Our Farm has two wells, one a deep water well, with a hand pump on it, so that we have access to fresh clean water off grid, the house is on the second well, a shallow well, we have fresh running water not only to the house but also in the little barn from this well.

The house is set up so that with a flick of the switch, and the turn of a pipe that I can run the big back barn, house and little barns all off the deep drilled well if I was willing to take it off the hand pump and onto power again.. This is a good thing, if with climate change, and depending on our water tables in the future if needed,  we could move to a wind/solor powered system to run everything off the deep well and there for have a much better change of not running out of water.

We also have set up a number of rain water catch systems off of our metal roofs, so we catch and keep rain water for the gardens off the house, the little barn and someday in the near future, hopefully off the big barn as well..

Add to that, we have two slough on the farm and small pond, which we keep digging and making bigger/deeper per year.. the dogs love it! but we also noticed something else, we got the big pasture fenced out, which includes the little pond, and the sheep are clearly using it, we keep filling their water buckets, but most days we end up dumping out 3/4 or more of the water we are giving them, the only way they are not drinking it, is if they are using the pond..

One of the future plans is to run all the rain water off the barn, collect it and run all the extra into the pond, I think this is a great idea as we continue to grow the pond.. Its a goal for 2011 to add in at least two more 55 gallon water barrels, we currently have a saving system of three off the house, and three of the little barn, and we could use at least one more per building for sure..