Stop gap solution (36 days to go..)
by Max Akroyd
Sometimes it feels like water, time and cash are the same substance. They all flow (generally in one direction – away!). They’re easy to take for granted, until scarcity requires you to be more resourceful. And a severe deficit in any defeats self-sufficiency.
Even the farmer from down the road looked worried. His normally keen and shrewd presence seemed dulled by a painful realisation: if there’s no rain within the next fortnight his farming year is effectively over, he declared. The recently-sown crops on his vast acres would wither and die, beyond the reach of irrigation, and his dairy herd would have to be scaled back accordingly.
On my small-scale, there’s still some hope. I’ve just spent 100€ I didn’t have on hose pipe and various other bits and pieces. I thus cobbled together the delivery end of an irrigation system comprising a couple of hoses that sweat water attached to very long, regular hoses. I can just about manouevre this two-headed, serpentine monster across my hillside without it uprooting all my raspberry bushes. After a couple of hours of snaking over a dusty bed, a track of moisture can be detected, sufficient to plant something into… Then I drag it on to the next bed… and the next…
Of course this expenditure of time and money represents only a fraction of the whole. The supply-side of this ‘solution’ equals a metered outside tap, open all night. Not sustainable: I’ll be in no rush to open that bill when it arrives! Clearly, if the new weather pattern means it only rains in winter we’ll have to recover rainwater then, store it and pump it around the same shoddy network of hoses. A much more significant capital investment!
But almost anything is worth it to avoid the debacle of last year when most things died in their pots. The backbone of the year’s planting is getting rolled out, albeit painfully slowly. Even yet, I’m not exempt from comprehensive failure. Half of my potato trenches still lack that vital ingredient – seed potatoes – as they remain open to receive rain that never comes. The baby roots I anticipated eating come June 1st - beetroot, turnips, carrots, kohl rabi – are still at the embryo stage. My peas and broad beans are a sparse shadow of even last year’s efforts.
I’m going to keep plodding on, not least because the effort laid down in previous months requires it. And I’m getting a great tan out there! But the chances of success seem a little slim right now…
Hi,
Normally a lurker here, but I hear your pain. If you could get the funds for a cisterna or two you will be amazed at just how much water you can accumulate even in a night or two of serious rain.
We have very seasonal rainfall here (Catalunya), but not very good at knowing which season the rain will come (this year nothing all winter). But we manage to just about cope, with the occasional delivery. However if we had piped water for washing etc I am sure irrigation from saved rainwater would be more than possible. So its definitely something to think about in future if possible.
Hi Lec,
And thank you for stopping by again.
I was just thinking how the irrigation answers will be available to acquire from smallholding in arid places. It’s just a question of adopting them.
Next stop finance-wise will be a couple of plastic septic tank vessels. Big capacity and much cheaper here than the bespoke rainwater tanks.
Once they’re in place it will no doubt revert to reliable rain. But better safe than sorry!
Mulch to keep the moisture in the ground that’s there. So says my ‘better’ half. I advocate rainwater butts everywhere there is a roof to drip into them and a deep pond/fosse for gathering water runoff, but I bet you one of Benn’s beers you already know all this. It’s an El Nina year, so better be prepared. There’s a hosepipe ban in France already, in some areas. At least nobody will see you ‘doing it’ and they’ll probably think you are doing some sort of hose rain dance across the beds. Might be worth a try. Now where’s that Indian Headdress?
Hi Helen,
I mulch extensively and suspect that’s what’s keeping my young fruit bushes alive! I fear any additional mulching now would just seal in the lunar dryness… No rain here for at least eight weeks – it’s enough to make one cry into Benn’s beer!
Fortunately, I don’t know what hosepipe ban is in French. Don’t tell me!
Max, on a totally different scale I feel for you. We had our first rain for weeks over the Easter weekend and although welcome it didn’t make a dent on the empty water butts and of course, once it reached the ground it soon disappeared in the widening cracks. Like you, we are metered so cost is an issue as is also conscience but I have resorted to watering seedling veg. It is however very frustrating seeing those householders who opted not to change from a fixed water charge to meterage, irrigating their lawns with no concept of what a precious resource they are wasting.
Thank you Simon.
At the risk of sounding grandiose, I think this water issue is typical of a big emerging trend, whereby we Western softies become reacquainted with the true cost/value of things. So the unmetered waterers will only continue to be water debtors in the short term.
But I could really have done with a slightly more conventional year, this year of all years. Oh well.
By the way, just read we’re due a frost on Friday!
The mud of the winter and the early part of this year already seems a dim and distant memory. We have cracks like canyons all over the farm and the baby pigs are in serious danger of disappearing into a void.
We do however, have the stirrings of new life as yet another clutch of Lavender Pekins begin their way tentatively into this world as I type. The chirpings are so sweet to hear, at least they don’t drink very much or tip troughs of precious water over to make a wallow!
Sue xx
Evening Sue,
Those chicks sound delightful. And distinctly less mischievous than those naughty pigs. As well as pushing over their water bucket, our Daddy pigs like to knock down the sun shelter I built for them – mainly by scratching their bristly bodies against it. Grr!
Hi Max,
Fingers crossed for some rain this weekend. There’s a cloud of drought anxiety hanging over us here but nothing wet in sight, and we’re now wondering whether we should have sown pineapples instead!
Hey Benn,
We were promised rain the week you were away and nowt happened. By way of a change weather-wise, I can offer you some frost on Friday night, godammit!
Hi Max
Everyone has said everything that can be said. Keep positive & if you resort to a rain dance get Emma to video it!
Mary x