by George Collins » Sat Jul 07, 2012 11:07 am
First, thanks for you replies and please forgive the delayed response. For the past several weeks, the pace of farm life has quickened. Youngblood has brought in an impressive butter bean, corn and tomato crop. Add to that blue berries, figs and the new hog fence on top of the normal watering chores of the black walnuts and life has grown pleasurably hectic. Fortunately, we started getting our summer afternoon thunderstorms on July 4th which has provided some relief from daily waterings so that our attentions can be diverted to preserving the harvest.
As far as the expense is concerned, I am fortunate. However, I hope to divert those resources as wisely as possible for every wasted dollar here means one less to devote elsewhere. The way I came to learn of permaculture was via studying survival related topics. Without going through the whole process of how my present mindset came to be, instead, perhaps the present mindset can give better insight as to the present direction:
Impagine you are living in the year 2022 and you are four years into a Zimbabwe style, hyper-inflationary period where a wagon load of money is required to purchase a wagon load of goods. Our troubles are compounded by, what in retrospect was determined to be, peak oil plus 8 years and a gallon of gas costs a half a days wages and all else is priced proportionately. Now Imagine you have a time machine that will take you back to now and then back to the future but will only do so once. Now imagine your 2022 self filling out a "to-do" list for his journey back in time.
What are the things that your 2022 self would like to accomplish in 2012 to make life as easy as possible in 2022?
We got lucky once in that we were able to live for a couple years in a house built in 1850. From that experience, we knew much about how to design a house for South Mississippi's environment. The one area though where we were unable to learn any lessons was the issue of water for whatever water systems the house originally had, had long since been lost to time. However, I am barely old enough to remember some of the houses of those that were ancient when I was but a wee lad and how they solved their water issues and without exception, they used open wells with hand-drawn buckets. Those things always scared me though because of the stern warning we heard frequently as childre about staying well away from these wells lest we fall in.
Pre-Y2K, we had some friends that installed hand pumps in their yards in anticipation of a break down in services. Fortunately we didn't buy heavily into the whole Y2K scenario although I did convince my wife to let me buy an AR-15. However, the one family we still break bread with on a regular basis that installed a pump, lost the father to a weird bicycle accident a little while back and he was the only one of that family that could have given me any insight into the particulars of installing a hand pump.
Having said all that, I am not opposed to having both a cistern and a hand pump or one to the exclusion of the other.
Lolly, to haul water by hand would be the last of all options. We have streams both to the north and South of our house. Each are about 1/8th of a mile away but the bad part is that the hills are quite steep. I have a young man that I hired to help me back in the spring that was in training togo to Marine boot camp (and who is actually on Parris Island as I type this) that was winded by carrying a bucket of water most of the way up the hill my kids would be required to climb multiple times per day, every single day if we were to employ the forced child labor option. I'd rather not for if the water issue can be solved more efficiently, their efforts can be much better directed elsewhere.
Guy,
We have county water and so there is no existing pipe. Our house was built with two scenarios in mind: incredibly expensive energy and short-term power outages in every respect we could then foresee, save one: water. That is the last really big issue, or at least the next really big issue that I would like to solve. As for putting it in the basement, that would required knocking a hole in the floor. I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea but I had though along the lines of putting it on the front porch. I One of the wells that I saw as a kid was through the back porch and just outside the kitchen. The water was retrieved via a hand drawn bucket. This seems to me to have been a really good answer to the water question but could have been made better with a hand pump methinks.
Matt, do you know of a source for cisterns or perhaps might you know of plans for building one from scratch? I have seen exactly one cistern in my life and it was attached to a house preserved for its historical value (Jefferson Davis' last home) and the caretakers of the place don't cotton to young folks like me climbing up and into the thing to check out its construction particulars.
"Solve world hunger, tell no one." "The, the, the . . . The Grinch!"
"If you can't beat them, bite them."