water, water everywhere - and that's a good thing!

here at Framboise Manor we are fortunate to live on a beautiful, clean river/estuary (empties into the ocean) that is fed by 6 mountain streams. being that we are 5 minutes from the ocean - we have water everywhere!

most of the members of our two communities (Framboise/Fourchu) have spent the money to have springs and wells dug. thankfully the Manor came with an already dug 4-crock concrete well. although it is safe to drink - it is full of minerals and a lovely shade of brown - not too enticing-looking in a glass! although all of our plants appreciate the mineral-laden water! and although all of our community members have offered us the use of their springs - we have no need. we have our own special, little set-up that we have been using for years now. we used this set-up back in the city and although a lot of people tell us that it seems complicated and would take a lot of time - we say back - heck - we wash our own clothes by hand for the love of cheeze whiz! and boiled snow to flush our toilet all winter! we love a little work!

we use our rainbarrels to collect delicious, salt-filled, mostly un-polluted cape breton rainwater and then run that water through our two Berkeys. if you have never heard of a Berkey Water Filtration System - go look it up and then get yourself one. or two. they are the absolute best water filtration system out there as far as i am concerned! and i have left probably 2,000 comments all over the net about the Berkey's and ya know what - it's probably high-time that they started paying me for all of this free advertising! naw ', 'jes teasin' witchya'!

we LOVE our Berkeys. we have used them for over 4 years now and they have never failed us! we also stocked up on a life-time supply of filters. not a purchase that we made all at once, mind you, but that is what prepping is about - planning and budgeting for your preps.

anway - we collect rainwater, something we are never short of here, and run it through the Berkeys. then we pour the filtered water into 5 gallon standard water jugs and place a jug in our water cooler dispenser. easy as pie. and delicious!

here's a pic of our high-tech set-up (jambaloney was an IT specialist, remember!). we put in a brand new gutter-system all around our roof, collect the water in this rainbarrel and fill the top of the Berkeys with it. in about 2 hours, the water is filtered, and then we put it in the 5-gallon jug hidden underneath the green towel. the green towel is our high-tech way of preventing algae from ever growing.



it takes 2 days to fill a 5-gallon jug as we only do this once in the morning. if we did it twice a day - we could fill a 5-gallon jug in a day. anyway, once the jug is full, we move it to the dark area of the basement until it is ready to be used. we have three 5-gallon jugs always at the ready, at any moment. when we run out of water in our cooler - we just haul up a jug from the basement. here's the water cooler - it works pretty good too!



it is just a standard, ordinary water cooler - no fancy gadgets, no ice-making machine, it doesn't make hot water. we don't need hot water from our water cooler. one nice feature though is that one button provides freezing cold water, whereas the other button provides room temperature water. so we don't have to use a lot of electricity to keep the whole jug kept at a freezing temperature - just the water in the reservoir is kept freezing.

and here is a pic of our little well. that little well pumps water 150ft away from the house at a 30ft elevation - that little thing works wonders! we always have water as soon as you turn on a tap - well except for last winter when all of our un-insulated pipes froze. but we have rectified that situation!!!! and that was not the well's fault!



this spring, we plan to begin installing a solar/wind system. but, being that we have those 2 beautiful Berkeys - we can run river water, ocean water, melt snow, marsh water, pond water and even puddle water through it - so at this point - we don't need to store water which makes more room for food storage and seeds.

we understand how fortunate we are to be surrounded by a variety of water sources - and that is a very good thing!