A Year In Redwood

Today 15th October is Blog Action day and the theme is water…..

I’ve never signed up to write about anything before….

In Ireland water is everywhere and that means every place and anywhere…and boy do we have lots of water… but that’s just IT we never think about water. We have lots of rain, almost very day, so we don’t think about it… water isn’t a problem….. but it is….

Once winter comes we spend some (maybe we should more) time thinking about heat, heat loss, and energy conservation, fuel bills, etc.

Farmer Alfie and I are lucky where we live, we have our own well which gives us our own good clean water (we know we’ve had it tested)…but guess what, we live in rural Ireland where our neighbours don’t have the same privilege…. yes, here in rural Ireland people don’t have clean, drinkable water! How bad is that?  In 21st century Ireland it is taken as a given…. but it isn’t… our neighbours are coming daily to take of our water.  I am glad to give it…. but it is still wrong in a 21st century society that my neighbours do not have access to clean drinking water!

We (Farmer Alfie & I) are lucky.  We bought this house 7 years ago. The previous owner didn’t buy into the ‘group’ scheme so we are on our own well.  Right now that’s just not good for us but also good for our neighbours who have had a ‘BOIL’ notice on their water for the past 6 weeks…… how’s that for a 1st world country.  Six weeks is a long time… but we don’t have a high population so they let us stew!

We try our best in this house to be conservative in our use of everything…. gas, electricity, fuel. etc.  Water is something we don’t think about too much… we live in Ireland, it rains a lot, our garden gets flooded…. why think about water….

Until we have friends or family, particularly from Austrailia, stay, where there are so many water restricti0ns… and boy you should hear them have a shower (I say ‘hear’ that cos I’m not in there with them)…. but 2 people can have a shower in the time it takes one Irish person to have one.   Also listening to them talk about gardens and lack of water so you cannot grow anything….do we need to listen more.

And this makes me think…. this year we had an incredibly wet spring, and then an incredibly dry period… so should I have watered my seedlings… I think I should have done so (I didn’t)…. I had very few peas, and a few beans and my fig tree hardly fruited at all…. I know it was to do with the fact that I didn’t water…  so

What do we compromise on… water  v air miles…water is not something everyone has, does my saving and conserving here make a difference elsewhere…. would love to have other opinions?