On April 25th we had 540 people trek through our garden as part of the 7th annual Bay Friendly Gardening Tour. We spent six straight hours answering questions about our chickens, rain barrels, bat house, beehives, and greywater system, probably in that order. After that came questions about many of the 33 fruit and vegetable crops that we've squeezed into our small back and front yards. 

We got many comments about the enormous size of the strawberries in our patch as well as the prolific raspberry and blueberry bushes, and lots of questions about our asparagus and fava beans ("What is that plant? And what is that one over there?").

Many of the people on the tour are novice gardeners, and it was wonderful to hear their excitement as they noted what can be done in just a small space. We were gratified to hear so many people tell us that they were going to go home to put up a bat house, set up rain barrels, convince a spouse to let them get chickens or bees, plant a fruit tree, or build a raised vegetable bed.

Overall, preparing for the Tour was a huge amount of work, but we are thrilled that the re-landscaping project we began a year and a half ago is finally finished (we think). Now that the weather is beautiful and we've begun to eat meals on our back deck, we can enjoy a yard and garden that is busy producing our summer crops without much effort on our parts.

(The top photo shows our Fuji apple tree in the foreground.  The photo below shows raspberries along the chicken fence, an apricot tree just in front and near the center, fava beans at the bottom and toward the center, and asparagus at the bottom and to the right.)

Our yard and those of three of our close-by neighbors will be featured on this year's Bay-Friendly Garden tour on Sunday, April 25th.  The free, self-guided tour is sponsored by StopWaste.org and includes over 40 gardens in Alameda County, grouped in geographical clusters.  Pre-registration is required.

Our yard is pretty well qualified, with native plants, rain water catchment, gray water, chickens, bees, food production, and landscaping with salvaged materials.  We've been told to expect over 500 people (and perhaps well over that, since registration has been particularly strong so far).  There's also a need for volunteers to help out, so sign up if you're interested.

Here's a fuller description of the tour from StopWaste: "The 7th annual tour continues to celebrate the diversity of Bay-Friendly gardens. Urban farmers grow abundant harvests of fruit and vegetables, and keep chickens and bees.  Native plant enthusiasts embrace the local flora. Salvaged material aficionados blend recycled art into the landscape. Bay-Friendly gardens offer something for everyone—come and discover ideas for creating your perfect haven.... Gardens range from professionally designed postage stamp-sized lots in Berkeley to exuberant one-acre market gardens in Pleasanton."

We're pretty excited, although we have a bit more prep to do over the next few weeks.

I first reported on our rainwater catchment endeavors back in February of 2009. That post had a lot of good details and references for getting started, but we've learned some things along the way and have settled on an improved method for converting and connecting barrels.

Our original approach involved cutting off the tops of the barrels, primarily so we could access the inside more easily.  The advantages were that we could clean the insides more easily and install the hose bib more securely.  The big disadvantages were that the barrels lost some structural stability (particularly when full), were harder to keep mosquito-proof, lost some capacity, and were not easy to link together.

Also, that approach was more work, involved more parts, and was therefore more expensive.  Cutting the tops off and getting a nice clean cut was fairly challenging, even though it got a little easier with practice.  Not having the most secure top meant we needed an overflow valve in the main part of the barrel.  We also spent extra money piecing together washers and makeshift nuts to secure the hose bib from both sides.  And then the nuts ended up rusting.

Back to the Drawing Board

I ended up going back to a very simple approach we had rejected early on: simply drill a hole for the hose bib and screw it in.  We had been concerned that the connection would leak or wear over time.  I've now converted six barrels with this approach, and I've only had one problem.  One has a very slow leak that I'll patch once it's empty.  Otherwise, I'm much happier with the new approach.

Here are the specs:  I drilled a 3/4" hole as close to the bottom of the barrel as possible and screwed in a 1/2" male hose bib.  It's a little hard to start screwing it into the hole and you have to be careful to get it in straight, but once it's in it should be pretty secure.

I also found sink strainers that insert snugly into the barrel openings.  They strain out leaves and other gunk, while keeping bugs out.

So that's it.

It actually takes me more time to wash out the barrels beforehand than to convert them.  That's because while the car wash soap and tire dressing is labeled as being "safe for the environment," I've been pretty particular to make sure none of that drains into groundwater or the bay (since we do live in Alameda).  So with each rain barrel upright, I spray the insides with a hose nozzle through one of the top holes. I empty the barrel into a bucket and the bucket down an inside drain.  Rinse, repeat.  Rinse, repeat.  Actually, the 30-gallon barrels fit in my bathtub so it was very easy to clean with a hand shower spray.

Linking Barrels

I was interested in filling more than one barrel from a single downspout from the beginning, but couldn't figure out a good approach.  One of our downspots with the greatest volume output is located at the back of out driveway where there was unused space that was perfect for lining some barrels up.

The biggest problem was just a method for connecting them.  I read through a number of approaches published online, but none of them were very appealing.  They were either more complicated than seemed necessary, or had other downsides.

The breakthrough I had was finally finding an adapter that would screw into the (unusually-sized) holes in the tops of the 55-gallon barrels.  It is a 2 inch PVC Male Adapter that converts to more standard PVC piping sizes.  From there you can reduce down to the size of PVC piping you want and connect up the pieces. I just snapped them together so I can easily remove the piping to clean it or a barrel later on.

The downspout drains into a funnel, which I nested a sink strainer in.  Each barrel has its own hose bib, so it can be emptied independently.

This approach means that we can fill the barrels above the normal fill line, fitting about 65 gallons into the large barrels.  So we now have about 360 gallons of capacity!

One other note: we mostly have white semi-opaque barrels, but have two blue ones.  We had read that an advantage of opaque barrels are that there is less concern with algae growth.  The disadvantage is that you can't see what the water level is.  We haven't had problems with algae and now have a clear preference for the white barrels.

Our girls are growing up! Madeleine now vigorously corrects people when they assume she is three years old by telling them, "No, I'm three and a half!" She has definitely become a pre-schooler in terms of social maturity and independence, which is fun for her and a relief to us.

Madeleine often still asks us, "I forget, how old is Rachel again?"  It's hard for all of us to keep track when we count in months and they are flying by, but Rachel is almost 10 months old now. The two sisters are best of friends and it is beautiful to watch their interactions with each other. The more Rachel develops and learns new things, the more Madeleine roots her on and celebrates her. We love watching her develop too, although the early crawling (at 7 1/2 months) and standing up and now "cruising" have made our lives more complicated.

In January we took a trip to South Bend, Indiana to visit Ann's parents and introduce the girls to snow. Madeleine had some memorable quotes. On a day when the high temperature was 12 degrees she asked "Why are there clouds coming out of my mouth?" She spent about 4 minutes on the outdoor ice skating rink before calling it quits ("I'm getting cold and this is very hard") but she wanted to go back the next day. Making a snowman/snowpyramid was a big hit, as was Grandma's hot chocolate when she came inside.

Back in Alameda, we've welcomed three new chickens into our flock. Madeleine chose all the names: Scramble (named after the one who died last fall), Pancake and Waffle, now bring our flock up to six. We are enjoying glimpses of spring, time to work in the garden, and the prospect of Rachel's first birthday soon to come.

We've posted new photos here:

October 2009:

November 2009:

December 2009:

January 2010:

Rachel is already five months old. Her newborn infancy has come and gone, and now our girl is wanting to grow up and PLAY! She does full-body wriggles when excited, and she flaps her arms and legs when she watches her big sister Madeleine run, jump, dance, etc.

She seems eager to eat solid food (she positively panted and drooled over our pesto pasta the other night), but in the meantime she sucks on her big toes a lot. A couple weeks ago she began rolling over and she's never looked back.  She loves to practice making new sounds, and we swear sometimes she vocalizes "just to hear herself talk." We are still yearning for the time when she will begin sleeping through the night and taking more than 30 minute naps.

Now that Madeleine has started pre-school two mornings a week, Rachel gets some special one-on-one time with mom, which we hope makes up for all the time she gets set down so we can get something done around the house. In the last month, Rachel's Grandpa Naffziger got to hold her quite a bit during his two week-long visits. Look at just a few of the newest photos and you'll see why we call her our "little Pauline girl."

We've posted new photos here:

Month 4:

Month 5: