I Started with One and Now I Have Three
This Video is from the Youtube channel: “Off-Grid with Curtis Stone”.
About Curtis Stone:
Curtis is one of the world’s most highly sought-after small farming educators. His book, The Urban Farmer, offers a new way to think about farming𑁋 one where quality of life and profitability coexist. Today, Curtis spends most of his time building his 40-acre off-grid homestead in British Columbia. He leverages his relationships with other experts to bring diverse content into the homes of gardeners and aspiring small farmers from around the world. Learn more at FromTheField.TV.
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Kinna like when I was in the Army: 2 is 1—-1 is none!
We are coming into the 3rd year of drought here in the central USA Grainbelt. Our average rainfall is 45”/yr.
I’ve added 5 ponds and improved dams on others and we are going to run out of water next summer if we do not get decent snow and significant rain this winter and in the coming Spring.
No well capability in my immediate area. I knew that going in. A neighbor about 3 miles away who is well dependent is hauling water from town for both his house and cattle because stock ponds are 8-15’ low.
We are going to be running city water lines to cattle waterers as a back-up 2nd source.
Did that stuff you put in your pond work in sealing it up?
It did.
Bentonite ⁉️
I would recommend some type of aquaponics/ aquaculture in your green house- trout should do well in your area. I know you said that for the ponds, but the other side of the nitrogen cycle is in the plants. not sure how you incorporate the rain water into that.
250′ well artesian in nature, circa 1757 hand dug well/spring, abandoned cased well, ramp pump 8′ of drop from pond discharge to 2 250 gal. IBC totes
Aloha Curtis stone this is Reinol from Hawaii. I am a Microgreen farmer. And I just depend on rain I have a 10,000 gallon tank and it’s working great you got a beautiful set up up there good job.
That’s why I love my well water , I’m on the same zepher that Zephyrhills bottled water comes from in FL , no fluoride or chlorine for me , fluoride free toothpaste too
Rainwater collection: I would put in a big concrete cistern, buried. There could come a time when you would have a droughty year: low snow, low rain, and even your well might falter. Extra stored water underground is always a good thing. And if you had a severe drought, you’d likely have more fire danger, so again, underground water that can be pumped out is a good thing. And finally, as you know, plants always grow better with rainwater!
I’m on town water, which comes from a river, which probably has all kinds of crap in it. Needless to say I filter all tap water. Next year is my big push on installing rainwater collection on every metal roof on my property as well as from my high tunnel. The latter will be funnelled directly into the raised beds in my high tunnel. First time in decades I’ve been without a well, and I don’t like it!
I love your basement plumbing redundancy well done . Love the double clamps
Add a water garden/ pond arrangement from the gutter system, that be cool.
I’d build a buried/underground concrete cistern next to your new house to collect all the water shed off of your roofs, I mention buried/underground as its free insulation and its out of the sun which helps to eliminate any growth issues (you could route the overflow back into your pond systems if need be, saving & re-collecting more water to on-site storage).
Doing that would give you not only additional/emergency storage right next to your property, but you also have gravity on your side, that gives you the ability to use water in your gardens on the lower parts of your property essentially pump-free from the cistern due to the elevation and mass/head of water within such a cistern.
Yeah an underground concrete tank is where it’s at. Don’t know how much roof area Curtis has, but you get one litre per square metre for every millimetre of rain. From the looks of the size of his roof I reckon he’d be able to catch enough to run his house on all year.
It’s amazing that on a property that had little water in a few short years you have just about achieved water sovereignty, well done!
As far as drilling a well (as you said yours is) on top of a mountain, does this usually require a deeper well than a well not on a mountain?
How did you line your ponds?
Greetings from Down Under. Former Albertan recently relocated to OZ. Great job thinking ahead with the pipe rough-in. I would do a storage cistern underground and also a landscape feature, mini waterfall/streambed and pond with fountain. All our water comes from rain and every drop counts here in Tasmania. Have a shallow bored well in yard for emergency use but that has sadly been contaminated because of loose regulations in effect years ago. Mainly used to top up our “Toilet water tank” supply for flushing.
Hey Curtis you know what is interesting and we did this, is to run an electric tape down your well to monitor your static level before and after a timed gpm pump test. Your recharge rate is more important than the limitations and ability of your pump to produce your water at the surface. This will give you amazing data on your hydraulics and an ability to better understand what is happening below the surface over the course of a year.
Great video!
Love all this content and all the resources on Freedom farmers. We moved onto 10 acres of raw land 2 and half years ago in SE BC. We dug a shallow well the first year which was providing a lot of water. Unfortunately it dropped to an unusable level 2 month ago. I’ve been harvesting rainwater of off my 80ft GH since June to water all of our gardens and its been a huge water source for us in the last 2 month along with grabbing water from our nearby lake. Creating “water banks” to store all the rainwater and fine tuning our rain harvesting is a priority for the spring. Watching your pond building has given me a bunch of ideas…thx for all the great content. Time and health.
Thanks Curtis!