Rain & what to do with it?

The weather out here can be kind of nice for what we call a winter. Already January and we've only had 2 rains and plenty of 70 degree days. Most places would love to have that be their summers, let alone their winters. Around here though, we wish it was raining.

Over the past year we have been working on creating ways in which to store the water we get from our sporadic rainfalls. We want to see them put to use. It's remarkable how much rain can be saved off less than an inch of rainfall. We've had 2 rains so far and so far we've saved 100,000 gallons of water. Saving every drop is worth it, even in our dry climates.

On our farm, we harvest water in multiple ways, creating a redundancy in the system so that if one fails, more will take up the slack. We have built 3 ponds that hold over 80,000 gallons of water, we have 4 above ground water tanks that hold 30,000, an underground tank that holds 15,000 gallons and a huge network of swales that passively harvest even more water than all of those methods combined.

All our ponds, tanks and swales catch rain runoff from every roof and driveway on the property. Our catchment area is pretty sizeable allowing us to catch so much off such small rainfalls.

In future postings, we will describe the process we used to build our ponds, how we filter them, and how our system of swales work and what they are good for as well. Until that time, take a look around the place you live during our next rainfall to see where your water goes.

Have a Grateful Day!!!!
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