Water Is On Everyone's Mind Today

 Ludlow Creek

It has been a dry summer here in upstate New York. Not as bad as many other states though. I feel bad for the people suffering in Texas. One town has issued an order of watering restrictions. That is not that unusual in times of drought I am sure. When we lived in St. Petersburg, FL, we lived with drought conditions. It wasn't a hardship for us, as at that time, we didn't even have a garden.

 Sharing!

But one of the restrictions of this town in Texas, was that watering of livestock was prohibited. How can that be? We have three horses and a large dog. They drink a lot of water. Do you think I would refuse to give them water? No way! I'd make sure they had water. If I had to buy it from the store, as much as I hate those plastic bottles, I'd do it. I'd probably go broke doing that though since they can easily drink a five gallon bucket down in a few minutes. When you bring a bucket of water into the barn the first one to drink will usually drink the whole bucket down. Then it is two more trips to the pump before you are done hauling water.

Our Pitcher Pump

There are ways to conserve water in times like this. For us, since our water has to be pumped and carried means we are used to using less water than most people. When we take showers in the summer, we use green soda bottle that sit in the sun all day. My son just took a shower and said it was hot. I use 6 bottles usually, sometimes less, but never more than that.

You may have read my post, Gray Water System For Watering The Garden, that I wrote in April of this year. I told about my husband putting a drain from the house sinks and bath tub to our raised beds. When we empty the sink or tub, the water goes somewhere that it is needed. We are very conservative with the water. Cleaning the horses' water buckets means dumping the dirty water onto our raised beds or trees.

 All that snow melts into our ground water table!

 

Copyright © 2011 Kathleen G. Lupole
All Photographs Copyright © 2011 Kathleen G. Lupole