Water in a time of scarcity: Cultivating abundance in dry climates

On Friday, our wellpoint wasn’t working properly. It kept switching off. We have two wellpoints. This is our “good” one, delivering very good water, sunk by Trevor, who knew the water in our area incredibly well. By Saturday, in 50km/h winds, our plants were still ok but a fix was urgent. So we decided to get a new pump as our first troubleshooting attempt, as it was conceivable that our pump was getting really old.

On Sunday, the wind was replaced by heat, and by the afternoon, Eugene had installed the new pump. I had been holding my breath as the seedlings can’t last longer than a couple of days without water, especially with heat and wind.

But by Sunday late afternoon, it was clear that we were dealing with a ground water challenge, not a pump challenge. I reached to our community for recommendations for wellpoint and borehole specialists, and today we wait and create some contingency plans…

Over the past several years, we’ve expanded to 6 veggie gardens, as well as our hundreds of trees. Our animal water is mainly rainwater, but the little ponds for our ducks use wellpoint. Our water needs have crept up each year, as we expanded our seedling and vegetable production.

I suspected that water would prove a problem this year. Upstream from us other operations are using more water, and the winter was incredibly dry. But I hoped we would have more time to create contingency plans.

Planning for water involves trying to understand our land and our community

Our farm exists in connection with our community, and also depends on the collective groundwater use of the neighbourhood. Our land’s ecology affects the spaces around it, and the people around it.

But there are not easy answers. If our water systems require more and more money, how do we factor those costs in, if at all? How do we use groundwater in a way that is sustainable in the face of very unpredictable weather? Have we been guilty of using more water than is renewed each winter? Or is this winter an exceptional case?

These times calls for us to be calm, be flexible, and keep doing whatever we can

It’s still a little too fresh for me to come up with good answers, but I’m sure we’ll be ok. I don’t know if a period of contraction is a natural part of having grown a lot over the past few years. Even if it feels forced on us, we can allow for just a brief moment of self-pity, and then, figure out a plan that aligns with our values.

Prioritising animal health, then fruit trees, then seedlings and veggies

This morning I’m considering a few practical actions so that we don’t have to jump on any large, expensive decisions too rapidly. Sharing them here in case the nuts and bolts are helpful to those of you in similar contexts.

1) Setting aside time to water seedling trays with rainwater/municipal water. Our seedlings are the most sensitive to heat stress, and they’re at the core of our community, so we’d like to keep them going. Track the volume of water and time required to handwater, so that we have that data.

2) Talking Eli through an alternative filling mechanism for the duck pond- we still have rainwater and this is a good time to use it if we can. The rainwater goes into our natural swimming pool, and then can be pumped out. Adding a tap connection to this pump will add to our resilience, so I’ll put that on our list for the medium term. My dad already fills the other duck pond from rainwater, so that resilience is already set up.

3) Reaching out to our thatch providers to say we’re ready for more thatch. We receive many tons of thatch each year, that creates a sponge around our food forest. There’s rain expected on Sunday, and this means that our trees will be ok for at least another few weeks. In our food forest, only fruit and nut trees get water— all companion shrubs, windbreak trees, medicinal plants, etc, do not require water.

4) Set aside a little time to talk through water with Eugene, so that we’re on the same page and feel good about the expenses and choices before us.

Everything changes, always

There are always big things to face, but I wonder if reframing those things as normal parts of life as we know it, helps? I don’t know what drought cycles will bring but I know that it will be ok. Otherwise we launch into emergency mode a lot of the time, and we risk becoming selfish or myopic if in emergency mode too often.

Our farm is resilient, and even if what we produce changes and changes again, it can take a lot of different forms while remaining true to our dream of being a space that can create encouragement, joy and hopefulness for ourselves, and for our community. Here’s to that!

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