Day 204

With all this trailmaking talk, I failed to mention the continual work with our expanded vegetable garden. Adding the beds, putting down the layer of wood chips, and actually planting the various plants was actually quite easy. We nurtured our little plant babies, hoping the garden would produce for us. We watered the entire garden daily, added coffee grounds picked up from a local coffee shop, sprinkled in chicken manure as needed, continually weeded, all while playing the waiting game. 

While these responsibilities were crucial to the success of our garden, they were also tedious and time-consuming when so many other “to do’s” were left undone.

Especially the watering.

Mother Nature didn't give us much of a break as well. Being an especially dry spring and even drier summer, we had to make sure our fledgling garden got all the water it needed so our plants would fly. We had a process of getting out the hoses and watering each and every bed twice a day. We smartened up after a while and attached a sprinkler so all we had to do was turn in the water and occasionally move it. Still, the lack of rain gave us cause that our newly expanded garden was not going to be worth the work we had put into it.

We knew that the drought would end and rain would eventually return. We also knew that when it did arrive, we wanted a way to store it to make watering the garden and providing water to our feathered friends much more convenient and much less strenuous.

At our previous residence, we had a rain barrel. It was a great way to save money on our water bill. Even though we were off of the sewer out here on the farm, we still valued preserving water and saving as much of it as we could. 

Our first thought was to hook up the rain barrel that came with us from the old house so it could stop serving as a dust collector in the barn. However, before we could do that, we knew the gutters we would attach this rain barrel to were at the end of their life.