Our plan If the Well Water FAILS

Just made it through the night. Of course, we didn't have a lot of wind, but I think it's helped to put a lot of staples into it. What are y'all painting?

I'm trying to make welcome, but he—

oh, I like it. I need to have L. Well, that, that's timing. That's good timing. The, the, um, the, the rainbow can be the M. I'll just put an E at the end over past the rainbow. Y'all get your little animal chores done, and Mama and I are gonna go with a very special guest Lance, water specialist. He saw the vlog the other day where we're trying to make redundancy in our water, and we're going to look into the spring situation and stuff like that. Well, Lance mentioned something about our wet weather spring and wondered if I fixed it. I did sort of mostly fix it.

You got a good French drain in there, so we do have French drains.

What'd we end up with, 3 French drains? There is a little bit of a— you can see the grass here.

And that's where it's at.

So there is something still going. I mean, the grass is all dead right now, but it wasn't 2 weeks ago. It was still a little green. Is this it? Is there something coming up right there?

I can't see. I've got keratoconus, so—

Well, maybe we're passing the inspection.

It looks a little wet right there.

So what makes this something you know about, Lance?

My background is water and wastewater. Nice. I started in 1987.

We're gonna start right here, hopefully figure out maybe what this was. I don't ever remember this working in my lifetime. What do you reckon this was, Lance?

This is probably your head for your spring, if that's— is that a spring?

I feel like that is—

that's the well.

I feel somehow in my heart I feel like that's, that's new. Maybe to replace this? Or do you think that's feeding that?

Probably. That might be old.

No, this is really old.

This has never been— let's open it and look in there. I think it's empty.

You have a line coming from this side. Okay, and it's right there.

Oh, oh wow, down there at the bottom.

Now that line may be feeding that way. Oh, okay, okay. You're right, it could be coming out here and capturing a spring here.

Okay, um, was this a reservoir?

More than likely. This is your convergence.

Still working.

This could be your convergence reservoir, or your spring could be there and they were actually pumping here.

Okay, to feed this trough. That would have been a trough for the animals.

Yeah. Didn't you say he used to feed— or they do the feeder pigs here?

Oh yeah, they would have done pretty good memory. These woods, cows would have been up here. Who knows, that could have been for any of that. And right downhill from that is this. You're welcome to open that. You're gonna see water flowing in here.

Okay, see, that's your screen.

You can hear it.

See, it's coming from there.

I think so.

That pipe was coming straight up the side of that wall.

Well, no, this—

no, this pipe's empty. I think this is just— this is a vent pipe.

Okay, that's a vent.

Oops, I think I just broke it off. Do you think that's clean water in that barrel?

Yes, sir.

Do you think it would have been clean— would it be clean water in the reservoir?

Yes. Okay, you can test it. $75 a test for each.

Okay, I guess that's the only way to know for sure. So what's the idea of catching spring water? They tap these springs and then they have a reservoir down the hill.

Yep.

And then they just take from the reservoir, pump or gravity feed down to the house.

Exactly.

There's the reservoir to give you context. We're walking up the hill a little bit. Rebecca thinks the spring's up here.

We could probably—

I seem to think that too. That's the good thing about western North Carolina, lots of springs. Look at this old metal tank they've turned into a pig trough or cow trough, something. Did you find it?

See, there's a spring right there.

Lance is on it. There's a dam right there.

That's a wooden dam, actually.

So where's the intake?

Well, there's a flat rock right there.

This is spring or a creek?

This is coming off of a creek, and they probably, um, made a spring box out of it, possibly.

Okay, he's thinking they could have buried the spring box right there. Yeah, where Rebecca is.

Does she see how they—

and then the pipe would be buried too. Yeah, look at this rock.

It is so amazing in here.

Our goal here is see if we can't tap into some redundancy. We're counting on a well right now for water. But wouldn't it cool to be having a backup, like a spring, using the resources we have? I see something. I don't know if it's going to pass the inspection though. It looks like a Styrofoam box. Yeah, here's the line. Oh, it is, it's a Styrofoam box. Does that pass the inspection?

No, no.

Where are you drinking?

There it is.

Thieves and Florida Keys, I had fellas coming in with samples. Bringing them in in Styrofoam Circle K cups. You better go recollect that, buddy.

Well then, it's a cup. Here we go. So he's got a French—

Taurus.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, you're gonna have—

Yes sir, you're gonna get contamination basically, right?

Yeah.

So this is a French drain collection, is that?

Yes.

That passed inspection? Is that the best way?

But here's the pipe.

And then how does he get his water into this, this little pipe down there without clogging it up?

There might be a screen. Stick your hand in.

You're gonna have to have screen filters.

So basically this is gonna have to be redone.

Oh yes, that looks like— it looks like a silt more than anything.

You're right, there's water coming out right here.

It's a better rock.

It's a better rock.

They've made their own filter.

Oh, so that's how—

filter sand. That's that, it's filter sand. Oh wow, 0.45 or more filter sand.

So worms in it.

So what is that sand meant to catch?

Uh, mainly just large objects. Okay, it's not to do anything for getting rid of bacterias or anything like that. It's a bacteria harborer.

So what are you supposed to do instead?

You can use filter sand, things like that. It's not gonna— what you're gonna have to do is either be in a closed container with a screen vent on it or have some type of a well, more of a finer point than this large drainage tubes. Um, okay, but I would put a box in this area, probably springbok. Springbok.

What feeds the springbok?

Not that, uh, you would probably just redo it.

Okay.

And you can, you could do the same, just bury it. They have this, they have what you thought was happening down there, and you could actually come off of this, but you'd have to make a bed. You know, see how they went underneath this rock? Yeah, you'd have to dig this out. You want to really dig it out and make you a 2-foot by 2-foot French drain area. Come off the bottom a foot, put your pipe in, lay the rock in the rest of the way, and then you can pull that off into the spring box.

Is this a good place for that?

Um, as long as you have nothing on the headwaters, you know, coming down the mountain, like there's industry or anything like that, which I know there's not. A watershed is anything that's coming off a particular area making a stream, okay, and then they converge into another tributary and then converge into another—

What's a tributary?

A tributary is a smaller— a larger than a creek.

Okay.

Okay, so the tributary will go into, which is still a stream or a river, it'll go into a larger river.

Okay.

Like most of our water goes eventually into the Broad River. I mean, that's what you're looking for. So it's all, all the watersheds from the mountains end up in the French Broad River.

How would we test to see if this is good spring water before we make, before we make the effort to do a box and stuff?

Now, um, you can always just, you know, go to, uh, a local lab and they'll give you a bottle.

So I would just catch this one?

You would just catch the water right there. But the problem is with that is that there could be— there's contaminations all the way up through. So I would say you all, when I look at things like this, I always say non-potable. Let's fix it to make it potable. Okay, so you need to fix it, you test it, if it comes back good, you go from there. Yeah, you— I've seen all types of different testing going on. You need to make sure that the rock is disinfected, everything's disinfected before you take your sample.

What do you mean, rock?

So if you're going to make your, your, your new spring box, yeah, you're going to have rock in there, uh, to collect the water. That's going to be your, your man-made filter.

So there's, there's a chance you have to, you have to get to the spring box before you can test it. So there's a chance you build this thing and it's not clean.

Yeah.

But it's, it's like—

but what you can also do is clean everything out. Yeah, let it sit for a week or so. Okay, you could cover it maybe. Yeah, with some Agribond to keep anything especially dropping into it, you know, for bird, raccoons, playing in it. Yeah, um, and then sample it before you do the spring box. Yeah, and you'll find out where, where you're, where you're at.

Then it goes from a spring box down to that reservoir?

Yes, you can take it to the reservoir, and that way you have more, uh, available water at any given time.

All right.

Um, that spring box looks like it's apparently a 500-gallon spring box. Okay, that will hold enough water for probably 10-15 people.

But something's wrong with that, it's leaking, or else it would be filling up. So that needs to be repaired. Okay, so we're looking at rebuilding this. Is this actually where we want to be, or we want to try to get to the top of this thing?

I would rather go as high as possible.

Okay.

Into— and possibly find where the spring is actually coming out of.

Okay.

It would be a better location because you're going to be— you have less of a chance of bacteria.

Okay.

Collecting from that.

Okay, I like it. So my homework is to chase this spring down.

That'll be fun.

The boys' homework. We're back at our reservoir. It's only that there, and then there's the houses. So we're talking about having to redo so much over there. Is that in a good spot, or does that need to be higher? I want to put it somewhere else, or bigger, or if we're going to redo things.

Well, if you're going to redo things, you might as well do— it's a possibility to have water to where you can go across this field. Yeah, and everything. So if we go higher up and and find a better area, you could have water for every one of the animals throughout the whole—

oh, that's true too.

We could similar animals.

That makes a lot of sense because, yeah, I mean, I'm all for nostalgia and stuff, but I'm also like, well, you could still use this.

Yeah, you know, this would be triple redundancy. So you would actually have a reservoir that you could feed the lower— okay, because you're gonna have so much pressure. Yeah, you could come off of this and this would give you plenty of pressure for over here. Okay, but you may need pressure to come over here. Okay, so if you you're up higher, you would split it this way. Yeah, having that—

you're talking about giving the animals spring water. Look at you, you're bypassing the pond and saying let's give them spring water.

That's nice.

And I like that, the best water in the world.

If ever there is an electrical, you know, electricity crisis, yes, we don't have to worry about then piping water to places. It's already there.

That's right.

Is there a way— this would be the question— Is there a way to pipe this, plumb this into the house and have an option?

Sure, you could actually do it right to the spring. Okay, so, or right to your well. Okay, okay. And then we would just— because it's going to have your pressure on it anyhow. Okay, so if the water went out, oh, I need to go— we need to go open the spring, take— shut the well off and turn on the spring water.

Can I mow a strip up the mountain board? Course, for these things. Yeah, sure. You all know what sure means. I hope I don't regret this. Before we do that though, let's help Arun. Let's get these nets set up. Let's get the cows. We still got to milk, guys, and then you can do that, and that'll take a while. Context: the old original farmhouse that Dad grew up in, the road we own both sides. We're spinning on around And we've got an old spring in there. Maybe this wasn't the best idea, but they for decades lived off this water. It looks like Jonah— Jonah has built this up. You can kind of see the older— probably about right there down was the old spring.

He brought it back up.

Yeah, I don't think— it's not working at all.

It doesn't look like—

so this was the water we had. Hold on one second, let me get this.

We were off of this water.

We were off of this water until your dad put the well in. Yeah, we had—

and this was— was this the little reservoir?

I don't know if this was a reservoir or if it was—

or did he have it pumped up to the other one? What was their technology? Was it seriously just rocks piled around with mud in between? Yeah, because I remember it could even be clay in there.

They would probably look for the best clay they could find.

Yeah.

That would actually dry up.

This is what I wish your father was still alive. Yeah, because he would have all of the knowledge.

There used to be a spring.

Would have any of this knowledge?

Maybe. There used to be a spring down the road that we would ride our bikes down to. Yeah, and it was just, it was just like that, and they had a little dipper in there and you can just dip and take a drink on the fresh.

Yep.

I mean, you'd see, uh, lizards in it and all kinds of other whatnot. If you remember yesterday, we got the shed. Look how steep that is. I mean, you can't You just can't tell from this. They can't tell in the film, can they, how steep this is? It's a lot steeper in person than on camera is what they tell me. So we're gonna try to— Sally's here, so we're just gonna try to see if we can't winch it up and get all of us together and push it. And if that doesn't work, we'll go for the tractor. That's the first problem. We're gonna see if it will reach all the way. By the way, we're trying to hurry here because we want to go find that springhead. Lance is willing to go, Rebecca wants to go. I think that would be fun. I don't know. I don't know. I kind of think we have a 50/50 chance. I think our chances increased when Arun said we could push it. Arun, I, and Lance could all push it, and Jonah, while Josiah parks in the truck, pushes the button. I think we have a chance. And if we can get it up to here, we can hook it up and then we can cut across with it. We're getting it up now because I'm here. I'm not hiking finding the spring, and it's kind of just— it's just so steep down there. See, I'm naturally holding it like that, but it's more like that. Yeah, that's more like it right there. We're there. That's enough, that's enough. Now wait, get it, get it tight. Okay, now get it tight. We're all going to help push. The thing is working without us. It's working. Hold on, hold on. It's, it's catch— it's catching on something. Oh no, there it goes.

Yeah, it's just—

all right, it's going. There you go, it's working. Jonah was right. Jonah definitely had more hope than I did. We can't pull it now. We might get aimed up towards the hill. We're digging up dirt. I'm needed in 3 places at once. Gideon wants in the tree. Jonah wants to do a mastitis test. Lily's stuck in a tree. That's probably the most urgent. Oh, you got it!

I got my foot back.

Can you get down? Come down, it's time to milk.

My foot was stuck.

All right. One fire out. Let's get Gideon occupied next. I told him yesterday I'd put him in this tree. He's been looking forward to it. Gideon, you gonna be all right?

Yeah.

Okay, where are you trying to go? All the way to the end? Yeah, I've done it. Well, I can help you, but I can only help you so far. You got this. All right, I think you're good there. Okay, she's been kicky the last couple of days. We're gonna test that one for mastitis, see how sensitive she is. I'm gonna say no, she does not have mastitis. She just has a sore teat. That's great, I'm happy about that. All right, so she's just having some— yeah, yeah, you can milk it. Yes! Because she's only got 2 teats left. She got another one. I know we cannot do another one or she's in the freezer. Now it's time. You want to go find the springhead? I don't think I've ever chased down a springhead. Just have you ever chased down a springhead? No. All right, you, Mom? Okay guys, 40 minutes to get up and down this mountain. I can see the light right through there, so It is only so far. Oh, it's far, and it's bushwhacking too. It's going to be interesting is getting a springbok way up wherever, although we are going to get an access road in here, so might have to time it with that. All right, there's the one we found. We're just going to start hiking up the mountain. We're going to go until we find the spring head where the water originally comes out of the mountain. What do you think? We already found the head.

Listen. Yeah, this was covered in—

we've got this.

Oh yeah.

Oh, right there. Hey, we might be getting near. Well, that's kind of anticlimactic. Oh, we got water source. No, we still got it up here. This might be it right there. Well, that didn't take very long.

Yeah, but is there a pipe there?

Oh no, there's not gonna be any pipe.

That's what I'm saying. This is probably where they were pulling that one from, but if you've got water further up, let's take it.

I think this could be it right here, but let's try. I mean, I guess it could be under this rock. You think we got water further up, Josiah? Whoa, yeah, we do. Is there water just high? We still got water here, guys. It's crazy how this little sprinkle has worn this out over time. Look at this beautiful rock. Beautiful. I hear lots of water. How high y'all want to go? I'll keep going.

What's your elevation, you think?

We're on an old logging trail right here.

Hey, I can take you.

See it? Look at this boulder, how pretty. There's a way to go under the rock. It's our— yeah, there's a climbing rock over there, a big boulder. Oh my word, look at all this water. Oh my word. I guess what they were tapping through down there is basically basically a creek. They're not nearly at the head. That's why I found the easiest way around this big tree. That's the easiest way over. Okay. Oh, Teddy, you've met your match, bro. Come over here, buddy. There you go. Poor guy.

Here you go.

Gosh, that was a big tree. Yeah, okay, we are leveling out. We're getting near level. You can see the sun, the top of this mountain. We have to get to the top of this spring very soon. It's starting to get a little more manageable, less steep. Best dense forest. Okay, I'm going to show you why they call this Burl Holler. This is a burl. I guess we had a bunch of burls in this holler. What? We're practically leveling out right there. We flattened out here. That could go—

oh my word.

How pretty is this? Wow, we've discovered a really beautiful place. Now the problem is we could be getting on somebody else here. I don't know where the line is. I don't think we have time to keep on this, and I don't know if that's our property.

It's not.

We're on to the other mountain. It goes on gradually up, and I'm pretty sure we only have to the ridge of this mountain, so we're probably gonna have to get a survey before we fall through that anymore.

So this shows that we are at the top of our— oh, property.

So we are near the property line. Yeah, see, I probably crossed it. All right, I'm gonna try to drop a pin. Well, hey, now we know that this probably starts on somebody else's property, so this may not be the spring we need. We're gonna go down. It does look like it's right on the property line. Ah, we're probably ultimately gonna have to explore a different spring because that's a straight-up creek. And although we could tap that for our livestock, we don't really necessarily want to type that for us. We are back. How is it? You feel refreshed? Feel ready for our training now? Warm up for our kettlebell training?

I feel really tired.

All right, Lance. Yeah, thanks, my man. All right, I think we'll try to find a springhead on our property and then get back— you out, get you back out, or we'll get you back out and you'll hunt with us or whatever. We'll just see.

We'll do whatever we ever need to do.

All right, thanks, my man. You're welcome. See you back. She's passed out. Well, she's not passed out, sunbathing. We just had our kettlebell training, got a little bit of sun. I'm excited about what's going to happen to go down here. I've talked to you guys before about us creating our own community group away from Facebook for Abundance Plus, but there's going to be so much more to that. Zane, a guy who's in Abundance Plus, also a developer, has helped us on this. I believe we're going to get a tour of it today. We're going to start rolling it out to members and then soon you guys. So hopefully I'll get you guys a little sneak preview here.

So one of the cool things on this is that it automatically posts whenever you upload new videos to Appuntis Plus on your behalf. It posts for you.

That's cool.

You've been— you've technically been posting for several days, but it's all, all feeding right in there. So this is just the community feed where everyone can see everyone's comments, just like our current Facebook group. We have it so you can filter out specific skill sets and find people in your area that are, uh, have those skill sets. You can see every member, you can message people directly.

Isn't that cool? That is what's coming. That right now is going to be a website. Of course it's going to also be an app because I know over half of you are using things like this on an app. I'm so excited to bring this wonderful community together in a better way online without all the nonsense. So, that said, as we tweak this, we are going to get this out to our lifetime members first as a beta to test it and then premium members and then standard members. But for you guys who are not yet members, let's do this. In the comment section, help us out, help us out. We're still open to feedback. Nothing's quite set in stone. Tell me, what is your number one struggle? I don't want to say with Facebook.

Maybe I should.

What's your number one struggle with Facebook? I mean, we're— just to give you an idea, we're doing so much more than Facebook because we're going to have a directory. Uh, we're gonna have a marketplace. Boy, I'm spilling all the beans here right now, aren't I? But like Facebook, you can create events and you can find each other, and there's groups and all that other stuff. So tell me, and, and I've come to those things like the marketplace because you can't sell livestock on, on Facebook. Wouldn't that be cool if our members could sell their farm goods or livestock or a used book or or whatever, all you all, members or not, could find and interact with them on the marketplace. That comes from talking to you guys and finding out your struggles. So help us, help us build this thing. We're going to launch it hopefully mid-November when we do the Great America Farm Tour showing. That'll be a big community event, and then we're going to launch this. The whole launch for this theme upcoming in November for Abundance Plus is community. So why not ask you guys? So what's your number one struggle in regards to, for lack of a better term, Facebook? I should say the current social media platforms, but let's just pick on Facebook. All right, talk to you later. I'm gonna be reading those comments.