My first confession

I started with two. I was volunteering with a local Keep America Beautiful chapter and they had a few left over from their annual sale. We were talking about starting a garden, and I wanted a barrel to use to water them, no chemically treated water for my food! I purchased two and brought them home, so excited to set them up and show the hubby all the wonders of collecting rain water that I had read about online. It's always been important to us to be conscience of our effect on our environment, and I saw this as an opportunity to lower our footprint, and learn something new. So I read the directions, leveled out an area, and set up cinderblocks to set it on. Right in the corner of the garden would work out great, it was close enough to water all the plants with minimal back and forth, so in it went. The second one was placed in the corner of the yard where it wouldn't be in the way of the mower and could provide some additional water if needed. That was spring of 2009. 

Then the ideas started. Wouldn't it be great to have fresh berries? I could put a berry bed next to the second rain barrel, and easily water it. But wouldn't it look lopsided? I needed one for the other end, but KBB was out and only sells then annually. So April of 2010 I planted the berries along the wall and made space under the other gutter for a barrel. We'd had some issues with the garage flooding and we decided to put one out there as well, since there was only one gutter draining into the storm drain in the concrete. Maybe a barrel would help control the water enough to keep it out of the garage? So I bought two again that year, and installed them as planned. 

Now it's August of 2012 and I have 10 rain barrels installed and one waiting for a new gutter to be installed on the new shop. People joke and call me a hoarder. But I look at it as a plan for anything and everything I want to do with my yard. Every barrel we have came with a planned area in our landscape. And each barrel I added saved me time or effort in my garden and/or landscape maintenance. The first visit to our house for someone always brings questions about the barrels, and even the die hard fans of sprinkler systems have to admit our system of free water and gravity fed irrigation is "cool."

So here it is, our story. I'm proud of my rain barrel habit, and I think now is a good time for me to share :)