Rainwater for days

February 1, 2025

Hello there. We just got back from a road trip to the big city that is a little less than a 2 hour drive from us. We left at 5:15 this morning to meet a guy in a Walmart parking lot to get 4 more IBC totes. People do sell IBC totes where we live, but they charge a lot more. We paid $65/each and they sell for $90-100 around here, so it was worth the drive. The totes are how we store our water and we are putting these behind our greenhouse where we will collect rainwater in them. This is going to so helpful because we haven’t had a water source up there. We’ll be able to water the greenhouse, orchard, and garden with this water. Previously we had to hook up a million hoses and drag them all over the place which is not ideal.

Even though we legitimately live in the middle of nowhere, we actually could have the ability to access municipal water. It would cost $1500 to get a meter added to our property, and when we first moved here we simply could not afford that. We also wanted to be as off grid as possible, and now part of our whole brand is being off grid. But sometimes I’m like, who cares? Who is holding me to that standard? Having water access on our property would increase the value of our property and make our lives easier. BUT we also have free water right now.

Our neighbor who lives down the road also has a property across from us where she keeps her horse. She has water on that property just to be able to provide him water. Water is charged a flat fee per month up to so many gallons, and she doesn’t use even 10% of what she is allotted. When we moved here she told us we could get water from her to fill up our totes, and that has been such a huge blessing. If we ever go over that allotted amount, we pay her the difference but that’s only happened two times in the three years we’ve lived here. We probably have to fill up once a month or less. Our ultimate goal is to collect rainwater off our house and we always intended to do that much sooner than now. It has been hard to prioritize since we have a working system and a million other projects to work on.

In other news, today was our first day off of our No Spend January challenge- we haven’t bought groceries or spent money at restaurants the whole month of January. If you want to know more about our thoughts & what we are doing going forward, you can read about that here. We celebrated being free from this challenge by eating breakfast on the go since we had to get up so early. Since we were in the big city, we also went grocery shopping. We spent $131 on groceries and we are going to try to last the month on those groceries. We need to buy 2 more items, so I think we’ll come in under $150 for the month. We’re able to get buy on spending that little because in December we bought several items in bulk, we have a lot of items canned, and a freezer full of a variety of pork from our pigs that we raised last year. I’ll definitely report back on how it all goes.

How are we doing emotionally over here? Johnny Rose’s face above just about sums it up. If you saw my post from 2 days ago, you read that we’ve had better days. Yesterday was also rough and full of a lot of anger, anxiety, and sadness. I feel like the world is on fire and half of us see that’s on fire and half of us don’t. And those of us that do are just stunned while we watch it burn. Today has been better because we got out of the house. I’ve been cooped up inside for 2 weeks while my leg is healing, so it was good to get out and experience society. Even when I want to withdraw and be angry at the world, I know I must get out and experience humanity. Because even though people are endlessly frustrating and flawed, they are also beautiful, diverse, and worthy of love. Interacting with other people, even if it’s just to smile and ask the cashier how his day has been, can open up that heart that wants so badly to close off.

Thank you for stopping by :)

-Casey