So we aren’t under a burn ban . . . Yet! We are, despite the recent storms, terribly short on rain. No rain equals drought. Drought equals a darn good chance that burn barrel, trash pile or brush pile you plan to light up can get away from you, and get away real fast if it happens to also be windy. But y’all aren’t that foolish, now are ya? Y’all aren’t gonna burn anything during drought conditions while it’s windy! Are you? I hope that opinion isn’t proved wrong, folks. We don’t need a situation here like those poor folks in West Texas have. Especially as I think we may have more houses per square mile than they do out there. Think about that.
That reminds me. Don’t forget about the Easter Bunny coming to town this coming Easter Sunday. The local volunteer fire department will be showing him around town before the Easter Egg Hunt at the high school stadium at one p.m. There will be lots of candy and prize eggs for each age group. So come on down at one for the fun.
Back to the weather. We do need some rain and we need it bad. What we don’t need is the high winds and tornado's. What I think we need is a couple of days of slow steady rain that will soak in and fill up all our stock tanks as well as the lake.
This is also a good time to preach about rain harvesting. Yes. I’m talking about harvesting the rain. It’s something I’ve read about on line and it sounds good to me.
There are several ways to do this. The easiest and most straight forward is with rain gutters on your house or barns leading to "rain barrels." These rain barrels can be anything from the old fashioned wooden barrels to a cleaned out 55 gallon industrial drum or even one of those big white plastic tank like things used to haul liquids. It can be even bigger and become a cistern. Cisterns can be built underground, at ground level or above ground. Those barrels I mentioned earlier can be above ground too. In fact it’s usually better if they are because then you can use gravity to feed that water to a small metal or plastic stock tank, a drip irrigation system or even to a tank to use to flush your toilet (thus saving the water you have to pay for, for drinking, cooking and bathing).
A lot of folks out here are already harvesting rain with the stock tanks that we see in just about every pasture. The stock tank catches the water that would normally flow off of the land and saves it for the cattle, horses, or goats to drink. These man made ponds have a base layer of clay or something else waterproof to keep the water from soaking in and disappearing.
There is another kind of rain harvesting land form called a swale. The idea behind a swale is not to keep the water in one place but to slow it down so it can soak in. Swales, from what I’ve read, come in all sizes, shapes and forms. They can resemble ditches or even just a terraced field. With a swale the water is captured and held in place so that it can soak down into the ground and add to the all important ground water of the whole area. Thus they shouldn’t pose a mosquito problem.
The bottoms of the swales can be anything from sand, gravel, broken up soil, or even grass that can survive the occasional flood. Down hill from the swale is also a good place to plant things like trees or bushes. What ever will shade the swale to keep the water from evaporating and also hold the berm that makes up part of the swale in place with their roots. Oh, yeah. Those plants will benefit from the collected rain water but that’s all to the good. You will not only add to the local aquifer but also get some pears, peaches, blueberries, black berries, corn or what ever. Sound good? Sounds good.
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