It started raining on Wednesday. The pond is already up a few inches! The level of excitement is unbelievable. It didn’t actually rain that much (I didn’t even get a measurement in our rain gauge) but now that we collect water from almost every roof surface, you can see the results.
We were very concerned about fire. With all the fire risks this year, it’s always in the back of our minds.
We were also struggling to get water to our vegetables. We had to pump water from the big pond to the cistern beside the greenhouse. From there, we were able to water the greenhouse and the garden. It is nice to have these reservoirs of water but when you actually start using them, you think about the idea that you are in an emergency and using your emergency water.
Our big pond is down over 1.5 meters from the spring. It was actually overflowing the bank earlier this year! It only took about 6 weeks of no rain for the pond to drop through evaporation and lowering of the ground water level. We don’t have measures for this but we do see it.