One On One Time - Dad Daughter - kayaking & Walking

I'm lucky that I spend a lot of time with my children, being a stay at home dad has been one of the best decisions of my life. 

One thing I always enjoy is when I get to spend a bit of one-on-one time with one of them. Finding time to do this can be hard as they're quite a tight little group! 

Just lately, to add to the stupid amount of things I try to fit into my life, I've become a new Beaver Scout leader. I'm only learning at the moment and I've managed to rope in a couple of good friends as well so we're all learning together. It's been great fun so far with loads of activities and it's been brilliant to see my eldest interact with her peers in a way I wouldn't normally.

Prepping On A Budget - Water

It's okay, you can put your tin foil hats away, I'm not digging a bunker, well not yet anyway... This is a post about keeping three days supply of water ready at hand.

I worry about how unprepared people in general seem to be. And I'm not talking about for a coming war or zombie apocalypse, I'm talking just for the bumps in the road of everyday living.

What Would You Do For Water?

Tewesbury, a town not too far away had a main water pipe burst yesterday. 

This has left 10,000 homes and businesses without water and thirteen school.

Picture from Severn Trent Water

Severn Trent have set up three distribution points hand have handed out tens of thousand of bottles of water.
Supermarkets have also been stripped clear of any bottled water as people start to panic buy.

This also happened a few months ago in Chelthenham where 7,000 were left without water.

In both cases the water board reacted quickly and sets up points for people to collect water. But it does make me wonder how much they have stored up for this sort of emergency and how long it would last for.

Water storage is certainly an area I need to work on.

Do you have emergency water stored?

Or your own supply?

What would you do if the distribution points ran dry in an emergency?

Temporary Water Job

 The one field I rent hasn't got a water supply. 

To combat this I use a "water cube", which holds a fair amount of water, but I have to pick it up with the tractor, fill it up, then take it back down to the sheep. A bit of a hassle and they seem to be drinking a fair bit at the moment, what with the hot weather and still having their woolly jumpers!

Water cube

 The field next door has a water trough but it's some distance away from where I want it (the other field also has a brook but it's fenced one side so this field has no access. So I decided the other night to run a temporary water line to the cube to save using the tractor and make things a bit quicker and easier. 

The hose pipe goes over the bridge to the brook

Runs up the field 40 yards

Changes over to alkathene pipe (as I did't have enough pipe of either).

The alkathene then runs up the field some more

To the other water trove that's been disconnected. 

I normally hate temporary jobs, but this is one that should save me a lot of time in the long run. If I owned the field then I'd add water straight away, but as it's rented it's really not worth it. 

Anyone else make do with temporary jobs to provide water to their stock or crops?