At first glance, rain barrels, water, and drought might seem like an odd trio, but they are deeply interconnected. When rain barrels are filled, they can sustain a garden through a dry spell—provided the skies send us rain from time to time. This is exactly the approach we’ve taken at Terra Basics.
New Hampshire is largely rural, and many households rely on wells, either dug or drilled, for their water supply. Our farm depends on a dug well that has served this household for over 35 years. However, in recent years, severe droughts during the growing season have stretched our well to its limits, making it impossible to water our large gardens adequately and have the water we need for the household, so that we can live here. Though 2023 was an exception, droughts, season-long and partial seasons have become a recurring challenge.
The concept of water storage is as old as time. Nature itself pioneered the idea with lakes, ponds, and streams, moving water from one place to another. The most remarkable system is Earth’s weather cycle, involving evaporation, cloud formation, and rainfall, which makes life possible on our planet.
Humans and some animals have long adopted water storage techniques to make life easier. Our friend the Beaver is the best engineer working in waterways. As for humans, from the limestone cisterns of the Neolithic age to the modern dams, we’ve been holding onto water for various purposes—drinking, household use, energy production, watering crops, and for livestock. As climate change alters weather patterns, these systems are becoming increasingly vital.
At Terra Basics, we felt the impact of droughts keenly. In 2019 and 2020, we lost many crops due to insufficient water. Our well couldn’t keep up with the demands of both household use and crop irrigation. We had to ration water, balancing the needs of six people with the desperate needs of our plants. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we lost a significant portion of our harvest.
In the winter, I reached out to the NRCS for help. They could assist, but it would require drilling a new well—an unpredictable and costly endeavor that we couldn’t afford. So, we had to find another solution.
After some online research, I discovered that some farms use rain barrel systems to collect and store water. Inspired by this, I began planning our system. We needed barrels, connectors, and a method for getting water into the barrels and from the barrels to the fields. It was a lot to consider, especially on a tight budget.
We sourced food-grade barrels locally and found affordable connectors online. Slowly but surely, in 2021, we started to piece together our system as funds allowed, without taking on debt. With barrels in place, the next challenge was positioning them to collect the most water. Our house is without gutters and has a few corners where rain gushes off the roof during storms, making them ideal spots for the barrels to collect the water.
Finally, the rain came—a big thunderstorm! But the water wasn’t flowing where we had placed the open barrel. Determined not to lose that precious water, I moved the barrel to catch the runoff rain. Within minutes, it was filled to the brim! The system worked, and I couldn’t help but dance in the rain. It was a simple but profound victory—capturing rainwater, a resource I had never before considered harnessing.
With our barrels full, we needed to get the water to the gardens. We found an old submersible pump we had used during a flood in the 1980s and repurposed it for moving water between the barrels. The pump still worked, and we used it to fill a barrel on a garden cart, which was laboriously wheeled around to water the plants by hand. That was a chore that we quickly decided needed some more thought.
As the summer of 2021 progressed, we expanded our catchment system with the addition of more barrels chained together with short pieces of hose with barrels graciously donated by a friend. Despite this, our harvests still weren’t where we wanted them to be. The plants were surviving, but we needed them to thrive. The barrels would run dry between rains, and heavy downpours would cause them to overflow, wasting water that the plants needed.
That winter, we planned further improvements. We found rain barrel-specific spigots that allowed us to connect hoses directly to the barrels, allowed us to use gravity to water our gardens more efficiently. We also acquired a 300-gallon water tank, which we also placed on higher ground, using the pump and hoses to fill it.
Fortune smiled on us again when a friend offered us unused gutters, which we hope to install to direct rainwater into our 300-gallon tank. With this system in place, we’ll be able to water three gardens with gravity alone. Here is where the sloped land plays a beneficial role!
Our property is sloped with plateaus for most of the gardens, so we’ve set up several linked barrels on higher ground to supply water to the gardens using gravity as our friend! The linked barrels are filled with the submersible pump and long garden hoses. These allow us to water the plants by hand using garden hoses. Although time-consuming, this method allows us to connect with the plants as they are watered, and no more moving around barrels of water in a garden cart!
Another area in need of water was our perennial nursery. While we were busy pumping water from the catch barrels around the house to the garden barrels, an unexpected rainstorm rolled in. Taking shelter under the eaves of the house, and of course, checking the weather app like all farmers do during a storm, we were gifted with a delightful surprise. To the right of our current barrels, a new torrent of water came gushing off the roof. This area is in the back of the house facing the forest, and we weren’t usually back there in the rain. It was a moment of pure joy and astonishment! We had been so focused on managing the water we already had that we hadn’t fully assessed all the potential water catchment locations around the house. That day, we appreciated the rain in more ways than one. We quickly took action and set up barrels to capture this newfound resource. By adding a rain-barrel faucet to this four-barrel system, we can better keep our perennials well-watered between storms.
It’s taken creativity and patience, but our rain barrel system is now a crucial part of our farm’s water strategy. We’re not done yet—the next steps: figure out how to integrate irrigation directly from the barrels and expand our water catchment into a larger holding tank. When it really rains, the barrels still overflow. We are determined to catch all the water possible!
Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to refine and expand our system!
NOTE: Our house does not have gutters. If it did, they could be directly connected to the barrel system.
2024 Note: Our barrel system has expanded to include 18 food-grade barrels, one 300-gallon tank, a submersible pump, and many feet of garden hose.
