Living without running water is definitely a challenge. You get used to it; things like composting toilets, doing the dishes with a bottle of water, washing your hands outside under the water cubie, filling duck bowls from buckets. And so far, since we’ve lived here (which has been just over 9 months), we have not paid a dime for water. There are a few places in town where you can fill up 5 or 7 gallons at a time and no one minds. So that’s what we’ve been living with.

Then, our very generous neighbors gave us a 125-gallon cistern. We didn’t have the truck at the time, so the cistern just kind of sat for quite a while. We didn’t have any way to take it and fill it. But now, with Maximus, we have that ability! So we loaded up the cistern and now we can fill it up for all of… one dollar. It costs one whole dollar for 128 gallons of water. There are lots of people in our area that haul water, and almost everyone has a cistern in the back of their truck. Now we look like we belong!

So even if we fill up once a week, that’s $4 a month for water. How silly is that? Our monthly water bill in Utah was $40. Granted, we don’t have the convenience of running water in the house (yet), but only paying a few bucks a month for water is worth it.

So now, we’re able to back the truck right up to the garden, we got a hose attachment for the cistern, and we can water the garden straight from the truck. It’s a pretty rad system. And we’re much less stressed about our water supply and how often we need to fill our little water cubies. We even have enough to fill Amelia’s little kiddie pool so she can get a good swim!

We feel like real farmers now: up before the sun rises to water the garden, and usually in bed at sunset. Those little green babies need lots of water, especially with all the sun we’ve been having lately. It’s like summertime now! Sunny and 70s!