Provisional workshop and workbench...

This is my temporary workbench that has been set up in the old Mill Office. I'd take more photos, but it's also chaos in the other three directions...

Those orange parts on the bench (old door from the house actually) are a Fairbanks-Morse pump given to me by a neighbor who, in the olden days, used to use it to pump water out of her creek for her livestock. A historic object, for sure, like the notion of water in a creek around here.

It is now back together after a bit of refurbishing, I haven't a lot of confidence that it is going to work as I am unfamiliar with the pump mechanism and the orientation of certain parts, and I haven't been able to find anything on the internet about it. I'll be testing it in the next few days.

Raining!!! (and we are thankful)

This year we got serious about collecting rainwater and put together a prototype system. The rainwater runoff from the house roof gutters is getting collected in garbage cans under the downspouts. Each can is connected by hose to the lowest can in the system.

At the lowest can, we put a float actuated sump pump that sends the water to a big temporary collection box. This is a photo taken during the morning rain on Thursday, 5/7/15, when the pump first started up.

The rainwater is routed to the box today because our 1500 gallon rain water collection tank is already full from the last rain of a couple weeks ago (photos taken 4/25/15, a day or two after the rain):

The greenhouse cans aren't connected to the system yet, so once the cans are full this water runs over into a channel we dug and is ultimately directed towards the garden trees. But we will be have these two cans connected for next year's rainy season and also hope to catch the runoff from the mill office and garage roofs.

RAINING!!! (and we are thankful)...