Rain

In the words of Forrest Gump: "we been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin' rain....and big ol' fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath. Shoot, it even rained at night......"

As a matter of fact it's still raining tonight. I started to lose count after we had 12 inches in less than 72 hours, but suffice it to say, we've had A LOT of rain. With all of that rain, we've also had flash flooding.......and regular flooding. And our roof even leaked (we haven't fixed it yet because it won't stop raining long enough).

My lettuce was under water for a few days. I planted tomatoes in the mud Saturday morning.

Alas, we did have a little break in the rain last Thursday and again Saturday. So what did we do????

Hosted rain barrel making workshops!

Actually, they were scheduled long before the never ending rain, but the timing could not have been more ironic.

Thanks to a partnership with the Washington County Cooperative Extension, Cargill (the Tyson equivalent for processing turkeys headquartered here in NWA), and the school district (me), we were able to host two "make and take" workshops where people could come and learn to make a rain barrel for just $15. The co-op folks are incredibly awesome and really did most of the work, I just helped secure some funding, organized the location, hauled some barrels, and then showed up and took photographs. It was awesome.

The workshops were set up so people did most of the work on their own barrels creating a genuine sense of accomplishment when completed. Oh, and they learned while doing! Where I come from they call that experiential education :) If only we could get more of it in the schools......

Anyway, the workshops were great - 40 people in Fayetteville now have bright blue rain barrels to catch some of this rain. Two participants have already happily let me know their rain barrels are hooked up and flowing over.

Here are some photos of the happy barrel makers in action........

Thursday evening crew

Katy from the co-op extension hard at work

I've never seen such a large socket wrench, just holding it made me feel powerful

Some people had the benefit of long arms to install their hardware.....

Others did not have such long arms.

This is the principal of the school, Ms. Champion, with her husband hard at work on their new rain barrel

Stapling on the screen.

Beth especially enjoyed stapling the screen

Dan and Laura got creative with their barrel :)

Happy rain barrel owners!