Drought Advice Wanted

save all your inside water and even urine if you can for your outside plants, and use a LOT of mulch..also shade anything that you think might benefit from shade..plant things on the shade sides of buildings and trees and taller plants..put large rocks around plants, they'll condense water down into the soil at night from night air. Even use wet garbage around plants, natural garbage that is.

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Brenda Groth
http://restfultrailsfoodforestgarden.blogspot.com/

I have also seen a squirrel drowned in a toilet. Found it as a kid when I went to go use the bathroom. Near scared the life out of me!

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You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.

OP... do you have any ponds/lakes or can you dig any now? Any water tanks or roof catchments set up? Are any of those things legal where you are?

If nothing else maybe some above ground pools (the cheap kind) to capture water in?


This is the "eden" method referred to a few posts up: http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/
You can watch the whole movie if you scroll down to the bottom. It was pretty awesome and there are many people posting on Youtube who have tried the method.

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You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.

Above everything else, find a way to water your spirit. I find droughts drag me down like nothing else. I listened to a homesteading podcast where the hosts, a married couple, were in the midst of a rain deluge. They made the comment that they would prefer drought over deluge--because they can at least do something about drought. But at the time I heard it, we were still reeling from 2012 (and still are). The death and withered brown, in total, just depresses me, because I know I have no power to fix it. Sure, I can keep a thing or two alive, but I never wish to see cracked pond bottoms and burnt pasture ever again. Everything from the micro to large animals took a huge hit around here.
Sorry. Didn't mean to drag down....just venting.

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Honesty and integrity are homesteading virtues.

No for ponds or lakes. My neighbor has one that is already low. Right now there is no rain- like in none at all- to fill any thing. But I think I will look for a kiddie pool to catch the fog drip from my tarped wood piles- there's frequently pool of water on it due to the drip from the redwoods after a foggy night.
Since I live at 1500 ft, all water is passing through on its way to the Pacific.
My garden is on an old slash pile that had had dirt piled on it so it is already a "hugelculture" area however inadvertent. It has always been damp down there. But this year will test it for sure.
I was thinking about making a keyhole bed in conjunction with a fog catcher.
The only good thing I can think about this situation I might have a break in the eternal battle with slugs

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For we used to ask when we were little, thinking that the old men knew all things which are on earth: yet forsooth they did not know; but we do not contradict them, for neither do we know.

Cover the soil. Do not till it. Keep it covered well. Did I mention cover the exposed soil??? Water use efficiency is so much better when it can not evaporate.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...ater-missions/ an idea for me- fog nets. I might not even need to put up poles - I have redwood trees.

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For we used to ask when we were little, thinking that the old men knew all things which are on earth: yet forsooth they did not know; but we do not contradict them, for neither do we know.

One year a volunteer squash/pumpkin sprouted in the tomato garden. The big leaves shaded the ground nicely and the tomatoes did well. The squash shaded the ground, and kept the weeds down.

If you do your laundry at home, use a front loader. Otherwise, go to the laundry mat and use their water.

An outhouse doesn't use any water to flush. If you must use an indoor toilet, have the boys pee outside.

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Nothing is as strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength - St. Francis de Sales

start buying hay now- If it is a severe drought It will be very expensive. If not you will have next winters already stored.

I brought us thru a pretty sevre drought by stashing a bucket under my a/c drip, and using that to water, plus plugging the tub and saving shower water. I would haul it out after getting home from work. Saved a small garden and most of the yard grass. But it was a city lot, not acreage. And, oh yeah, mulch.

If you have fog, nets can catch an amazing amount of water. I've been looking into it as we only get 8" of rain a year. Luckily our rain is more spread out, and we get plenty of snow but it mainly serves to refill sloughs and recharge groundwater for our wells.
If you can catch that fog, you don't have a drought problem as far as household/garden/stock watering goes.
I agree with buying hay, fog capture or not your pastures are going to be brown and crunchy and any hay land will not be worth cutting.

Best of luck and remember not to sweat the small stuff too hard. your personal water use is small compared to that of livestock if you are not a luxuriant water waster. Worry about your animals and have a way to haul and store water, even just one of those square totes in a truck bed and a couple more by the barn. Don't get stuck relying on someone to deliver water, if it gets real dry all water haulers will be overbooked and you are nobody compared to big operators. Unfortunate but true.

How many head do you need to water so we know how serious your situation is. What do they usually drink, surface water?

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Check out my farm/ranch blog - www.evansranch.ca

Here's some things I've done -

-Reduce the surface area of your stock troughs - board off an adequate drinking spot and cover the rest with plastic. Try to keep your stock shaded and rested. Exercise your horses late afternoons/dusk.

-Apply water directly to the ground, never sprinkers.

-Keep your trees alive first, then shrubs. It's been shown deep-rooted trees keep water higher in the ground. Let your bulbs go dormant ASAP. Don't water up the native wildflowers, so their seeds will survive in the ground. I'm digging the little miner's lettuce that sprouted and potting it up.

-Think worst case scenario for fire, and clear defensible space for yourself and your stock. Be ready to evacuate your stock and have an alternative place to put them.

This year is the scariest I've seen on our old little ranch, so I've pushed up my "use it as many times as you can before it goes out" water habits:
Dish water cleans the floors, then it flushes the toilet - pour it from a bucket into the bowl, not the tank. You'll see the trick. I wipe down all dinner and cooking ware with paper before washing. Spare washing water so there's more left for rinsing.

Use the (hopefully you have a top loader) washing machine like a wash tub, whites in first, agitate, pull them out, and so on through the pile. Right through all the cycles. When I wash my face and hands I do it over the washing machine and let the water collect for the next wash. A small thing, but it does add up.

Everything in the house except the toilet has been diverted to grey water. Totally against code, and we have no close neighbors.

A little thing that doesn't net much, but keeps disposal of salty water off my wicket, is to use rice instead of pasta. Potatoes aren't boiled.

Rectifier is right on - don't punish yourself to a raisin. Personal water use is the least of it.
And not least, please pat yourself on the back! And thanks for putting out this thread.

Have you heard of Walipini's?

http://www.bensoninstitute.org/Publi...s/Walipini.pdf



And these can save water for poultry: http://www.avianaquamiser.com/



The ponds/pools idea was in hopes that you got lucky and did get some of that rain in the next two months. *Fingers crossed*




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You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.

mulch, it heavily,

All our water comes from a creek. I just have two horses and the (at the moment) three goats. With a small creek and others taking from it before it gets to me, I expect there will be a chance of no water this summer. So prepared I will try to be.
There is still a chance as we have two months left in the rainy season. But some expert said it will take record setting rain to escape the hole we are already in.

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For we used to ask when we were little, thinking that the old men knew all things which are on earth: yet forsooth they did not know; but we do not contradict them, for neither do we know.

We seem to be in the same climate mode as 1851, 1884, and 1897. Don't know how you would find out if your creek has ever failed to run though. If you have a local history society they might have writings or records about your creek. With water users upstream you might want to look into your water rights and documenting your usage as far back as possible.

I can't spit out the correct name for the ocean oscillation thingie that means a warm water mass is sitting in the Pacific, and that's what's driving the high pressure cell. It's not going to be a sudden turnaround. And this is our third year droughty here.

if you expect to have your water source run dry this summer, start storing water soon!

I often see the metal frame intex brand pools on CL for ~50$. A 4' deep pool that is 15' wide stores 5000 gal. Pretty cheap water storage. if it has a leak, put some polyethylene sheeting in it as a new liner, fill and tarp it to keep algae from growing.

Set one of these up for storing water from your roof (if it is legal in your area) in case you do get any rain over the next couple months. If no rain comes, fill from your creek since it sounds like you have water rights to it.

A simple sand filter can make stored water suitable for drinking.

straw bales can also be used as a frame for a cistern. A few dozen bales plus some rebar or t-posts can make a frame that is 10' x 20'. Add a epdm or other type liner (20' x 30') and you can store 5000 gal of water. Put a tarp over it to reduce algae growth and eliminate evaporation. The straw bales last a year even when there is lots of rain over the winter.

Some streams run underground even when no surface water is visible. A sand point driven into sand or gravel in the stream bed might find it.

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"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

Then with currently available water you need to be storing it wherever you can. The pool idea is really good! Make sure you cover it to stop evaporation. You may need to treat it with chlorine to keep it from growing algae or bacteria as you will have it stored for many months.

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Check out my farm/ranch blog - www.evansranch.ca