Glass Drinking Water Dispenser

"Ask and you shall receive."  Ha, it works! Today I am the recipient of a fine glass water dispenser. How cool is that. 

A good friend snuck into my place today while I was gone and left me this present. I hadn't a clue until I went for a drink of water. Lo! This thing is perfect. 

Thank you! 

Drinking Water - Postscript

1- Carol from New Jersey emailed, "I bring my drinking water home from where I work but I've always used milk gallon bottles to store it in. Now that I think about it, sometimes the older water tastes stale or has a chemical taste. Now you have me thinking about using glass bottles. Where do you buy them?" 

Carol, using glass seems better to me too because of the potential chemical leakage from the plastic, especially aging plastic being used repetitively. I've never read scientific reports about it although I've seen warnings on various websites (that I haven't ever confirmed). Is chemical leaching real? I believe it is simply because of the taste factor. Leave a refilled plastic bottle of water rattle around in your car for a few weeks then take a taste. Yuk. Something has definitely gotten into the water. It tastes plastic-y. I surely don't want to drink that stuff. 

Other than carrying water home on the brief trip home, I keep my water in glass. I get discarded glass jugs from the recycle bin, even though we are not suppose to snitch anything out of those bins. But I only take a few of the old wine bottles. Another way to find them would be to talk with your local luquor/state store, restaurant serving wines, nightclubs, etc. Let the manager know that you'd like a few glass gallon jugs and offer to pay for them. Tell the state store owner that perhaps he could tell his buyers of the wine by the gallon that, in the name of recycling, there is a person looking for a few jugs. Offer to pay, say a dollar or two per jug, as an incentive. Another idea.....since apple juice, vinegar, etc at the natural food stores often come in glass gallons, you could post a notice on the store bulletin board that you are looking for a few empties. Store order have one? Suggest to the manager that one would be a nice service to his customers and community. Around my town, bulletin boards draw the eye of customers. 

Anyone else have any suggestions?

2- Dana down in Florida suggested attaching a note with the date to my water storing jugs so that I would know which water was the oldest or newest. She said, "Always rotate you water so that none of the bottles get stale." 

Thank you for the suggestion, Dana. I already have a system for rotating the bottles, but I use a low tech, low input method. I don't need post-it notes nor a pencil. Since I'm focusing on low input and frugality, I devised a quick timing saving method. I simply fill the new bottles to a different level. How about that for cheap! One trip I'll fill the bottles to the top. The next halfway down the neck. The next time to the bottom of the neck. Next to the shoulder of the jug. Then I start the cycle over again. This was I always can tell at a glance which are the oldest or newest bottles. It doesn't take extra time nor use any resources. Simple. The only hitch is that I have to remember which level bottle I'm currently working on, but since it will be on the front of the shelf, I usually remember just fine. 

Drinking Water

Safe drinking water is not a given in many homes in Hawaii, at least on Big Island. County water infrastructure doesn't reach many housing areas, so residents are on their own. People without county water, or those whose water tap/meter is not on their property, either haul water in or catch rainwater...or both. 

We don't have county water on either of our farms. On the homestead we have three catchment tanks set up to harvest rainwater. If I could get approval for a water meter, it would be installed 0.9 miles from my house. It would be my obligation to run water lines from that meter. Projected cost-- $9,000 to $10,000, perhaps more. And that's if I do the landscaping along the roadside afterwards myself rather than paying someone to do it for me. Yes, I'd have to level the ground, add topsoil cap, and grass seed/fertilizer. 

On the seed farm, we have nothing at the moment. I haul water in. Eventually we will install a catchment tank there for storage of water that we catch, haul in, or buy from a neighbor by sharing a pre-existing line. Running our own water line doesn't seem to be an option since at the moment the county isn't allowing anymore meters in the area. Yes, the government can deny the residents access to the water system here. But running a water line would cost $8000 or more, if we could get permission.

Thus many people are on catchment, and since they are not financially well off, they do not have UV systems for sanitizing the water. The best they can do is add bleach to their tanks and run the water through a filter to eliminate the coarse particles. Some people use that water, others opt to find safer water to use. A local church provides a safe water station for people without street legal cars (cannot haul water from water stations). Happily that community recently got its own water well, making safe water more easily available to its residents.

Using catchment water is fine with us. But we don't have a system that makes the water safe for drinking. Although the bleach we use may be adequate, I'm not certain. That's the case for many people. So the county has water taps where residents can pick up safe water. 

This is the option we choose. This one station pictured above with two taps used to be the sole service for my area, meaning there were often long waits for your turn at a tap. About a year ago the county finally addressed the problem, which people had been complaining about for years. A new water station with five taps was installed at another location, meaning often no waiting lines. By the way, this water is the best tasting water, in my opinion. Really good and worth the effort. 

I happen to pass the water taps five days a week. So I pick up a couple gallons if I pass by and see the station unoccupied. I use plastic milk jugs to get the water to bring home (safer than chancing breaking a glass bottle, which I've manage to do in the past). But at home I transfer it into glass gallon jugs for storage. 

My concern is that chemicals may leach out of the plastic into the water, since the jugs are being reused over and over again. I just feel better storing water in glass. 

For easy use of the water at home, I have a water cooler in the kitchen and a smaller one in the bathroom. Yes, they are plastic, dang! I have my eye out for something glass that I can convert to a water fountain. But until then, I don't put much water into the cooler at a filling so that it doesn't stand there for long periods of time. But using a cooler is safer than pouring water from the glass jugs because we both have "slippery" fingers. We've dropped too many jugs! 

The gallon glass jugs are stored mostly in my kitchen. A keep 4-5 under a shelf for easy access. The rest are stored in the dark. Plus under the house, wrapped in black trash bags, are dozens more glass jugs of "emergency water'. That water has had a bit extra bleach added to it before the jugs were sealed shut. Hopefully I'll never need that water, but you never know. 

In the Kitchen: Homemade Stock

I tend to make a lot of soups, stews, and sautéed meals. Thus I use basic stocks all the time. Until the past few years, I bought chicken stock by the case from Costco. Whenever beef broth went on sale, I'd stock up. Not any more. I now make my own. It's part of my self reliancy scheme. And I find it takes very little of my time to make them. 

I've gone to that old time habit of keeping a big stock pot on the woodstove. So when the stove is generating heat for the house, it's also making stocks or broth. I'll make a few types of basic stock : fowl ; pork ; beef/mouflon ; lamb ; vegetable. Alas, no fish. Hubby is not big on seafood. None of them has a set recipe, so they often come out a bit different each time.

Stock utilizes homestead resources. It eliminates a lot of wastage and utilizes  some excess things that I wouldn't otherwise know what to do with.

Here's some of the things that might go into the pot:
...onion skins and butt ends
... veg peelings such as carrot, potato, turnip, rutabaga, etc
...discarded bits of vegs, such as celery ends and leaves, mushroom stems, tops of peppers, ends of tomatoes, that sort of thing
...green tops of onions, garlic, radish, etc
...tough stems of broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower, etc
...leaves normally discarded such as broccoli leaves, etc
...fatty or tough parts of meat normally cut away (you can skim off the excess fat later on)
...bones. Those trimmed off of meat cuts plus those that were cooked and even chewed on. A few hours of boiling takes care of any germs. Roast chicken, turkey, and other fowl carcasses are great for making stock. Marrow bones are excellent too. 
...leftovers. While not every leftover works well for stock making, many do. 
...tough or stemmy parts of herbs
...veggies I have in excess

I'll simmer the stock pot for quite a while, often making additions as it cooks along. Once cooled, I'll strain out the solids, leaving me with beautiful stock. I'll then adjust the seasoning as needed. Dinner that night will use some of the stock, while the excess will get frozen. Although I'm not a great fan of plastic, I find the freezing stock in quart or gallon sized ziplock type bags works best for me. I also freeze some in ice cube trays. I find that an ice cube of stock to be very convenient at times. 

By the way, the veggies I strain out go into the dogfood. Bones go into the wood stove fire to become a soil amendment. Anything the dog can't eat goes into the compost pile. Zero waste.