Cd Anderson

S Bengi wrote:the hard water is actually rich in balanced mineral and healthier than the slippery sodium water. Both your body and plants will love it.

I know, but it's not so good for our appliances. Scale build up is hard on pipes, washers, hot water heaters etc... Not to mention how it interferes with the functionality of soap. We are discussing how we could possibly separate the intake water so we have drinking water that still has the minerals but then the appliances would be conditioned/softened.

Unfortunately it's unlikely that rain catchment would be sufficient. We average 34" of rain a year. We'd need a very large roof to catch enough water. The potassium chloride is an idea. We're also looking at Nucleation Assisted Crystallization, though I'm having trouble finding information on how well the body utilizes the crystallized minerals.

Thanks for the welcome and the links!

The kids will certainly have their share of work! They're actually looking forward to it. We homeschool so I've already got them reading up on chicken care, dog training, growing herbs and building basics. These are all topics they've already shown interest in and having a homestead will give them an opportunity to explore these things. Currently the plan is to start with chickens for eggs in March along with a small garden and a dozen fruit trees. I just hope I can keep everything alive!

S Bengi wrote:Check out these guys, they use a bio-filter and for their greywater in Arizona.
They store the greywater in a pool and eat fish out and water their lettuce/veggies, so it must be "safe".
They also have goats, which probably drink the filtered water.

So readup on them, call/email and see what they are doing thats right.
I think they have been doing it for 5 or so years no one has gotten sick.
http://www.gardenpool.org

(side note: ever time I buy a bottle of water and I see filtered water I always think it is filtered grey/black water, lol)

Oh this looks promising! Thanks for the link!

Adam Klaus wrote:how does a family use 1000 gallons of water a day?

by having 8 children

So we finally got our water test results back and the hardness is 355.4 with a ph of 8.2!! I can only imagine the chemicals they must have used to get rid of any evidence of such hard water! So what can I do? Traditional water softener is just salt, which is not going to be good for my plants (right?) So what would you do to naturally soften the water before it comes into the house?

S Bengi wrote:You should not hold up your water. The water that your family uses everyday, should be sent to the plants everyday.
You may be able to "holdup" the water for 12 or so hours but not for days or weeks.

(I hope you where not getting ideas of storing the winter water for use in the summer in a tank. just kidding)

Send the grey water thru pipes to the fruit trees. The water should stay underground/sub surface at all times.

Technically you could filter out solid matter down to 10 or 5 micron, use UV light or heat to remove microbes, then remove mineral (distillation) and then drink the water.
So you will find stories of people doing that and drinking the water, but on our scale,
Just send the water thru a mulch filter. Make a waterway to each of your fruit trees and you should be ok.

No, not storing all winter (we don't have much of a winter here) but I just think we will probably us more water on a daily basis than the trees need. Especially since most fruit trees do better with a good soaking once a week than they do with a daily watering. I'm estimating that we'll have about 1000 gallons of grey water a day, probably more in summer than winter because the kids shower more and we do more laundry.

Pipes underground to all the fruit trees is going to be a problem. We will have fruit trees spread through out the property to provide shade for the pastured animals and our soil is heavy clay. We only have an 18" frost line but digging that 18" often requires a jack hammer.

If we were able to filter the grey water so that it could be tanked and then once a week (on a rotation I would imagine) it got hauled to the trees it would be easier I think than trying to lay several acres of underground pipes. A sand filter system is supposed to remove all major contaminants and make water safe for drinking, it seems that we could do that with the grey water to make it safe for storing and watering food crops. I'm just not sure how to set something like that up so it can handle 1000gl of water a day and not be obtrusive.

Also, why are enzyme cleaners a problem for grey water? I would think those enzymes would be beneficial for the soil.

Adam Klaus wrote:when the cat's away the mice shall play....

maybe the problem is that people concieve of owning cats. maybe cats are just part of the urban ecology, and their presence makes it a healthier ecosystem.
nothing healthy or untroublesome about rodents run wild in the backyard.

cats are good when they live like cats. love life.

The same could then be said of dogs. Dogs would keep the raccoons and possums away and my dogs have done better at rat catching than my cats (though I think the scent of my cats keeps most of the rodents away) but no one suggests dogs should be allowed to roam.

The property we're buying has a fairly new pond on it. It was dug about 3yrs ago according to the neighbor. During the digging process we got a 5" rain fall and so it was never finished. According to the neighbor it's also never been full. There appears to be a very small (currently dry) stream behind it, but it's built up on that side so the stream wouldn't feed it (which seems strange to me, but maybe that's because the stream travels through other farms that use who knows what on their fields) There are a few weeds growing around it, though very sparse. The soil appears to be clay/lime/sand. There are a plethora of little frogs, evidence of cranes and something burrowed near the edge into the mud that made bubbles. The water is fairly clear when it was collected for samples (almost as clear as the house water) What are important things to know about the pond and how can I go about finding them out? (the current own is deceased so I can't ask him anything)

The side that is all built up appears to be the pile of soil from digging it out. I'd like to move the majority of this to use in the gun range. From there I'm wondering what I should plant to encourage wild life and make it a place my kids can play. We do have water moccasins in the area, is there anyway to deter them? We have a friend who has offered us all the bamboo we can haul, I was thinking that might be good around one end. It's about 300' long by 150' wide no idea how deep.

DE is like baby powder or corn starch, when it's in the air it can be irritating but it settles quickly and then is not a problem. We've used it for flea and tick control for years. In our area ticks and fleas are a huge problem as we often don't get long enough freezes to kill them off in the winter. We sprinkle it around the floor boards and under the couch cushions, all over the yard outside, but especially around the fence where the grass is likely to grow taller before being taken care of. It's massaged into the animals coats and pushed into the cracks around the thresh holds. When we had a really bad flea problem (away from the house for a year and they just took over) we coated the whole floor and window sills with DE, let it sit overnight and then swept it to the baseboards. Then I mopped the floor with fennel tea several times over the coarse of a month, put DE under all the couch cushions and made sure there was a nice layer behind/under every piece of furniture, we also put in flea traps (it's just a light bulb with a stick pad under it, the light attracts the fleas which stick to the pad and die) By the end of a month we barely had any fleas and I vacuumed up all the DE and went back to our normal of treating the back yard a couple times a year and rubbing it into the animals coats a couple times a year. We also add it to their food a few times a year to "deworm" I buy ours at the feed store, it's a common additive to chicken feed and a 50lb bag cost us about $20 and has lasted forever!

It deeply bothers me that my neighbors allow their cats to roam free...

Why should I have to deal with their cat in my yard, getting into my trash, digging in my kids sand box?
Their cat in my yard cause my dog to bark. This can be a problem at 5am!! or when the baby has just gone down for a nap. It's not acceptable for my dog to run free, why is it okay for your cat?

Most importantly though is that cat owners seem to forget that their cats may carry a parasite that can be very harmful to unborn babies and those with immune disorders, Toxoplasma gondii. Because your cat poops in my yard I have to wear gloves to dig in the yard/garden at all and leery of letting my children dig in their own back yard. I think cat owners should be held to the same standards as dog owners. Cats should not be allowed to roam free in an urban setting.