Saving My Farm: 500ft Waterline Repair for Cows, Sheep + Pigs

Today I've hurt my back. I've got to work smart because I've got to continue to save my farm. My wheelchair. Hurricane Helene robbed us of our topsoil and much of our lower pasture. What's wrong?

Fuse blew.

For what? On the quick attach. Uh, quick attach. The quick attach, which it's a hook that drops down. Will let you get rid of the bucket while still in the cab. It's super handy, but we keep blowing fuses on it. Earlier, turned around, hit that. It's just a reminder. Slow down. How do I slow down when I've got so much to do? What's my next? What's my next line? And now I want to add sheep to the equation. I hear the quick attach. It works. We're fixing things. It's the end of winter, beginning of spring.

They need to get out and it's getting to be a pain. We're down to round bales and round bales are a pain to feed the pole barn.

We have to pitchfork it in. I'm not gonna do it. I'm just gonna film them doing it. It's not that so much that's the trouble. It's that it just fluffs up. See, we've half filled that trough up, but not really, because you need to fill it up densely. There's always sheep in there. Why do they get in there? They're just sheep. They got sheep brains. See, you're aggravating him. You're— that'd be another reason to get you guys out of here. We'll roll this out and hay bomb with them. So don't give them too much. My goal is to get them out today. I gotta fix the water line and then I could use some help moving them. Breakfast break. Anybody with me? 3 meals a day, a little overrated. I mean, they like it, but it's a time suck. Just want to go. 1, 2 meals a day, we're good. Hey, y'all ready? We're here. Okay, I'm not waddling as bad. My back's loosening up. Got my supplies. In order to get 3 systems over there, 3 species of animals, we're gonna have 3 systems of water. Well, right now let me show you what we're running off of. We just got this water hose coming across the road. It's feeding the cow trough, but we'd have to take off of that. We'd feed up the pigs, we have to take it off of that, put it to the sheep. It's just too much. And we have our water line system comes from the house right there. It's broke right there. And there's a number of places it's broke, probably 500-600 feet out through there. Hey Gideon, can you go get me the torch? First things first, our source line has been busted. I got this adapter to put a female end back on this hose. How am I going to jam that in there? Hopefully I can heat this up and get it on there. This works on plastic. I don't remember if it works on rubber. Heating up the end to make it expandable. If it's going to work, it's going to be a lot warmer than that. Well, yeah, that's not going to work. I thought it might not work, so I have a plan B. Okay, we have these adapters. By the way, this is half-inch line. This is my old line. I don't recommend that anymore. We do 1-inch line, which is much better for carrying the water. So don't build half-inch line. I'm just repairing what I have because this year the word is recovery, not build. We're recovering this year, so we're just gonna make this half-inch line work one more time. To make this connection, I don't need a ball valve, but I didn't get any male-to-male connectors. I thought I had male-to-male connectors, but these are like 3/4 inch, not a 1/2 inch. So I'm gonna have to provide a ball valve because I have plenty of these connectors. Today's not about perfection, it's about getting it done. Hopefully after we set this one, we can just have a nice musical montage of fixing it and I don't have any problems. It's not— I think it's on enough to put in the strap. Let's do— no, let's do— okay, we don't need the ball valve here. Let's do a T. Let's do a T, and then we'll be able to get water right here. See, this comes to here, we'll have a T. Okay, that's what we need to do. Jeez, I guess that's those barbs. You can get it on but you can't get it off. I found this, it must have been from that. Um, this is a T. Okay, now we put our T on both ends. This will attach to the T-post. That way, you know, we have our electricity for our fence and our water at the T-posts. And you can see the T-posts because they're sticking out. You don't have to guess where the stuff, stuff is. We just have to jam this one in now. We should be good. I think I got lucky. I think that's, that's gonna have to be one side down. Other side should be easy. 2 feet from getting here. I do not want to add an extension for 2 feet. I got it out from underneath this fence. That bought us some. It's gonna bring us to right here. That's gonna, that's gonna have to be close enough. Explain this one and then we're gonna be hitting the road. Hopefully just nailing these and getting these in. I could use heat, but I don't know. Yeah, I better use heat because it's supposed to come all the way to that nipple. See? Very nice. Hi John, where are you? It gets soft but stays stiff. Let me see if I'm getting it tight. You want— you don't want to go too tight. Oh wow, that's, that's tight. That's nice. Okay, go too tight, you strip it and it won't hold. And not tight enough and it leaks. We did our first one. I had to take a moment, take some care of some stuff inside. 10 o'clock now. Hopefully this is a nice musical montage of putting Mending this fence. I meant hose. A lot going on in my head right now. I was gonna drive. I can't bring myself to drive on the pasture. Joel Salatin says you're supposed to treat them like cornfields. They're our crops. You wouldn't drive through your cornfield. Grass is our crop. Plus my back is feeling pretty good. And maybe that's the trap. Maybe that's where I go wrong. I'll push it.

Hey, good morning.

Good morning. Can you pull my cart?

Sure.

Okay. Oh hey, stops here. Okay, technically we could put an end on this and we could have enough. I mean, water goes well past where we need it for our hay bales. It'd be nice while we're at it too. We've only got to get to that T-post and then 100 more feet. Lowe's didn't have half-inch poly pipe yesterday. Let's see if we have some on the farm. Let's go see if we have more line because I'm not putting an end on this if we have more line and this is taking too long. We're looking for half inch. It's been years, so I'll kind of be surprised if we have it. Oh, that's 1 inch. Nope, that's 1 inch. Stay with me, it's all 1 inch. Do I have a half inch to 1 inch adapter? If I'm going to add new line, that's probably what I need to do because all our stuff is for 1 inch. Lily!

I was spying on you.

Yeah, you were.

I was gonna go see you while we're casting.

If you were a spy, you would have got me. So for now, let's plug that up. Let's get the sheep over. There's a chance I could get this done and have some rest time before the show. I just remembered all this is contingent on there not being any leaks or breaks in this line. This end is stripped, so we have to put a new end on it. Thankfully we have those. We're gonna see if this works without leaking. Why isn't this working? This hose clamp. Okay, here we go. All right, now the test is we're gonna go turn this on and make sure we have no leaks. You give me a lift? I'm trying to baby my back. Be smart. Moment of truth. All right, let's go see. Hey, we got water coming out right here. Oh, but we have a— uh, we have a leak in the hole already. Okay, I think I have a hose mending— I think I have a hose mending kit. Shall we go assess everything else? We want to go check, make sure they turn on, on every T-post. Wherever. It just can't stay there. Wow, that works good. We can get this water line up. We can get the sheep over. Hey, that's working. I see the king of the hill. Queen of the hill. Okay, good deal. Turn it off. We're beyond where we need water temporarily, but it'd be good to make sure there are no leaks. All right, turn it off. No leaks, no leaks, no leaks. All we've got left is the end. Make sure the end— our end fix works. Okay, so—

oh boy, it wasn't leaking when we came. It was after I turned it off. That's weird.

We need to rethread that, I guess. Go get our plumber's tape. It's in the— it's in the Henry cart. Hold on, it's not leaking out the— it's leaking at the hose. It's leaking through our adapter, not the Teflon in in the ball valve, and that's a pretty bad leak. That's gonna cause the well to have to work overtime. Okay, the only thing I know to do— I'm gonna come back to where it was not leaking and try to make my end there. Whoa, that's hot! I put a lot of Teflon tape on there too. All right, now watch. Wow, it's even worse. I think I need to pull it out a little bit. Get over a barb. Back the barb out a little bit. Let's see what happens. Yeah, still terrible. Look at that. We can't have that. We might have compromised it when we melted it. Let's shove it in. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what to tell you.

I don't know what to say.

You think it's because we're doing this when water is going through it? And so it's keeping itself to path and it needs to be turned off. Lily, I'm gonna need you to run down and turn off the water, okay? And I'm gonna have her get my tools. I might can get a little tighter with the, uh, drill driver. Thank you. What about the drill? Yeah, I want all the tools.

You want all of them?

Yes. I cut it back further. I tried a different adapter, did it without water pressure on it. I put two hose clamps on it. You can turn it on. Stop, stop, don't do that. If this doesn't work, I really don't know what to do. I'm stumped.

Go to Lowe's, buy a zip tie, kink it, zip tie it forever.

I wish. Are we working? No. We fixed it. Oh, and we tightened it with the Drill driver. Is it— is it on?

And we still have one more leak to fix.

All right, turn that on and let's turn it back off and see if it works. Okay, now turn it off. Hot dog!

Yes!

I don't know what it was, but we fixed it. I don't know if it was getting the water pressure off the line, using a different adapter, or tightening it with the drill driver, but we fixed it. I did not think that was gonna happen. I was already planning for a sheep move tomorrow, but you guys get so much better video and I get so much more satisfaction if we get those sheep out. Okay, Lily, let's set— oh, we gotta mend the— oh, we gotta mend the brake down there. 1 hour till their lunch. I've decided pain means there's inflammation. Fasting helps in— insulation— inflammation. I'm not gonna eat any food until I have no more pain. I get this back pain, I don't know, 3 or 4 times a year, and it normally goes on for a couple of weeks. See if we can't kick it in a couple of days. I could have used this. Maybe we'll— what's that? Uh, this is a mid. Maybe we'll use this instead of our ball valve. Ooh, we have two of them. What color is that? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Go turn the water off. We got a leak right there, and we got a leak going into the joint. We have problems. We got it leaking right here. Okay, so even if I fix that, I mean, that's leaking with that unfixed. It's gonna be more pressure on it when I do fix it.

That wasn't it.

I thought we were on a roll here. It was leaking here. It was leaking here. It's gonna leak even worse because there'll be more pressure because that hole will be mended. Don't ride that right now!

I'll be right back!

Come on!

I made it down the pole!

To see if the hose line could be mended or could be tightened.

See?

That's gonna leak. I couldn't tighten it up anymore. Had him turn it on again. It might not be leaking where this hose is connected. It's certainly leaking here. We can address that in a second, but, uh, let's fix that mint. We mended the hose. I'm gonna have Gideon turn this on. We're gonna see where our leak is. It's coming right there. Okay, that might not be leaking. All right, turn it off. I'm just gonna cut that one back and redo it. Here's hoping for the impossible. There's water going through it. No way, no leaks! Gideon, what? We did it! Yes, we did it!

I wonder—

we fix things. Not leaking. Oh my gosh. Okay, all right, we're doing this. Hey, thanks! The boys have been working on our alternate road. For, I don't know, fire truck, dump truck, anything big truck that doesn't want to go over our— we're going to build up, build back the locust bridge. That's what was there before the hurricane. We found it downstream. I think we have most of our 2x12s. Yeah, the theme of building back up to this hurricane is just building back with what we have. All we got to do is is see if this fence— we have the fence draping through it. Will it, will it go across for a sheep's paddock? Where do you want to move the camp? Can we move the pigs right here tomorrow? Pigs are moving right here tomorrow. Let's bring the fence for the sheep around that.

I do.

I think it's gonna be more beautiful than it was. We have a creek running right down through the middle of our pasture now. It was hidden in the woods before. Now it's just open. It's gonna be beautiful. This is just gonna be green and lush. Okay, I couldn't make it all the way to the end, so can't do that either. So there we go, rearrange these a little bit. We titled this, right? We titled this Waterline to Cows sheep and pigs. I'd hate to just say it was for cows or pigs and cows. That's exciting. Get in, we're ready. Open that gate for them. Open it a couple. Austin, I'm going to take off the drone. Show that now before the sheep are in it. Y'all be ready, I'm going to bring the sheep. Okay, it's the sheep's happiest day of the year.

Oh, they didn't push me over, Papa.

They should. They might.

I'm gonna run.

All right, you're gonna run with it. They're gonna follow you. They're crackheads. They're alfalfa heads. All right, get in. Get their attention. They gotta know you have it. Show it. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep.

You did it, my man. Now I have—

Good job!

Look at that, you have 3 animals, this little pasture. Yes, like only in this hay area.

That is the point. Don't know this, we're gonna build this back so fast. Pigs, sheep, cows, well, and a horse. 4 animals, Gideon. You think chickens can go right there where the pigs are making out, uh, compost? I guess. I think so. Austin, let's celebrate. Bring back the before shot. Piglets doing their thing, pooping, digging, urinating. That sheep— I'm so happy about the sheep. Go eat that crappy hay, turn it into nutrient-dense manure. Oh, look, look, look, they're meeting each other.

Look.

Yeah, you guys are partners in healing the land. Good job for y'all. And cows, you gotta love it. All right, fasting's a good idea, right? Because those cheeseburgers look delicious. I was feeling tough out in the field. We're back feeling good. We're good right now. But you want for me, baby? Get one with cheese for me. Becca got the Boston butt going for tonight. Oh boy, it's talking tough in the field. What am I gonna do now? I'm starting to feel hungry. What if I just felt a little bit— if I fast through the day, through the night, and it's gone in the morning? That would be worth it. And we did it! We have 3, 4 species out on the land. Let's see about adding one tomorrow. See you then. Happy day.