Drought

This is our back yard. It's been very dry here. The ground is hard and cracked, even in the "grassy" part of the yard. Much of the grass is dried out but the clover, ground ivy, and other "weeds" are doing okay.

Area-wide, the hay crop is reduced and gardens are suffering. We don't do hay but we do have a kitchen garden. I've seen folks carrying water to their gardens in five gallon buckets. That's a hot miserable job.

Our water supply is an ancient hand-dug well. It's only 25 feet deep (so we were told, we haven't measured it) so we're anxious. We shower (no baths) and that only when we can't stand ourselves any longer. When we do laundry, we do a full load and then we wait a couple of days or longer to give the well a chance to recover.

When I need hot water to wash dishes, I let the water run into a gallon milk jug while it warms up. Then later on I carry the milk jug water to the rabbits and chickens.

Last year we had to cut the grass every weekend and it actually would have benefitted from being cut mid-week some weeks, but our schedule didn't permit that. This year we have cut the grass twice that I can recall. Maybe three times.

Fortunately, there is a water line that runs from the pond down to the area where the house and garden is. We use the pond water to irrigate the garden.


You can see on this support post for the dock that the water level in the pond is about 5 to 8" below normal.


We tried using drip hoses to water the garden, but they clogged because of all the debris in the pond water. Then we tried a fan style sprinkler, but the little screen filter on it clogged within less than five minutes so that the water flow was completely blocked.

I spent way too many hours watering "by hand" - with the hose, not hauling water, but still time consuming.

Then my husband thought of the nifty little sprinklers you see in the photo. tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-BRRRRRRRRRRRT! They have a large water opening that the water shoots through, and no pesky screen filter. All the pond debris just flies out into the garden where it's probably appreciated by the veggies growing there.

The drought has really brought out the predators, too. We've had an ongoing struggle with Raccoons going after our chickens. The peanut butter bait continues to be effective. We only have one rooster and one hen left, but we are less TEN raccoons now.