Die Manchmal Gruene Weide: Spring Planting and Harvesting (water)

Inge and I worked Die Weide today, catching some sun and beautiful weather along the way. This week we saw the forecast for rain most of the week so I decided to set up the donkey shed water harvesting system to feed the 330 gallon tank. This picture shows the finished result.

Donkey Shed Water Harvesting

I cobbled a few bits together here but it will collect water until I can fix a few things. I need to pop a few rivets in the gutter and if you look closely you will see the first flush diverter system is propped up with a two-by-four because I ran out of strap to tie it to the shed. I had a new piece of left-over 10 foot 3 inch PVC to build the downspout stuff and diverter, but when I inventoried the PVC remnants from previous projects I found everything I needed so I returned the 10 foot section for some money! Also, I checked that the hayloft door will open but I'll need to build a stop to prevent the door whacking the PVC. The shed roof is 10' by 12' giving 120 square feet. At 1/2 gallon of water per square foot per inch of rain that runs to 60 gallons per inch. So 5.5 inches of rain will fill the 330 gallon tank. I plan to run a drip irrigation system off this tank to water asparagus, grapes and watermelon this year.

Gutter installation photo.

Today was gardening day too. Inge did most of that work while I worked on the harvest system. In past years, I used a broadfork and rake to prepare the soil for planting. However, this year I decided to add one rototiller run to the broadfork work. A few weeks ago I broadforked the garden. The broadfork really loosens the soil to a deep, 15 inch level. This permits the rains to deeply penetrate the beautiful Blackland Prairie clay-loam soil. But it also leaves a lot of clumps on the surface so I decided to attack the clumps with a tiller. Wow! It only took 40 minutes to till 360 square feet of garden and after Inge raked it out the soil looked fabulous! After that she planted the peppers I started from seed (Jalapeno, Habanero, and Tobasco peppers), about two dozen plants. I hope to sun dry the Habanero and Tobasco peppers to make pepper flake packets for friends. She also planted six 10 ft rows of green beans. (We harvested the most delicious, tender green beans last year that I've ever eaten.) Finally she planted 8 rows of black-eyed peas. All of the beans, peas, and peppers I plan to drip irrigate from the new 1525 gallon water tank. Below is the picture of the garden at the end of the day. (In the background you can see the new 1525 gallon tank.)

Garden planted with peppers, green beans, and black-eyed peas.

Someday I'll fork over the five grand to hook into the city/rural water system. But the first choice will always be to use harvested water before resorting to the delivered water.

Finally, all that hard work requires a sufficient quantity of calories to maintain energy and what better way to fuel up than fire up the fire pit and grill up a pair of steaks and some foil-packed veggies. Here are a few pictures of our lunch time fuel replenishment.