Making Progress at The Funny Farm

I planted some top hat blueberries this afternoon. They are a dwarf variety developed at Oregon State U. They are self-fertile so they will produce fruit on their own without the need to plant a second variety. They will grow about 2' tall and wide. It will take about 3 years for them to start producing a significant crop.
Behind the beautiful tomato plant that may or may not produce ripe fruit before frost (think fried green tomatoes though) is a nice cover crop stand in the flower field. We planted annual rye grass and red clover.
It has rained just enough that we have been able to water everything with rain water except for a couple of days a couple of weeks ago. We purchased 2 275 gal. tanks really inexpensively and are in the process of getting them set up which will increase our rain water harvesting capacity to over 700 gallons. With the complete ban on outdoor watering that is a blessing.
Lets do a rain dance so we can fill those puppies up!

Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle

That is on of our mantras here at The Funny Farm. As soon as I knew we were going to get the place, I began planning how to exploit the large roof areas to capture as much rainwater as possible. I plan on using 1500 gallon tanks which are 7.5' wide and 5+' tall which will require flat spaces on which to sit. My landscape crew was about to remove an old concrete patio on a job so, instead of taking the material to the landfill we stored it until we could repurpose it as wall-building material at the farm.
We needed a wall to make a flat area for a water tank at the corner of the house by the downspout. For some reason there are large amounts of broken concrete all around the farm so we used that along with the material we had previously stored to build a wall. My crew was amazed at how good it looks so now they all want to build themselves a wall with what a friend has dubbed "urbanite" or broken up concrete.
There was some sedum, sempervivum and variegated liriope growing in places where we didn't want them so we harvested them and incorporated them into and below the wall to create a finished look. The mulch we used is wood chips we stockpiled when we cleared out some tree saplings elsewhere on the farm. Everything organic we will use in some fashion here. It will be reused, repurposed or recycled as compost. More on that subject later.

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.