Moving Forward at the Funny Farm

As some of you know Robin and I are closing our business The Urban Gardener on Christmas Eve at our current location because of the devastating consequences of the deepening drought and the ineptitude of the powers that be to manage the most limiting resource we have, water. Because the government decided to target the landscape industry in their pitiful attempts to reduce water use our landscape crew has had plenty of time to help us here at the farm. We built a cozy chicken house in the barn for a dozen hens. They will be moving in this spring. We look forward to fresh eggs and lots of poop for the garden.
We have been dissembling the garden center and moving materials out here to build stuff with. We made some terraces that will become home to asparagus and strawberries. We leveled out a spot where we are repurposing a tent structure as a greenhouse in which we will be starting veggies and growing reishi mushrooms.
I have been having fun using the dingo (its like a miniature bobcat) to sculpt the back yard to create some plant beds and a gathering space with a fire pit. My friend brought me a truck load of wood chips which i used to cover the bare disturbed earth. The fungal mycelium will do its job turning the chips into rich soil in a year or so. When we get our mushroom production going we will be inoculating the chips with mushroom spawn so the whole place will be mushroom heaven.
So i guess that is the silver lining in the cloud over our heads at the moment.
Sure wish it would rain, though. 30% chance on Saturday. Whooohooo!
Did i mention the pond is almost dried up. Pretty soon we'll need to have a big fish fry.

Advice to Sonny Perdue

Dear Gov. Perdue,
Here is my advice for solving our water shortage problem.
Require all the citizens of Georgia to piss in a bucket, dilute it with water from their showers and use it to water a plant.
Amen!

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.