Rainwater Harvesting

This summer has been one of the hottest and driest on record. Successful farming requires ready access to a sufficient supply of water to support crop growth.We are connected to city water so we have the supply but it is expensive and it is chlorinated too which is not good for our friends the soil microorganisms. The chlorine is put in the water to kill bacteria and fungi and what are soils organisms? bacteria and fungi.
Sometimes water actually falls from the sky (although not very often this summer). All we need to do is collect it and save it for use when needed.

We've calculated that each time it rains 1" we can collect 1600 gallons of rainwater from the existing roof area that is currently guttered. We can add gutters to the barn and screen porch to expand our capacity another 600 gallons per inch of rain.

We plan to install above ground cisterns to capture that free water for irrigation. We've installed our first small rain barrel by the front door and are preparing places for 1500 gallon collection vessels at the corners of the house. Hopefully by next summer we will have all of them in place.

I have not calculated the payback time for the cisterns but when i do i'll let you know.