Rainwater Harvesting.., We're Into That

We use a hand pump to bring water to the farm.

Our school is in a great school district. Even in these crazy days of difficult school financing decisions, we can still float the boat and are much better off than other school districts in Texas. That being said, when we started our farm project, or now if we want to add anything new to the farm, there is a lot of red tape, forms to be compiled and plans of work to write up. This hasn't been a problem for our farm team though. In fact, it has given us time to plan and really think through what we are doing and where we are headed on our farm.

Students at work on the farm.

When we started our planning and conversations with Phil Lozano,  Associate Director of Facility Services for our school district, we initially told him that we wouldn't be asking them to pay for the water. Since our PTA works magic at raising funds and figuring out ways to get things for our school and students, we told him that we would just pay for a water meter and that the bill would come straight to the PTA. He immediately shut us down on that thought with great reasoning.

He asked us to change our thinking. Rather than teaching the kids to just turn on a faucet and water plants, we need to teach them about sustainability as well as water conservation. In the past, settlers and farmers didn't have hoses to run when they watered their crops. They needed to be resourceful and collect water to save and use sparingly. He had a good point and so we changed our thoughts and set off to learn all that we could about rain water collection.

Our 1,000 gallon rain collection tank

Since we like to do things BIG, we went straight for the 1,000 gallon tank. Jeremy came out and set us up with everything we needed to get our rain harvest system up and running. His company is Rainwater Harvesting Systems and they are located in Denton, Texas. They are able to provide rainwater collectors in all shapes and sizes. Jeremy and Rainwater Harvesting Systems come highly recommended by our Farm Team! 

                    

Jeremy is an expert in rain harvesting.

 Special gutters were installed on our barn to collect the rain.

We are proud to be green!