You Want To Homestead? Part Four!
I have talked about starting with raw land and also finding an operating homestead to purchase. What to check for with zoning and planning. I have talked about clearing the land or making sure the operating homestead you are looking to buy is what you want and need. I have talked about getting the power into your homestead and the telephone and the internet to your homestead. We have talked about a lot over the last few weeks. Now let's talk about the most important thing on a homestead.
You will want a garden and so you can grow your own food on your homestead? You want to raise chickens for eggs and meat? You want to have cows for milk and also meat, along with maybe a few goats? You want some pigs to help clear the land and maybe for meat to eat? Will you want to clean the dirt from your clothes and be able to shower and clean up? Will you want something to drink after a hot day in the sun? Then to me, the most important thing you will need on your homestead is WATER!
Water is the life's blood of anything we do, Even if you do not homestead it is still a necessity. We cannot live without it and you will not be able to eat without it, because animals we raise and the food we raise will need it to survive. For the first three years or so we had to haul in water because we did not have the money to put in a well right away. It is not fun and you will find it takes a lot of time and effort to do this. So plan ahead on getting a well in. We were lucky as we had a neighbor that would let us fill up 275 totes and some bottles up from his well and we helped him on his electric bill and then we found out the city water had a place we could fill up from the portable city water source, that cost us about $40.00 a month to haul from there plus the gas and wear and tear on our vehicles. It took us a good while to save for it and it was one of the things that took a priority on our homestead. We had to get power in to run the well pump and not use a generator to do so. So that was the first thing we did was power. The phone like I said did not cost us really anything to get put on the property, but a well was going to have to be put in before we could really build or grow anything. Even then we had to get some help to do so. Luckily we had a well driller that would carry part of the note and put us a well in. We had $3500.00 saved up and we asked if he would let us make payments on the rest of it and would he put in a well. You will only know if you ask and the worst he can say is "NO" but in our case, he said "YES". So just ask around, it never hurts to ask and sometimes you will get lucky.
The first thing you will want to do is figure out where the septic is going and where you will have your animals. This is very important since in most places it has to be 100 feet from either of those places. You do not want your animals or your septic system to ruin your water that you and your animals will be drinking and using. Then find a general area you want your well in. Ask your neighbors about their well, how deep it is? What is the quality of the water? Who drilled their well and how much it cost to get it put in? Study the soil tables so you will know what they have to drill through to get to a good water source for you. On our homestead, it was all sand but 9 miles or so down the road it was all granite rock. They went through about 4 layers or so of sandstone to get where our well needed to be. Remember that the top layers of water are full of the chemicals that lots of farmers are using on crops and animals make the top layers undrinkable because of their manure. It is a fine sand that is at the bottom of our well and it is not fully cleaned out right now so we use a filter on our well. It will get better as the well is used. You might have to do that also depending on what is in the bottom of the well.
Then call around to some well drillers and find out the cost to drill on your property. Ask them if the will hook power to the well so when they leave it will be pumping water for you. From talking to the neighbors you will have a good idea of the depth you will need and things like that so you will know if the drillers you are talking to knows your area and ask lots of questions about how much water you can expect from the well. Ask about how many GPM (gallons per minute) you can expect the well to produce. You will want at least 5 gallons per minute running for 2 hours. We ran our well for 3 days straight on a sprinkler when it was drilled to clean out the boring fluids and such and it never missed a beat.
Sometimes you will have the option of having county or community water on your property and if you do that is great. I love having a well because it is good clean and great tasting water. No additives like chlorine and fluoride in our well water. We test our well water every three months or so and will move to every year once it is really established and going good. When you have your will drilled it will take some time to get the boring fluids and dirt and stuff out of the water and it will settle down after a while. You have to remember you disturbed the earth to get to the water and it will take some time to clean itself out.
This post is getting long so I will end here and do another post on what type of pump motors are used and what the tanks are for and what a pitless adapter for the well is for and the benefits of them on my next post. I will also go over some other things you can use if you do not have power or a generator to pump water with. Thanks for taking the time to read our blog and I hope you are learning something from our experiences on our little homestead. Hope everyone has a great day/night whatever it is in your neck of the woods!
I took all the pictures in this post. They are my own pictures!
@steemitbloggers
Did you have to have a perc test on your land before permit for septic
I have to pull my pressure tank tomorrow. have a leak coming from the bottom
Nice job so far on your homestead
We are in nothing but sand here. I would say everything perc's fairly well here. We had to get the permit and had an inspector come out and check the location out and have him inspect the tank and field lines before it was buried. Yeah, the seal on the pipe that goes into the bottom of the tank is broke or the pipe has cracked. Thanks!
You have a steadfast determination to get things going. I read your story and see that your perseverance on this journey will certainly go a long way. I admire how diligent you are on your work. Have a nice day to you and yours. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks! It has been a long road and it is a longer road still. We will get there.
I particularly like this part about the well as we may someday have to install a new one. Ours is quite far from the house. For now it works great. I just needed a better understanding of the process. Thanks so much. Hope all is good with you. 🐓🐓
We are doing good! Hope you are all doing well, also! It is not a hard process to understand, I was hoping this post would clear up some things for people. It is hard to get information from well drillers as it is their lively hood and do not want to give away any secrets. lol
I hear you about having to haul water. We hauled water 2 miles and uphill in order to start building on the homestead. We had two wells but both were brackish since we are very close to the ocean. To drill a well for fresh water (which could have sulphur) it would need to be 300 feet down and at $50 per foot that comes out to a fair chunk of change which we didn't have. We could get municipal water but we had to pay for a mile of tubing to get it here. It has been a real learning experience.
Yes, it is and always will be a learning experience on the homestead, as we are still learning. Hope you are doing good!
It is a learning curve for sure. We just have to watch out for the storms. The water could get deep this time of the year!
Your series about wanting to be a homesteader is something everyone who is considering the lifestyle; whether on or off-grid, needs to read and consider ALL the possible concerns they may have. So many people just thing.. "oh homesteading is easy.. etc" and jump in without thinking.
Thank You! We planned for two years and even then things did not go as planned. I am trying to tell them this is a great life and a happy one, but it is more work than many think. Homesteading is a calling that you answer in life, it is not a 9 to 5 job, you will have to sit up at night with a cow having a calf or a goat having a kid, making sure it goes good and try to fix things that happen. The easiest way I can describe it is like a game of poker and you are all in all the time. I really hope people read these posts and see that it is not easy and do not jump into homesteading thinking that it is an easy way to go. I knew what I was getting into from helping my grandfather on his homestead and it is a sunup to sundown job. I do not want to discourage people from homesteading but I want them to know what it is all about and help them understand homesteading to make a good choice.
Damn dude I can't even imagine having to haul all our water that would be a pain in the ass. From having had two different homes with wells I can say that I'd recommend having the biggest pressure tank that you can afford and to get an in-line sediment filter. They are really cheap and easy to install and will prevent sediment from accumulating in appliances that can plug them or burn them out.
Yeah, Hauling water was a drag but it was we had to do for a while. Pressure thanks have come along way in the last couple of years. The tank we have is small but it acts like a 45-gallon tank. The in-line filter is a good thing for any well no matter what you drilled through, really important if you are using instant recovery water heaters as the sediment will burn out the elements in them easily. It is not just the tank and the filter but it is also about the type of pump motor you use and also the size you use. We are using a Gould 1/2 H.P motor and it is a great pump motor. I did a lot of research on everything and found it to be the best in the industry. Just remember it is not about one piece of something it is about every piece of the puzzle. Thanks!
Hey this sounds just like us! We installed a borehole and pump a few months ago and then cleaned the water veins so that the water wasn't tasting and smelling like rotten eggs.
You're absolutely right about the water however. We actually use the water for the cabbages and other veggies were growing, but then after some tests we started consuming it too.
All of this sounds great until our borehole pump broke....suddenly we were up the rover without a paddle as we had become reliant on the water from under the ground. So all we had left was the 15000l of water in our tanks until we could get the borehole pump working again.
That was when we were blessed....in the middle of the worst droought in the Western Cape area for decades, we had RAIN! Lucky? I dont like to think so.
Hey good luck with all your adventures and projects. And thanks for the post
Sounds like you have lots of sulfur in your water. We had a well like that a while back in Mississippi. We were also on community water there so it was not a problem. The well was water still tasted good just smelled a little strong. LOL
Thanks! Glad you got some rain! It comes at the right time.
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