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!
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