At Auchenstroan, we seem either to have too much water or too little. With this long, hot, dry summer stretching out over months, it’s definitely the latter and memories of having to install drainage are fading fast.
Since we moved here, we have installed sheep troughs fed by natural springs (water system and water system extended) so that the sheep now have water troughs in every field. However, during the summer, these springs dry up and even two tanks containing around 2,200 litres last only a few weeks. So, sometimes we have had to top them up. This used to involve filling a bowser and towing it up with the tractor. Now, we have a pipe that connects the top tank to a pump (housed in the upside down old water tank – see right). This in turn is linked to two bowsers. At the moment, these are filled by pumping water from the river, but the plan is to install a rainwater capture system on our large shed and fill them from that.
You can see the pipe snaking its way up (to the sheeps’ tanks) in the photo. There is also a pipe snaking its way down and this, when completed, will link to the rainwater harvesting system we have for our veggie plot. This will mean we can top that up if it too runs out.
And finally, just to make life a a tiny bit bit easier, we found a really useful gizmo, a watering timer. It opens a valve letting water through for a set time. We had coils of soak hose sitting around doing nothing, so have installed that in the polytunnel and it now waters itself each day for an hour. It saves us a lot of time.
Now, all we need is a solution for our domestic water supply which seems to be drying up too. But that’s another story…
