Clothes Washer Greywater

I met "L" at the dump the other day and she asked me how I get my clothes washer water to my gardens. She was tired of carrying buckets and was envisioning an underground irrigation system. That surely would work, but I haven't yet gotten to that point. Considering that my gardens are scattered about an area of 6 acres, an irrigation system would have to be pretty extensive.....and expensive. So I have other ways of utilizing my washer water. 

First let me say that the past 3 years have been "wet years", thus irrigation water isn't a high priority. But I still tend to utilize greywater because I believe it's a good habit to be in. During drought years, I become fanatical about using every drop. 

Our wash machine is located in an outdoor shed between the house and driveway. This is Hawaii, so I don't need to have the laundry area inside my living quarters. The water discharge runs out via a long 1 1/2" diameter hose (a swimming pool vacuuming hose) which I can move about the yard. When I don't need irrigation water, I simply let the washing machine discharge directly around some trees, moving the hose so that one spot doesn't get overly saturated. But when I need the water, I either discharge right into a nearby garden or I do something different. 

1- (an old method I no longer use) I run the hose into a large trashcan, then use a bucket to hand dip that water and carry it to a garden spot to water individual plants. Time consuming. Labor intensive. Once upon a time it seemed a fine solution, but my shoulder joints are wearing out so it was time to come up with a less painful method. 

2- Run the hose into the trashcan, BUT rather than hand dip the water, I use a sump pump and a garden hose. The trashcan can hold both the wash and rinse water from one load of laundry, so I don't have to be right there to use the water between wash and rinse cycles. The sump pump (with its dedicated hose) lives in the trashcan, so I don't have to set it up each and every time I need it. Yes, that's a lazy approach, but it's a time saver too. Far, far quicker to just turn on the pump compared to the alternative. 

Now for more distant gardens. I tend to produce more greywater around the house than I need for the house gardens. So I need to get that water to more distant spots. The method I'm currently using involves a trashcan in the back of the pickup truck, a sump pump & garden hose, and my portable generator to run the pump. This means owning two sump pumps and two hoses. Sump pump #1 was given to me by a person who was moving away. I actually broke down and spent money for pump #2 because it made my life easier. (Gosh, I can be such a cheapskate sometimes!) 

Above, here's my set up. Trashcan, pump with hose, generator, truck. I transfer the laundry water into the trashcan, and put a lid on it to keep most of the water in while I drive to the distant location. Pump goes into the water, generator runs pump, garden gets watered. 

Above, the pump actually goes all the way in and sits in the bottom. 

With this system, I can add fertilizer teas to the water before pumping. An added gallon of manure tea or urine will give the soil a bit of a nutrient boost while it's being irrigated. Or I can use fresh compost tea as a foliar treatment to apply microbes and foliar nutrients. 

Oh my......I can hear the screams and warning even now. Egads girl, that's WASTE water. It's "toxic". You're gonna die a thousand deaths from every bizarre disease imaginable. First if all, I don't use toxic chemicals so they are not going to magically appear in my laundry greywater. Yes, there will be some micro cloth particles and biodegradable detergent in the water, and some human skin cells and skin bacteria, a minute amount of residual leftover textile chemicals, but good lordy, that's really not a problem. My soil is teeming with micro organisms who deal with much of it. What they might not deal with will be far less dangerous than wearing the new clothes in the first place, since the cloth is coated with textile chemicals which we tend to absorb into our bodies via skin contact. Yes folks, modern industry poisons us and our world at the request of its customers. Nothing I can do about that, except apologize the earth for our species fouling its own home.  

I'm sure someone out there will warn me about rain splash, but since I wash all my vegetables before eating/selling/trading them, I don't see a problem here. My veggies are far cleaner than the ones you are buying in your supermarket. 

Someone else will tell me that's it's illegal. Yes, it most likely is. (I've become a bit of an outlaw in my old age.) But since it's not a constructed system, I don't think the health department is going to arrest me, nor the hundreds of other gardeners in Ka'u who also do this. 

Urban people especially seem to have a phobia against using greywayer of any quality. While I agree that some types of greywater is not suitable for garden irrigation, I don't have a problem with using my own laundry water. And besides, here's something to think about as you go to sleep at night. Where does your municipal drinking water come from? What's in it? It's not pure H2O. Many urban areas are now utilizing heavily polluted ground water, recycling their greywayer, and (gasp) eyeing up their blackwater! No, it's simply not feasible to remove all the toxic waste from that water you're now drinking. (It can be done on a small scale, but not for a giant population.) Your own bodies become the final filter to remove trace amounts of a vast assortment of every sort of chemical that goes down the drain into the sewer system, including industrial chemicals, medications, animal poop, etc. Yikes. Yes, I conclude that my washing machine water isn't an issue considering the scope of things. 

Extra Water Storage

During dry periods, five days a week I pick up a half ton of water as I pass the county water taps. Sometimes I can use this water right away. Other things I need to store it for future use. While I have large catchment tanks (2 by the house and 1 by the barn), there are situations where I find it far more convenient to store the water in small batches close to where I intend to use it. Thus a small tank by the clothes washer stores water for the next couple of laundry loads. A small tank by the pasture stores enough to reload the stock tank when needed. Glass gallon jugs in the kitchen store drinking and cooking water. 

Down by the greenhouses I store extra water in trashcans and old milk jugs so that it's handy. Most of the time I collect enough rainwater for the greenhouses, but when things are dry I need to resort to the water I tote in. Those milk jugs will last for about six months of use, then they go off to the recycle bin and get replaced with fresh ones. 

One note about using trashcans.......either keep them filled to the brim, totally empty, or keep a lid on them. Otherwise critters tend to get caught in them and drown. 

While I'd love to have those 300 gallon totes around to store water in, they are far too pricy to justify their use. Around here they go for around $300 each. Ouch. I'm told that on the mainland they can be had for $50. Wow. It's by far cheaper here to buy 9-10 trashcans than one tote to hold the same amount of water. 

Water storage, in small amounts, can be creative. I've seen people use 5 gallon buckets, old Tupperware storage bins, all sorts of jugs and bottles, old coolers. One fella is using old dead chest freezers (they're free!), closing the lids to prevent evaporation and mosquito problems. Another used discarded wood pallets to make the right sized box to slip a heavy duty black trash bag into it, which was then filled with water and tied shut. At one mini farm the people made holes in the ground, used plastic sheeting as a liner, then filled it with water. It worked for them. 

I suppose it comes down to how much money one has to spend. I've seen farms around here with gigantic reservoirs that costs tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands. Other farms have multiple tanks at a few thousand a piece. Multiple totes work for others, at $300 each. But many small homestead farms or mini ag operations don't have that sort of cash available. Owners have to think outside the box in order to come up with affordable water storage systems. Nothing wrong with that, as far as I'm concerned. 

Hauling In Water

It's been three weeks since the last significant rainfall. The soil is beginning to dry out. So it's time to water the gardens and bring in livestock drinking water. I have a large catchment tank down by the main gardens that I can use to irrigate them with, but the scattered smaller gardens have no convenient water supply. What to do? Haul water in. 

Prior to the early January windstorm, I used a transport tank for hauling. It held 330 gallons. 

(Above- squashed white water transport tank.)

Actually it was way too large for my truck. 330 gallons weighs 2,754 lbs. Although my truck has been beefed up for trailering purposes, that's still over its stated ability. So I had to be real careful and drive slowly. I eventually changed to using a trailer, but that also meant being very careful and slow. Someone once suggested that I only fill the tank half way. Not a good idea. The water would have sloshed back and forth, possibly throwing the truck or trailer out of control. The sloshing actually could have torn the trailer right off its hitch, making for a disaster. There's no way to avoid the sloshing since the road between me and the water source climbs up the mountain via lots of zigzags. 

The windstorm squashed my transport tank. I looked into replacing it with a smaller tank. I was surprised about the cost. Then another local farmer offered me two small transport tanks. I initially was going to use them for hauling, but found a better use for each. The smaller one (25 gallons) now stores livestock water for the chickens and rabbits. The larger one (50 gallons) stores the daily water for the donkeys, horse, sheep, and goats.

 Having those two tanks has made my life far easier and saves me a lot of daily time by eliminating all the running back & forth. So I decided to leave them be as is. (Katie, thanks from my heart for those tanks. I thank you every time I use them.)

So I decided to try something else. Very conveniently our local hardware store had commercial rubbermaid trashcans on sale for $20, with an additional $2 off for senior day (ah-ha, the benefit for being old!) Since they could be multi-use items, I decided to buy 8 .....the number that fit comfortably in the truck bed. Trashcans are also great for hauling grass clippings, storing feed, storing just about anything. Buying 8 was less than half the price of a transport tank that I was eyeing up. Before buying them I did some quick math. Figuring on loading about 25 to 28 gallons of water into each trashcan, that brings the load weight to well under a ton. Good. 

I quickly discovered that loading the trashcan with water and using the lid to hold it in doesn't work. The sloshing pops the lid right off. I tried using bungee cords to hold on the lid, but the sloshing got violent enough to empty most of the cans by up to 1/2 even though the lids couldn't completely fly off. No, those lids just couldn't handle the water action on the curves and hills. Water sloshed out everywhere. I nicely watered the asphalt on my way home. Now that I had invested hard earned cash in those trashcans, I wasn't about to give up in the can idea. But in the back of my mind I knew that at least I'd have other uses for the cans if I failed on this one. That was a bit of a consolation. 

 I knew from experience with my original transport tank that the water couldn't slosh if it was filled to the top. Plus I've seen pictures of collapsible water transport bags that could be used in the truck bed. Hummm. Out of those two juicy thoughts came the idea of containing the water using a trash bag in the can. Grabbing some heavy duty contractor bags, I stuffed one into a trashcan, filled it with water, and tied it shut with a string (I now use a short length of electric fence cord. Strong, easy to tie and untie, reusable.) Bingo! It worked. To further test out the idea I loaded the whole truck with all 8 cans. Success. 

I use a short length of standard garden hose to fill the trashcans. It takes 18 minutes for a fill up. 

Next problem.........how to get the water out of the cans. 

That will be a story for another post. 

New Pond

I'm finally taking some action on creating the next pond. All my previous ponds were mini ponds designed for mosquito control. Then range from holding five gallons to 50 gallons and are home to dozens of little guppies. But this next pond is going to be far bigger. Perhaps a home to tilapia and koi? 

This pond started out with the top ring we removed from the ag-catchment tank. The tank was too tall for it to capture water off the new barn's roof. I saved the ring figuring that it would come in handy one day. Well, it's finally "some day". 

A while back we built stairs down the from the house to the lower field. At the base of the stairs is a dry seasonal creek bed which is "dead" because a landowner above us bulldozed and contoured his land, thus destroying the dry bed as a rainwater runoff channel. With the creek bed safety deactivated, we decided to built a footbridge across it and make a pond underneath the footbridge. Now the saved catchment tank ring has come in handy. 

Last year we got this far. The metal ring was installed under the footbridge. We made a concrete circle for the ring to sit on and then put a layer of sand in the bottom. Then other jobs seemed more important, so thus project stalled. 

Last week I stopped into the water catchment store on my way back from Kona. Just stopped on impulse I guess. Came out with a catchment tank liner. Ok, now I had a job. Today, after letting the liner warm up in the sun, it got spread into the ring thusly.........

It's not quite smoothed and stretched enough yet for filling, but it's almost there. But it rained for a few minutes, putting "first water" into our new pond. So, it's on it's way! 

Right now it looks so incredibly white-white. So out of place. But once it is filled I'll be finishing off the rim with decorative wood, rocks, and plants. 

This is as far as we got. Running water to it for filling will be another day. 

No Water!

The water pump choose to fry itself today. Such are the risks of pumping your own water. Sometime things break, and sometimes it's catastrophic. I'm still not sure exactly what happened inside the pump, as I've yet to take it apart. But the bottom line is that it fried. No water. Luckily we were home at the time and heard the pump constantly running. We ran to the pump house, saw water running across the floor, looked at the pump and saw water running out the end. Quick, shut off the power. 

A glance at the pump revealed that this was not going to be an easy, quick fix. The plastic connections at the pump end were melted. Bummer. We needed a new pump ASAP. 

Of course this happens to be Saturday after twelve noon. Only one store around here sells dc water pumps. A quick phone call and we find out that they're open for another hour. Great! Of course we hop into the car immediately and high tail it up to Oceanview, and buy us a pump. $250, ouch. But when you need water, today, like now, one doesn't quibble. Whip out a credit card and try to figure it out later how to justify it in the budget. 

So the gods of mischief messed up. According the Murphy's Law, the store should have been closed...or out of pumps in stock. Ha, beat those gods for once. It's nice to win a hand every once in a while.       :)

With new pump in hand, hubby suggested that we stop at the Ace Hardware and pick up replacement hose and hose clamps. Might as well replace the old, since otherwise they'd be the next thing to fail. 

$25 more and we're on our way back home. 

Installing the new pump turned out to be fairly simple. Disconnect hoses and electricity. Reconnect using the new hoses and hose clamps. Attach the electric wires. Flick the electric switch and watch the pump self-prime and build the water pressure back up in the tank. Wallah....water! Check for leaks....none....good to go. Hubby, being a neat freak, electrical taped all the wiring and water protected it all, screwed the pump down, made sure everything was lined up properly before declaring the job complete. 

Tomorrow I plan to take apart the fried pump to see if it's repairable. If it is and we can get the parts, the pump would come in handy for other applications.....or to keep as a back up. 

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. 

When the Water Fails

The latest water crisis in West Virginia had been an awakening for some of the unaffected folks, while its developed into a real crisis for the poor people involved. They could not use their water source. Just how do you survive if your water becomes contaminated? Are you ready for this event in your own neighborhood? 

Until I moved to my present location, I took water for granted. The only precaution I took was to store about 50 gallons of water under my house just in case a big storm knocked out the power and I ran out of gasoline for the generator so that I could run my well pump. I was on a private well for water at the time. If I had been on city water, I probably wouldn't have taken any precautions at all. Water was always there. Water was a given. But now the situation in West Virginia has shown us that perhaps that is foolish thinking. 

So have you given your water any thought lately? 

(Water always comes out of the faucet, right?)

On my farm we catch rainwater. Over the years we've expanded our ability to catch and store water. Some of our tanks are covered, thus protected from the weather, leaves, dirt. Some are open, housing fish, being used for crop irrigation. In addition we have separate safe drinking water storage containers stored under the house for in case of a hurricane. 

Although I do not need to implement it, I have the knowledge and ability to distill ocean water into drinking water. I could build a solar water sanitizer. I could make a homemade water filtration system. 

If forced to relocate, I am aware how previous generations gathered drinking water in lava caves and from fresh springs located under ocean waves. And with a sheet of clear plastic or glass, or even a bottle, could make a simple water still. One still won't produce much water, but make a hundred out of discarded trash and you are set. 

Water is such a basic thing. If it gets contaminated to the point that it can't be used, then we're in deep trouble! Our civilization is doing all sorts of things that are endangering our water. Runoff from farms, industry, mining, forestry, even parking lots and salted highways. Fracking. Drilling for gas and oil. Chemical industry. Paper making. Textile industry. Power generating plants. Sewerage treatment. Food processing. Ocean shipping. Trash dumps. Just to point out a few activities that are pumping contaminants into the water system. I'm amazed when I read articles about the various toxins being found in various drinking water systems and people aren't screaming and rioting about it. Not just toxins, but medications, hormone disrupters, micro bits of plastic, etc. 

Oh boy, I can feel myself on the verge of a rant. Calm down, take a deep breathe. Focus back on the homestead. 

Yes, homestead. Self sufficiency. Self reliance. When I first came to Hawaii, harvesting rainwater scared me. It still scares the State of Hawaii Health Department, who does not deem catchment water to be potable even if the most modern sanitation systems are used. But ya know, I'm really glad I harvest my own water. I can control it's quality. It doesn't arrive to my sink via old asbestos pipes, or more modern pipes which harbor a layer of sludge on the bottom and needs extra chlorination when the pressure gets low during drought times. Nor contains chemical contamination due to the toxic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers used by commercial farming and industry. Luckily the main air pollution in Hawaii is due to the volcano. It's not from a chemical plant, industrial smokestacks, automobiles and trucks. I can work with the volcano. 

(This is one of our 3 water storage tanks.)

Did I say that Hawaii says that catchment is not potable water? Then why use it? Well, let me first say that catchment water at the Volcanes National Park and Kilauea Military Camp are both declared legal potable water. Uumm.  So if you're a federal facility, catchment is just fine. But if you're not, then it's not legal water. Uumm. Perhaps enough said. 

Good filtration systems with UV sterilization units that are properly maintained make catchment water perfectly safe, even for drinking. Although one state office claims the water isn't potable, other state offices approve that water for not only residential use but also public use at B&Bs, etc. Crazy that one hand says no while the other says yes. But that aside, it indicates that correctly treated catchment is fine. 

While no water source is safe from a mananical enemy, I feel comfortable knowing that my catchment water is rather safe. I don't have to worry about industrial chemicals, agricultural runoff, or other dangerous contamination. My system can still give me water even if the electric grid goes down or if the county's water pipes crumble. 

I'm not suggesting that everyone run out and start collecting rain water, but it may be an idea to look at your options. Perhaps a storage tank or two of reserve water. Perhaps a well. I don't know. But just assuming that good clean water will flow out of your kitchen faucet every day may be delusional thinking. I'd rather not take the chance and find myself like people in West Vrginia. 

All three of our tanks are currently full. I floated a bit of greenery in this tank so that you can see that it's up to the brim. Having full tanks is a wonderful feeling! 

Utilizing Our Arid Land

When we purchased 1 1/2 acres down the road, a friend asked, "Why did you buy that land for? It's hot and dry, not good for farming." He was a bit in disbelief that I intended to farm there, although someday it will morph into our retirement location. I was looking for something warmer and drier than the main farm. Some things just do better warmer and drier. 

So what are my ideas? Well, that depends upon how much water I intend to use. For now, it all needs to be trucked in.

Things I can grow with minimal irrigation:
... Purslane. This green grows exceptionally well in the dry, poor soil of the new place. There is a small niche market for it, and I can feed the excess to the chickens. In fact, I could develop a local chicken fodder market for purslane since flock owners around here like the idea of feeding it to their birds for the omega fatty acids.
... Sweet potatoes & gourds. The locale historically was a Hawaiian sweet potato and gourd production area. I've already experimented using traditionally Hawaiian ag techniques and have successfully produced both crops in that area, although not on my own lots. But I currently have both now growing there. I've used very little irrigation for either so far.
... Dry land landscaping plants for resale. -- cactus and other succulents, plumaria, bromeliads, bougainvillea, aloe, panex, agave, palms. I'm not sure I want to get into the nursery business, but the opportunity is there. I already planted some of these type plants, but only for my own landscaping. So I know that they will do fine there. By using a bit more water and fertilizer, I could propagate them.
... Pin cushion protea. These grow well in the area, but I'm not ready to get into the business. Possibly a future option.
... Pineapples. These would require some outside water, but they don't demand a lot. The local white pineapples are always in demand. I put in about 50 starts for my own use and they are growing well.
... Local desert plants. While it would make no sense to intentionally cultivate them, there are two plants growing abundantly in the area that I can use. One is Christmasberry whose berry can be ground and used for pepper seasoning. The other is Haole Koa whose young leaves and stems can be used for animal fodder and whose seeds and seed pods are used by local crafters. I have harvested leaves to add to the chicken feed but found it to be tedious and not a productive use of my time. I have hat bands made from the seed pods and I've  toyed with using the seeds to make a necklace. Very pretty but time consuming. I equate it to quilt making....time consuming, tedious work to do as a hobby or on a rainy day. But there are crafters out there who use the seeds and pods on a regular basis.
... Moringa. Currently a fad crop, but it has its plusses. There is a small niche market for it now, but I would most likely use it as livestock fodder.

Things that require more water:
... Now for the reason for wanting this location -- good to reduce problems with moisture related plant disease and dry enough for seed production. On the main farm, saving seeds is a challenge. The seeds often mold or even sprout right in their pods. They never dry down. Before pods go brown I've had beans and peas start sprouting! My radish and Chinese cabbage seed would get moldy in the pods long before the pods would dry. And with diseases, some veggies really suffered with fungal diseases in the dampness of the main farm. To date I have already produced two bean seed crops. Everything went beautifully, proving that the site will be quite useable for seed production. The main issue to be addressed will be water.
... Hot weather crops: Some crops just can't be produced on the main farm. I will be experimenting growing them on the south farm. I already know that papayas, mangos, breadfruit, and breadnut will grow there. I plan to try tepary beans, edible soybeans, lima beans, and malabar spinach.
... Hydroponics. A contained system would not waste precious water and produce a variety of crops. I plan to toy with simple hydroponic systems later on this summer. It should be fun. 
... Raising tilapia. While I'm told that tilapia will grow at my farm, fish breeders agree that it is too cool there for breeding them. Thus a small pond will be made on the warm farm in order to produce more tilapia babies for growing on to meal sized fish. 

Hot, dry, and sunny may have disadvantages for general vegetable farming, but I plan to take advantage of these conditions to expand my homestead farming operation. 

Catchment Water

Our water storage tanks

Before moving to Hawaii, we never gave our water much thought. You just turn on the faucet, and presto...water! I've lived where water was supplied by the town. It came via an unseen pipe in the ground and had enough pressure to blow you away. I've also lived where we had our own well and pump, where the pressure wasn't as strong but still could run a lawn sprinkler with no hassle. Now I live where we catch rainwater off our house roof for general use and haul drinking water in from the county tap for drinking and cooking. And the water pressure is barely passable. Big differences!

Ok now, why do we have catchment? When we arrived here from the mainland, it wasn't our first choice. What, catchment? No way, we said. Dirty rainwater? No way. Well folks, we eventually changed our tune, but it took while. We live a mile from the nearest county water supply. That would mean running a mile of our own pipe. Digging and building a county approved trench for the pipe would have bankrupted us. Top that off with the fact that the county is not issuing permits for water hook ups for the past several years, it made our choice of looking into catchment water a suitable option.

The only two water options we had were catchment or water delivery. With water delivery, the water is county water, thus safe to drink as long as the homeowner takes care to protect the water. With catchment, the water needs to be treated with a fairly expensive water treatment system that needs to be maintained. Of course, water delivery costs money while catchment water is supplied by Mother Nature.

We had to look at our water usage and determine just how much "safe" water we needed. Turned out that it really wasn't much. That meant that if we went with safe delivered water, almost all of it would be used to flush the toilet, take showers, mop floors, wash clothes, water livestock, etc. Very little would go for drinking and cooking. Add to these facts that the county water tap was only a five minute drive away and that we passed by it normally ten times a week, picking up our drinking water would not be all that much of an inconvenience.

The cost of a catchment water system is mostly upfront-- putting in the holding tank and running the gutters to collect rain. For around $3000 we put in a decent system for household use. No fancy water treatment system at the moment. Maybe in the future, though I doubt it.

Going with catchment water fits nicely into our vision of self-reliancy. Oh, there's maintenance  involved, but it isn't costly and we do the work ourselves. Monthly I  check the chlorine level, adding chlorine as needed. I also check the pH level and adjust if needed. Rain gutters are hosed out to remove debris and that water is diverted away from the tank. About once a year we siphon water off the bottom of the catchment tank to remove volcanic ash that slowly collects. By keeping the tank well covered we don't have a problem with mosquitos.

What about our drinking water, you say? I have a dozen glass gallon jugs that I store drinking water in. It is kept in the kitchen in a dark closet. It's handy, easy to use. I thought about making an overhead storage tank so that the water could be gravity fed through a dedicated faucet, but I never carried through on the idea. The glass jugs just worked out fine. If they become a nuisense in the future, then maybe I'll come up with a better solution.