Environmental Moment
By Cathy Claeys
Hello dear friends! I’d like to talk about capturing rain water from your homes gutters today. This topic is dear to my families heart as we enjoy our backyard with several large shade trees, shrubs, ground covers and small vegetable garden. There is also a drought tolerant Bee and Butterfly Garden, that now grows where our front lawn used to be.
My husband Gary had the great idea to purchase a large, inexpensive container from Friedman’s hardware store several years ago. You may have seen them, they are old olive barrels that are light weight when empty and cost under $20.
He was wondering how much rain he could capture if he placed a barrel under one downspout that collects from 1/3 of our roof surface area. Turns out, the container over flowed in less than a few hours after a moderate rain. Now we have 6 barrels and are planning to modifying two more down spouts to drain into them.
We try to save water at our house in as many ways as possible since the late 80’s and early 90’s when we lived in Main County and were restricted to a mere 50 gallons of water a day. It takes some work, and the willingness to carry water from the barrel to plants in buckets but it is totally worth it!
Be assured we do shower before attending church on Sundays!
I would love to learn how you folks conserve and reuse water at your homes and places of business.
