring fireflies rising up from the lowland, drifting through the forest, filling the darkness with sparkles. Magical.
We also have two small springs in a swale that divides our pastures. Those are now much drier than in the past. At one time they filled the swale with water which then flowed into the lowland seep. No longer. We have another upland seep on the edge of a pasture along Big Woods Road. This one was discovered by the cattle pastured there. We also own around three acres on the other side of Big Woods Road which contain a small spring— that one is also drier than in the past when it actually created a little stream along the road.
The Little Monocacy River runs through our farm. For many decades it flooded every year, sometimes twice in a year. These floods have ceased and the river itself is running consistently lower than it has in the past.
From Poolesville— Habitat Lost Perry Kephart Kapsch, owner with her sister, Ann Frazer Brown, of the family farm, Chiswell’ s Inheritance share:
The sole-source aquifer which flows into wells serving the County’ s rural residents is more than just a tank of water waiting underground.
On our farm, the aquifer appeared as a lowland marsh where springs flowed together to form the headwaters for a stream that ran off the farm into a larger stream that flowed six miles away into the Potomac River.
In the 1950’ s, President Eisenhower’ s Department of Agriculture helped pay to dig a hole and a dam in the marsh to provide for a pond for fire protection and as a watering hole for livestock. Maryland brought bass and blue gills for fishing in the pond. In the winter kids ice skated, except where a spring near the shore kept the water slushy and available for thirsty deer. In the summer kids swam where they could feel the cold water spurting from the deeper springs, cold water they were assured would keep the snapping turtles away from their toes.
Water birds, the mallards, wood ducks, Canada geese and swans migrated through and began to return each year to nest on and near the pond. Snapping turtles and brown muskrats burrowed holes in the dam and in the shallows at the waterline or joined the frogs, lizards and snakes who had moved along with the marsh to the outer edges of the pond. The marsh birds, the thicket birds, and the field birds moved out with the wet ground adjusting their nesting and feeding habits to the new boundaries.
One all-weather spring a short distance uphill from the old marshland actively flowed through a springhouse. After the pond raised the marshland water level, deep green watercress grew in the now still water between the springhouse and the pond.
Then, a few years later, nearby farmers began spraying herbicides like paraquat dichloride and glyphosates. The quail, meadowlarks and other field birds all disappeared. Fewer thicket and field
34 plenty I summer growing 2026