The first thing you should think about when buying property or a farm! WATER!

folks today on the stery Ridge Farm Channel we're going to talk all about the entire water system it's cold it's winter time there's not a lot going on but I think there's a lot of Education to be had today you're going to learn about the farm water system here and hopefully you can take this information and build your perfect water system for your property for your farm or for your little [Music] Homestead hey there folks this is Josh Stony Ridge farmer welcome back to another gorgeous freezing cold day here on the Stony Ridge Farm it is winter time and winter time is kind of a slow time on the farm but it gives me the opportunity to kind of reflect a little bit today we're going to talk about the water system here on the Stony Ridge Farm hopefully this helps you water is one of the most integral parts of starting a farm operation and it's often overlooked it's as important as good fencing so come along today as we talk about our water system here it's interesting it's good food for thought we're going to go around and we're going to visit a couple different type Ty of waterers we're going to show you some awesome footage of this whole system being built last year all right folks welcome back to the Stony Ridge Farm Channel this is your first time or your 50 millionth time please hit that like button consider subscribing to the channel this is a first generation Farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and we're starting a first generation cattle operation currently we have 50 cows we started with two and we're just growing growing growing we have about 85 Acres fenced right now about 150 acres on the farm we'll continue to fence this stuff we'll continue to build more water systems and we'll continue to take you guys along as we enjoy doing this so this is our water system right here this is from Lorent solar this is a solar panel system there are eight solar panels that feed a solar well we have a well that's underneath this insulated rock over here we'll get you some footage of all this as I talk about it so we installed this about 2 and 1/2 years ago and again it's from Lorent solar it's a to total DC system in other words this system runs 100% off of the sun when the sun isn't shining it does not run so it doesn't run at night which brings into question a lot of issues with water and freezing so we have an insulated well cover over here and we have that insulated well cover in the wintertime covered up with mulch so a good layer of mulch about that deep helps to keep the water from freezing underneath that insulated cover is a pressure tank there's a tube which is basically your well head it has a cap on it it has a pressure tank and it has a valve that helps prevent back flow it's called a backflow prevention valve and that keeps water from back flowing into the well and going down in there and causing us problems or burning our pump up okay now this will work on cloudy days it just doesn't work in the dark it will pump currently right now and the sun is down over the horizon now this well pumps from this station over to a water tank let's go go visit that water tank I told you it's cold and windy it's cold and it's windy you might have a little wind noise right now but this is a water tank this is a th gallon water tank from Northern Tool and Equipment it is partially buried in the ground the reason it's partially buried in the ground is that I had to set the bottom of this tank below the frost line the water comes from the well over there and is pumped to this water tank and then it falls via gravity to the rest of the farm you don't have to do this this is something that I thought would prolong the life of my well pump and would help me to have 1,000 gallons of backup water in case the cows wanted to drink at night which makes total sense to me there is one and A4 in poly pipe that comes from that well and goes right over to here and keeps that tank full with 1,000 gallons of water there's a valve in there that floats so when the water level goes down that valve falls down it's a sensor when the water level goes up that sensor goes up floats upright closes a circuit and keeps or excuse me opens the circuit and keeps the water tank from overfilling okay so this Falls to our water tanks I'm going to take you and show you the two different types of water tanks that we have on the farm freeze proofing your water system is super important and you want to make sure you get all of your water lines in place in the right place and deep enough so that it's below your frost line wherever you may live let's go down and I'm going to show you a tire water tank and this tank will freeze this is an old skitter tire and it holds approximately 750 gallons I'm going to walk you up a little bit closer and show you how this tire water tank works so this again is an old skitter Tire I get all kinds of comments from people about oh your cows are going to die cancer blah blah blah they're not guys this is industry standard this is something that a lot of farms have all over the world okay inside this water tank is a goldfish where are you little buddy he's hiding back there I got a little spot little habitat in there for him the Goldfish helps to keep the insect larvae from growing inside the water tank so we don't have a mesquito problem because there's goldfish inside this water tank and you have to replace the Goldfish once in a while you see these pieces of pipe and conduit that is to keep a calf or a cow from getting over in the water tank in the hot summer months calves tend to hop over into the tank this helps to discourage them from doing that and right there's our little goldfish he's a big old boy this is called a Joby Mega flow valve I'll post links to all this stuff in the video description including the solar well this is a Joby Mega flow valve that Valve Services this tank this tank is turned on and off right here so here's what I used these are for uh irrigation systems or this one I think it actually says sewer but this is for irrigation systems we basically turn this off pop that out and there's a tube down in there that goes to our valve system and the valve system is what controls turning this on and off now you need a way to drain this and you'll see that in the footage we put a drain in the drain goes over to right here it's trenched in and I can pull that cap off right there and that tank will totally drain really really interesting pretty cool setup that is a tire water tank if the temperatures get down below 20° consistently for longer than about eight days we will start to see ice on this and we'll have to bust the ice off every single morning or we'll have to keep the tank running all the time okay we can't really keep the tank running all the time unless we take the valve off that is rough that's hard to do when it's cold outside so here in North Carolina it really doesn't get cold enough to freeze this thing solid but you will get a layer of ice about 3 4 in something like that you might come up here with a hammer and Bust It Loose let's go look at the Mira found frostfree water tanks that you don't have to bust out and those are really really cool and that's on the other side of the farm so let's drive over there this is called a Mira found 3390 this is a frostfree or freeze prooof is water tank now if you live in Minnesota and it's going to be 50 below zero you're going to have to get a heated water tank they make these in a heated water tank and they make them in a non-heated tank and this is a non-heated it has a tube that goes down in the ground approximately 24 in which helps to bring heat from underground and into this tank let me show you exactly what it is so underneath here is our valve system there's a cover right here this is really thick it's poly it's really thick it's a poly polymer plastic and it has insulation in there this is really thick and it has insulation this is the Overflow for this thing and these are the balls that help to insulate okay so we press the ball down or the cow presses the ball down and they're able to drink this is probably a good curiosity for folks that aren't even farming so the cow pushes that down when we have young calves this entire piece right here unbolts from two bolts one there and one there and we can take that out and little calves can drink out of it cuz little calves can't push this down okay it's pretty easy to press down and you can see it develops a seal listen it seals on the outside edge right here so that helps to retain the Heat and the water inside helps to retain it it holds about 40 gallons of water which helps to retain heat also so there's a heat tube down under this concrete pad that pulls heat from the ground to help warm this inside and it's insulated so it's really thick with insulation and you press these balls down to drink and those are insulated so that seals it off in the summertime that keeps out all of your mosquitoes and all your bug larvae and in the winter time that helps to seal it off and that's called miraf 3390 again you can find most of these at your normal agricultural stores now you're going to find some footage right now we're going to walk you through the install of one of these and how it's all done the footage is going to be of me trenching so I trenched our solar well is way over there it's nearly a half a mile over there I trenched all the way down all the way across the driveway and all the way up through this field and we also have one two three four five of these mirant Water Systems over here this has been an integral part of the farming here so the way this works and we'll back up just a little bit so you guys can see I have four posts set up right here these four posts one 2 3 four have a spring gate this is called a spring gate okay there is a spring that's held in place by a hook on these Critters and all this is from Farm fence Solutions so simply hook those and we rotate these around so when the cows come in the pasture they're able to access right here when they go to the next Paddock which would be right here we'll just take this line loose and loop it right over and hook it there and vice versa we'll just keep rotating around until we've rotated the cows throughout the pasture in the summer time we move our cattle twice a day in the winter time it just depends on how much hay and where we're at so we have the cows leap frogging Paddock to Paddock to Paddock all winter long up here while we unroll hay out onto the land and again that's where the regenerative Farm comes into practice we don't bring in outside fertilizer we actually bring in carbon so we bring in Hay we unroll the hay we bring in minerals and we bring in Limestone and limestone is what helps us to correct the pH of the soil so there's a lot of information here I can't tell you how to build a farm but I can tell you how we set up our water system there is an onoff valve down in here so you can turn each one of these units off that is very important and there's a drain at the bottom right here so you can clean it out every once in a while you're going to need to pop that drain out do a little hand scrubbing and clean this thing out let a little fresh water come in there same goes with our tire water tanks if we keep our goldfish in there the tire water tanks do absolutely fantastic if the Goldfish pass away or die then they don't stay so good and we've had some raccoon issues where raccoon will get in there and fish out one of the Goldfish or two of the Goldfish or all the Goldfish so that's something that's important guys thanks a lot for joining me I hope you've enjoyed all of this I hope you've learned something from all this water water water fencing fencing fencing so the next video is going to be all about fencing and all about the different types of fencing that we have here here on the Stony Ridge Farm and how we built it and what's the most effective and what's the most efficient hope you enjoyed this video if you're starting a farm or if you have a farm already and you're considering a new water system take care guys we'll see you next time on the Stony Ridge woo Ridge bring your wife bring your kids we living life pure and sweet that's the way it's supposed to be Stony R cross my fingers that I don't get soaking wet a lot of air ladies and gentlemen this is my pet rock Bobby say hey Bobby no more beep no more beep no more beep please no more beep we don't want to hear any more beeps I don't want to hear a beep anymore please stop beeping oh I stink I can smell myself need to get a strap and then it should drop on the teeth I don't have a strap oh I remember this being a pain in the butt last time I don't know why I'm burping and I'm tired of farting is there any way I could please pass gas again Taco Bell Tian bolts and Lorent just Lorent and repeat Eric's rolling his eyes back there behind the camera guys full of crap we're building a swing set today kids make a heck of a swing set would it oh let's fall down and get some glue on your finger M finger glue please stop biting my leg Yeah ha