Water Like a Blessing

IT'S A WARM JUNE DAY, but I’m watching rain clouds in the west and wondering if they’re coming our way. Especially in June, the arrival of a shower may have us either giving thanks or wringing our hands—or both. If there’s hay on the ground, we want those clouds to make a wide berth around us and not spoil it. On the other hand, if we’ve just planted corn, we’re hoping for a good soaking to set the seed firmly in the soil and discourage crows, who delight in pulling up sprouts.

I bring my attention down to the soil at my feet. Here in our kitchen garden, a heavy rain will wash away the chard and beets we’ve just planted. But the clouds are far away, and in any case, the last of the springsown greens definitely need water. I reach for the big watering can.

The Blessing of Water

In farming, water is so important it almost defines our relationship with a place. Certainly, when we came to northern Appalachia thirtythree years ago, water almost made us leave; eventually, water is what made us stay.

Despite only moderate average rainfall, these hills are wet. When we bought our century-old farmhouse, the only running water was in the basement after a rain, pouring through holes in the foundation and out by the door. Outside, showers often interfered with our farming; in haying season, we seldom got the three days’ dry weather that is the minimum for putting up cured hay.

But when we remembered the long dry season in our native Southwest and the periodic monsoon rains that challenged our early homesteading years, temperate-zone Appalachia looked pretty attractive. Finally, it was the abundant ponds, streams, and springs to be found seemingly everywhere in these hills that made up our minds for us. We stayed. There is no life without water; it is akin to God’s blessing.

Simple Ways

In the beginning, virtually none of the water on our original seventeen acres was where we wanted it. The water in the basement, of course, was worse than unwelcome. A french drain took care of the majority, but in our then state of ignorance, we directed that runoff into the nearby creek, just wanting it gone. We’re wiser now. Today, if we are moving water, we plan to hold on to this cherished resource, direct its flow to a point of need: a pond, tank, or cistern. We detain water as long as we can. A problem in some places and at some times, water is nevertheless our most necessary resource.

It took us a while to come to think of it that way, though! We imagine our grandfathers, long in their graves, shaking their heads to see how slowly we learned. They, who grew up without plumbing or electricity, had no difficulty appreciating the value of water, or finding simple ways to store and move it. Rainwater capture and gravity-fed farm water systems were commonplace to them; so we, their descendants, set out to teach ourselves what our ancestors always knew.

Not everyone understood our intentions, for sure. With Appalachia’s healthy water table, we could have dug a well and laid down pipe to carry pressurized water to the barn, garden, and field. Our neighbors certainly watched our hillbilly activities with skepticism. But something held us back from going straight to costly and high-tech water solutions.

Partly, of course, we were constrained by our budget. We’ve always tried to solve our problems inhouse, so to speak, before we spend any money. But there was something else, too: we had the conviction, even then, that God’s world was manageable by simple means, and money and technology should be reserved for emergencies. We felt sure that good water management, like good farming, could be accomplished by attentive and creative hand work.

Gravity is Free

Rain barrels were our earliest foray into nonelectric water management. It didn’t take long for us to realize that the cute pickle-barrel-shaped ones just didn’t hold enough. An inch of rain on the roof of our modest house was almost 300 gallons of water—enough to fill six such barrels! We switched to 300-gallon capacity IBC’s or “totes,” readily available secondhand. Now we could really store some water. We used 2” PVC pipe to link several together at the spigots so they would fill and drain simultaneously; after that, we collected hundreds of gallons every time it rained, enough to water our extensive gardens and two dairy cows.

Still, sometimes we went a long time without a rain—what then? Appalachia is full of streams; three small ones cross our little homestead. There was a solution here—if we could find it. We knew that if we gave our cows unlimited access to the creeks, they would make a muddy mess and have a negative impact on water quality downstream. But when we began practicing planned, holistic grazing with portable fence, grazing our cows in small, shortduration paddocks, instead of doing harm, their creekside grazing stabilized stream banks and prevented erosion. Another problem solved.

All that readily-available water flowing across the farm really motivated us to find other uses for it. One was so simple we wondered why we’d never seen it before. We call them “creek hoses”—just a bucket or tub plumbed with a “cooler drain” and a garden hose. We set them in the bed of the creek; anchored with some big rocks, they let you direct water to any point you like downhill of the bucket. Three of these now deliver water to stock tanks in the barnyard and garden. Instant free, non-electric running water!

Water in the Hills

Seeing that we come originally from the Southwest, it’s probably natural we discovered the most amazing water sources last of all. Maybe there were springs and seeps (slow-moving springs) back where we were born, but we never saw any. The idea that clean, drinkable water comes out of the ground still delights us. And when we realized that we needed pretty much no special equipment or know-how to capture this water, we were thrilled. Our first spring improvement was dug by hand one cold week in October: just a simple trench and some perforated pipe, and we had running water in the barn by winter. That was almost fifteen years ago, and that spring has been running constantly ever since. Spring improvements dot the farm now, bringing water to livestock, gardens—even our guest cabin.

From the Right Side of the Temple

Today, our little farm is flowing with water from springs, creeks, and roof capture. These simple, non-electric systems give us independence and resiliency. On the farm, water gives us new insights into God’s Word, reminding us of the water flowing from the Temple, water that becomes a river on the banks of which fertile orchards produce fruit yearround. In a world given over to substitutions, water is irreplaceable, like that Word.

The rain clouds have passed to the north of us. I tip my watering can and a shower of tiny droplets moistens the soil where chard and beet seeds are waiting to be awakened. It’s like a blessing. //