Rainwater Collection System

More on The Sister in the Basement…. I cannot wait to water the gardens instead of shoveling snow!

Visitors to the farm are usually surprised to learn that we water the entire garden and landscape with reclaimed rain water. Our system, which collects and stores rainwater from our barn’s metal roof, provides 100% of our annual watering needs. The best part, it was extremely easy to install, and can be inexpensively adapted to almost any home, shed or roof with a gutter.

We spent the past week hooking our tanks back up from winter storage – and within 24 hours – we had just over 150 gallons stored from a single rain. It’s been over a year now since we first completed the rain collection system – and I honestly don’t know how we survived without it.

It gives us access to free water, and with our two plastic tote tanks, can collect as much as 550 gallons from a single downpour. And that’s only using rain from…

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March 18, 2013

Larry-isms #1 …

Happy St. Paddy’s Day! Have you seen The Boondock Saints? Today would be a perfect day to watch it again. And in honor of Doc, I give you this clip (language alert).

Mr. Wonderful reminds me of Doc…only without the cussing.

“”Happy Saint Urkel’s Day, Babe.” (Like St. Urho’s Day, but nerdier.)

“Schmidget” (Similar to a “smidgin” but smaller?)

“You took the air out of my balloon, Laura.”

March 17, 2013

Middle Spawn Has a Blog!

Another proud parent moment–the Middle Spawn (AKA youngest Pajari Girl) is blogging!! And the title of her blog is… Musings of an Intellectual Badass. Because we Pajari Girls are the perfect blend of brains and brass. 🙂

harley 002 — Present day. Smart AND pretty.

A self-proclaiming LOTR nerd, her post on Lord of the Rings memes is bahahaha funny. Go say hi, and tell her that her mother sent you. Loveyabye!

March 11, 2013

Frost

Here in northern MN, bitching about the weather and the 9-month-long winter is a sport, a hobby, a point of pride, and a way of life. It wasn’t really working for me, though. I have found that hating things I have no control over hurts me a lot more than the thing I am hating. It doesn’t mean I long for -40F in July–I just try to spend less energy on stuff I can’t change and more energy on the stuff I CAN. So I’m trying to ~~hate it less. Prozac also helps. And a tanning bed. But I digress.~~

These are my favorite shots (so far) of frost this winter. They are of hoar frost on the Norway Pines and a couple windows in my house, taken on two different days. This lovely wiki article explains the different types of frost. “Hoar” -yes, pronounced just like “whore”…haha.- comes from an Old English word meaning “looks old”. I can hear the Spawn yelling “Nerd Alert!!” already. Whatever.

The window pics were taken during our week-long Get Inked with the Pajari Girls Tattoo Party when it was -30F and colder. (We felt sorry for the Texan tattoo artist who had never been Up North, but he seemed to man up pretty well. Still working on THAT post.)

The outside pics were taken on a much warmer day.

As usual, if you found this post amusing, helpful, disturbing , inspiring, or not a total waste of your time, please Like, Share, Comment or Pin this ~~shit~~ stuff. If you are raising your hand ‘cuz you fell behind, click the button to Follow Via E-mail. Then you won’t miss anything. These things let me know what you think is worth reading/writing about. Thanks!! Loveyabye.

March 8, 2013

Another Treasure

I first found this old jar full of rose petals several years ago, while cleaning out my grandparents’ basement. I vaguely remember placing it on the shelf between the two giant sets of doors that Grampa Ralph drove his school bus through.

A few months ago, I stumbled across it again. Mr. Wonderful and I tackled the basement last fall, and somehow, this didn’t get thrown away, even though the glass jar had at some point fallen from the shelf and broken. The light from the naked bulb in the 10-foot ceiling was just enough to make out a handwritten note in pencil taped to the jar.