We Found Endless Water (Without Electricity) - Part 1

You know what I really want is my family to have a place to be able to be a part of this business, this life, and for us all to be together and for my children to all have places here and to be surrounded by my grandchildren. That's what I really want. With 10 acres of grazable land, I didn't feel in my heart I had enough for my vision, and so we inquired of all the properties next to us. They are broadacre properties But it was, hey, are you for sale? No, no, no, no, until we exhausted everything. But there was something about that process, stepping out and exploring a different idea, that really opened my mind to, wait a minute, how can we make better use of what we have? If I have any regrets of what do I wish I would have done earlier, it's that I didn't establish water and I didn't establish access and I didn't find out what we had on this property. I'm finding a lot of stuff. There's up on top of the mountain a pasture, over behind the cabin a place for— we could clear for pasture, up along the access road on the way to the market. So we got some nook and cranny stuff. Oh, Big Daddy, where Big Daddy and Grandma are, we got more nook and cranny pasture up there. So is it possible? Could it be I could gain 10 more acres and double our production and feed 6 families over the next 100 years. Homestead goals, y'all. Homestead goals. All right, boys, you ready to climb? Let's do it. This starts with finding water, one of our most important needs. Now that's a flowing spring, and you can actually dig in there. It's right there, literally. That's why I have you out here, Eric. What do you do when you need to know how to do something? You turn to Mrs. Boob Tube. And I'm asking her, how do you build a spring? And I find this, this, uh, series or video where at the end he said, oh, if you need help installing or consulting your spring, call me. And that's what this is. He happened to be local, this guy named Eric. A good story always has a guide. Well, Eric is my guide. Crazy, we have a spring in our walking path now. A little higher up where I think this other spring is, totally away from this creek here. Freaking— he's gonna see how high we can go and still find it. Eric's gonna continue working on the project. I've got to get on milking. Cows don't care. Look at what they've done to this poplar tree. You guys like the poplar, don't you? That's cool though, you still have a shade. You got some minerals eating the poplar. Crazy grass here, guys. Crazy ice cream grass. You all enjoy. Yeah, she's— calf's taking all of Flossy's milk. Daggum, some aggressive calves lately. She's only like 3 days old. I'd like to at least wait till a couple of weeks. She can be away from her all night. Well, that's one reason we have two cows. Phyllis, you're our only hope. Her two teats will give us, I don't know, a gallon. Explode with anxiety and excitement because we had to come down, train, do lunch, clean up. I just want to be up there seeing what's going on with the spring, helping make it happen. Let's go up there. Feeling good. I've been feeling good last couple of days. I'm ready to climb this mountain. We got our spring box, it's got our water catchment. Look at that, you just put it in there with sticks and mud, so it's working. Look at that. Josiah, come here. You're coming. And what is it? You said it's a half a gallon a minute? Yep, that's pretty good. How many, how many gallons a day is half a gallon a minute?

770 gallons a day.

Nice. That's pretty easy, huh? A couple hours you did this.

This is their overflow.

Overflow. This is going to fill up. In just a few hours. We're putting this on there. That's just to— that's so we can fill it up, right? It'll fill up overnight because we don't have our line on there right now. It'll fill up if it's— that's only 125 gallons. Fill it up in a seventh of a day, you know, 240 minutes, it'll be filled up by suppertime.

So this doesn't sag, we'll put it in a piece of 2-inch PVC. Metal pipe from back here so it stays straight.

Nice. Hear that, Josiah? That's sustainability. Oh my gosh, that sound of water off the mountain.

So Dad can come up with other chores for you to do instead of haul water on the buggy.

We're coming down now. We decided that we're going to catch water up, up at the top for the livestock and run it all the way over to the pigs. This We're going to test this, and this may be our water redundancy. This may be our spring for our house. There's plenty of drop. Look at that. Heck yeah, we're 2,380 right here at the base, but we're going to be significant— we're going to be a bit higher over there and say where the pigs are. It's a good climb right here. That's where the pigs are. We did climb, so I must say 30 feet.

I take at least 10-15 pounds of pressure. Okay, to come up here.

Yep.

And you only got 25 on the line.

Yeah, I was— I've got 25 on the line coming down right there. Yeah, because remember, you're only coming down like 120 feet, so that would do it or not?

It'd be marginal.

Eric's leaving for the day. I got 2 bits of homework. Let's order more water line. Little health update while we get our Second piece of homework. As you know, I did carnivore diet for 68 days. I started feeling a lot better. Then I started introing some food and I started to run and basically crashed. Feet started killing me. At first I thought it was the food, didn't even suspect the running, but then I went back to just carnivore and the pain persisted. Finally, I said, well, maybe it's the running. I gave it up. I've been eating 50 grams of carbs a day, which is some dairy and some fruit, so I'm mostly carnivore, and I've been feeling great. So it was the running. My body's not ready for it. All right, here we go, off-road! You got it? You can carry it?

Those are heavy. How far is it?

Not too far. Actually, you could see the green barrel right here. 100 feet? Get some good video of this, guys, before we cover it up. We've got our line and we're just going to cover this up with gravel. You've got an intake with some PVC pipe holes in it. It's just a plastic sheet for a dam. Spring water is getting in there. This is an overflow right here. It's just going to take it back down to the creek in a rain event. We got a 1-inch line taking it all the way to the Carolina Water Tank spring box. This catches the silt. I believe that's what it's for. Down at the bottom, we have overflow. This, this is the intake on the right. This is the overflow on the left. The overflow, we'll get a pipe, we'll get a line and take it to the, to the creek. And then this 1-inch line goes to the tank. How much does it feel from a couple hours earlier today? I'd say it's a quarter to a third of the way full. I don't think I could ever get tired of hearing that sound, and that sound's gonna go 24/7, Christmas too. And we'll have to connect our lines here Just take it down to the pasture or to the house. I'm gonna put the plastic over it. You see if you can find a rock to put over that. Okay, keeps the debris out of it. All right, we got it covered up. Let's leave it for him before we cover, cover it up, make sure we did it right.

I am making chicken broccoli casserole for a friend of ours who just had a baby, and I've got my chickens in the stock pot already.

I'm making double here.

I'm just skimming some of the scum off the top. I'm just gonna take this out, let the chicken cool for a minute, and then I will strain my broth. I picked all the chicken off and now I've got my bones back in. The pot. Now I'm going to make some bone broth, a longer simmer bone broth.

Look at this amazing meal Mom made for us. She made our filmmaker Benjamin Roberts a casserole dish. Why not make some for yourself too, right?

Exactly.

It's not twice the effort.

No.

What are you making?

I'm gonna make myself a little special, an electrolyte lemonade.

She's gonna put Lemon and a half in there. Will you take him? I think he's wanting to go outside. Where you want to go? Go outside? Becca, I thought I could even— I could get back to the farm fit stuff and scythe on those steep pastures where the— where mower can't get cows left, you know, to get your exercise, stuff like that. Whatever, you know, split wood, uh, build a trail.

Very good for you.

I like to build a trail to access Everything on our property. How about a trail around our entire property? The perimeter.