Rain!

The forecast hadn't called for it, but as soon as I heard Persephone (our Husky mix) yelp and climb up the front door, I knew that there was thunder brewing.I brought her inside to hang out in her Happy Place (the crate we originally bought for our Pyr), and proceeded to gather litter containers to collect what I could of the oncoming downpour.

In my opinion, many suburbanites take little notice of drought conditions until the color of their lawn is at risk. As ranchers sell to the developers,not only does there become an increased burden on the aquifer (or tower, in some cases), but the collective voice of the farmer becomes that much dimmer. When I drive into town, I see once-nurturing creeks that have dried to bone-white. About a month ago, one of the larger ranches (300+ acres) came up for sale--"perfect for development." If another rancher doesn't buy it, two things will happen: land assessments will go way up, raising overall property taxes (in Texas, the rates have been cut by taking the school finance chunk out--we'll see the results over the next few tax years), and we will not be taking that route into town anymore. I don't mean to offend--I don't begrudge people's choice of how to spend their money or where they want to live--but the sight of cookie-cutter houses replacing that of trees and cattle makes me sad.

Well, back to our personal battle against the effects of the drought...

A real rainwater collection system is in the overall homestead development plan. We've only gotten so far as to install gutters on the house and the front half of the garage/shop/office, however, so all we have to store the water is a large barn-bucket and my son's wading pool. We feed those two containers via reused buckets of cat litter. Oh, and the liner to one of those step garbage cans (which broke after one step too many). To collect the maximum amout of rainwater possible, I have to empty the litter buckets into the two large containers for as long as it is raining (or until I've filled both containers and all buckets). Not only do I get 2 or 3 days worth of garden water, I get a free shower to boot! The other reason for the hurry in terms of getting the buckets in place is the speed, size, and duration of the cell. The one we got on Monday was one of those small pop-ups that could have just as easily missed us, instead of gifting us the 1/10" that sustained our corn, squash, tomatoes, carrots, herbs, and roses for three more days without dipping into our well.

One problem in this temporary solution of water transport is that I'm unable to be properly armed against our rooster. I used to keep him at bay with and old broom the cats had saturated (it was a nice double insult, I thought). That eventually fell apart, and I commandeered the pitchfork for disciplining the rooster. So, on Monday when the rooster saw that I was unarmed, he came after me with those 2" spurs and his bad attitude. I ran for the pitchfork and gave it to him hard enough that he lost his tailfeathers and took off running the other way (rare for him, usually we just come to a standoff). I'm told that rooster gonads are bigger than their brains, but I would still think that this idiot would have enough self-preservation about him to cease with the ground war.