Coyote Ridge FarmsWelcome To Our Rural Blog

Finally completed is the farm’s first large heavy use protection (HUP) pad for the cattle’s remote water station, north of the creek.  The pad was built to the USDA’s Conservation Dept. specifications.  On top of the pad will sit a 300 gallon, permanent, stock watering tank.  Although we will not be using the completed remote watering station this year, we will be using it again next year.  And next year, we will be building another pad just like this one, but even farther away from the farm-site (almost ¾ mile away).   Next year’s pad will be in the center of a new 24 acre pasture.  This new pasture will be divided into 4 permanently fenced paddocks – all sharing the one watering station… but that is a blog for another time.

This entry will focus on the building of the HUP/anti-erosion  pad I built today.

2 days ago, I had our local gravel company, Benson Gravel of Kerkhoven, MN, deliver 24 yards of material – 12 yards of what is called breaker-run, 6 yards of class 5 gravel and 6 yards of unwashed sand.  From Benson Gravel I was also able to purchase a remnant of Geo-Textile Fabric.   Geo-Tex is like a heavy, plastic canvas.  I’m not really sure what it does, but road construction companies use it under the roads.   This stuff goes under the breaker-run, gravel and the sand of my pad.  The remnant wasn’t large enough for the project but I am lucky enough to have a brother-in-law that works for a road crew and he grabbed me a couple pieces for Geo-Tex that would otherwise have been thrown away.

Here’s what our watering station pad looked like after gravel company dropped off the material I ordered.  The shiny black material is the Geo-textile fabric.

This is what I started with.

One of the truck drivers helped me layout a large piece of the fabric so he could dump the breaker rock on it, saving me the time of hauling it any distance.  You gotta love small town businesses.  The light colored pile if the sand, the brown is the gravel and the gray is the breaker rock.

Unwashed sand

Class 5 gravel

Breaker run rock

The dimensions of the HUP pad is approx. 24′x27′.  The stock tank I will be using is 4′ wide by 7′ long.  Ideally, the pad should extend 10′  beyond the water tank.

Breaker run layer of pad over Geo-textile fabric - 4"-6"

Gravel on top of breaker run - 2"-3"

Sand layer on the gravel- 2"-3"

The photo above is the finished pad.  Should the stock tank ever over-flow or we have extremely heavy rains, this pad is suppose to prevent mud-holes from forming around the watering area.  Below is a nice shot of the 4 layers than make up the pad.  All total, it is approx. 9″-11″ thick.

4 layers - Geo-textile fabric, breaker-run rock, class 5 gravel, sand

Now, I just need to buy the stock tank and I’ll be done with all my pasture projects for the year.

Related posts:

1. Ritchie Waterer
2. Hot And Heavy