Rain Water

To reduce our water use we have changed over to low-flush toilets (where most people waste the most water) and are in process of switching over our laundry system to recycle the rinse water to the next cycle of wash water (how the old-time farm wives did their laundry).

If you want to know where your main water use is - try moving all your water from a creek or other open water source to find out how much you use and how. Only then can you begin to gauge how valuable it is. And it is a resource that is quickly being reduced from its bountiful status toward rare.

Aquafiers around the world are being depleted as populations increase and oil production world-wide continues. The use of irrigation has now been out-lawed in many counties in the U.S., wells dug in India, China and Afric must go deeper and deeper every year and the United Arab Nations are predicting their aquafier will be depleted in 15 years or less.

Here in the U.S., we are finding more and more un-natural chemicals like dioxins in household drinking water that have filtered through the ground from the Great Lakes to as far west as Wyoming. Its time to make conserving water and reducing the uses for it seriously.

Conserving water use and building holding ponds for use when needed are basic low energy farming keys to having fresh water when and where you need it.

We have a well and are changing over to rainwater collection and will add watering systems for the animals and gardens this year. In doing this - saftey is our biggest obsticle since we do not a stray animal falling into a huge pit of water.

The intention is to bury the water collection system under a sand/plant filtration system since we want the water we store to be as clean as possible. By doing this we will be reducing our electric on-demand needs- our pump pressure system will be reduced and we will no longer need to soften our water since rain water is naturally soft.