Drought?

So everyone is saying that we might be headed for a dry summer. These are people who have lived here for a long time and haven't seen a winter and spring like we've been experiencing before. This could be bad news for our plans to plant well over a hundred fruit and nut trees in the coming weeks. Bad news because it means I'm going to be hauling water from the brook to water trees all over the land. Ugh.

We have implemented a new low-tech grey water system in response to the potential drought. If there's no drought then we can go back to business as usual and if there is a drought then we'll look quite wise. Our grey water system just means that we save all our grey water and take it out and pour it in a 45 gallon barrel outside the mudroom door. Pretty simple but again another easy way to be water conscious in a changing climate.

I took a shower this evening (after a hair cut, the cut hair then being stuffed into old stockings to hang on our new fence and deter curious deer; they don't like the smell of old hair apparently). I left the plug in and the water filled up the tub and I filled a bucket and took it downstairs and out to the barrel. My shower used 3 gallons of water. Frances' baths use 6 gallons of water. So that's 9 gallons plus maybe 2 gallons of dish water. That saves me a couple hundred feet walking up hill carrying two buckets with 6 gallons in each.

Not that you probably care about all this. But if reducing the expenditure of energy is what life is all about (I know strange coming from a pig North American) then developing these new systems saves on caloric and fossil fuel energy (ultimately most of our calories come from fossil fuels anyway).

I just checked the weather and what was a sunny week ahead has suddenly turned into a week of rain. Wild weather, changes all the time. Time to get some seeds sowed.