The Rain Barrels

For years now, Farmer Jon has wanted to create a rain water system. At first, it was going to be used as garden water or water should our electricity go out and the well didn’t work. But, as our little funny farm began growing he saw the potential for using the rain water to water all of the animals. I agreed that a rain barrel would be handy. I really didn’t think too hard about it because it seemed like an easy, cheap project that would potentially take him a couple of hours to complete and keep him busy for an afternoon. I should have known better. Let me introduce to you, Farmer Jon’s rain barrel system…..

That’s right, you are counting correctly. That’s 10 ‘food grade’ blue barrels all connected with PVC piping to create a rain water system capable of capturing 550 gallons of water. Now, when he put this up I assumed my husband had lost his mind but after the rain we have had and the amount of water our animals are drinking, I have deduced my husband is actually a genius. I haven’t had to carry bucket after bucket of water from the house out to the barn for a month now. It’s my own little slice of heaven. It has even filled Jr’s pool a few times!

I’ll give you a little recap of how Farmer Jon built this system. Believe me, it was quite a bit of trial and error to finally get a perfect system.

It started with building a stand. Which in itself was probably the most difficult part of the whole project. We live on this hill and NOTHING is flat so we have to account for that. Our first try just wasn’t beefy enough so after our first major rain we found it like this…..

Once we got the stand sturdy enough we laid the barrels on and began the measuring for the PVC. We needed to make sure each piece was measured perfectly to avoid and leaks.

We also realized we needed to have those handy little vent pipes at the top of each of the barrels. If we didn’t we quickly dealt with vapor lock and couldn’t get a drop of water out of those darn barrels.

The piping running up to the gutters was just a matter of creative thinking and lots of extra PVC elbows and connectors. It was mostly some trial and error to get it right.

We then covered the catch tubing with pantyhose. This keeps the debris and bugs from getting into the barrels and creating nasty water. Again, another genius idea from Farmer Jon.

The best part of this rain water system? We haven’t seen anyone with one like it. Farmer Jon spent many hours researching, reading, watching YouTube and thinking in order to come up with this idea. He would glean ideas from other people but then created this whole monster in his mind and was able to put it together and make it work. Seriously, I am one lucky woman to have such a handy man!

Welcome to the Crazy

I assume I need to start this blog with an introduction. I’m Amber. My clan and I live right outside a very small town in Minnesota. We live on a 10-acre hobby farm that has been passed down through my family for 3 generations. Our small brood consists of me, my husband Farmer Jon, and our three children (Asa is 12, Jerzy is 8, and Jon Jr is 3). That’s just the start…. We also have 2 dogs, 26 rabbits and nearly 200 chickens in our menagerie. Jon is an over-the-road truck driver and I am a work-from-home mom that sells Plexus. We are also beginning homesteaders. It’s Farmer Jon’s dream to, one day, live totally off the grid, I’d settle for being self-sustaining enough to survive an economic breakdown. We aren’t super preppers and I don’t see us ever being totally off the grid, but we do pretty well when it comes to using what resources we can gather here on our little farm to keep our family fed and cared for. Our grand idea for this blog is just to share our crazy world with others. We hope to inspire others to begin homesteading (or at least become more self sufficient) as well as use this as a tool to learn from others who have been in our shoes. There are lots of crazy antics in our household that will surely make you laugh and lots of great tips, tricks and info on homesteading, raising animals, being a truckers wife and running a crazy household like ours!

A little more about Farmer Jon and I. We have been married for 2 years. We are a perfect pair that balances each other out. Not to say we don’t drive each other crazy sometimes but all and all it’s a pretty good match. You will all be lucky enough to be introduced to Farmer Jon in videos we plan on uploading in future posts. You will see that we are a fun loving bunch who love a good laugh. In our household I am obviously the household management while he is the primary bread winner. My job is to make sure a roof stays over our head, food stays in our bellies, lights stay on, and the children survive each day. His job is to be gone for weeks and come home and finish (or start) a new project that he thought up while he was out on the open road. I think it is important for you to understand that my husband spends all his time on the road looking for new ideas and thinking of projects to do on his home time…… or things he wants me to do or try add to my already crazy days. It makes for interesting conversations each day while we recap our days. He has a few friends that so very kindly (insert major eye roll) help him with his ideas and give him plenty of material to expand on and drive me crazy. Between those friends and a 100GB data plan (so he has almost unlimited access to YouTube) the ideas flow from him like a waterfall. The key to being the wife of such a creative mind is to only listen with half an ear and NEVER EVER assume a project will go as planned or be as easy as he claims.