Rain Barrel Acres Farm

I often get asked about the name of our farm. Rain Barrel Acres Farm was born of equal parts necessity and a hatred of plumbing. Plumbing is such a temperamental activity. While it may seem straightforward, attaching pipes with glue, tightening fittings, busting out the gas torch you got as a stocking stuffer ten years ago, applying flux, it is never that simple. Pipes don’t WANT to fit together, water is fickle and has issues with flow and seepage, and heating flux on copper is an art, not something to be learned via a one minute youtube video. My husband and I had attempted plumbing before, we still refer to that project as, “the unfortunate incident.”

My problem was that I had TWO outside hose bibs and FIVE acres. I hauled water in buckets for days. Boy did that get old. I even took to filling a wheel barrel with water and pushing it to various locations. I had hoses. Many hoses. They were everywhere, they were tripping hazards, and yet it still seemed better than embarking on a huge plumbing project.

One day, while making a half hearted attempt to wind up the hose (in a marriage there is always one person who thinks a hose should be neatly coiled and one person who suggests that two hours of dragging contractor hose into a circle is a waste of time since you will just be dragging it out again the next day) my husband suggested that I get rain barrels. I could even use the barn gutters to divert water into animal troughs and not have to carry water in buckets or leave hoses lying around uncoiled: hint hint. I jumped on the rain barrel bandwagon lickety split.

Early on I was contacted by a magazine after they read some articles I published about our farm. They were very excited about my ingenuity, my commitment to the earth and the recycling of the water from the sky to feed animals and gardens alike. When the nice gentleman from the magazine called me I had to explain that the real reason I had so many rain barrels was actually because married people shouldn’t attempt plumbing together. I believe his response was, “Oh.” Needless to say it was not the angle he wanted for his article.

For quite sometime I used the rain barrels (it rains a lot in the pacific northwest!) to collect water from the gutters to fill animal troughs and to dip my watering can in to water the garden (I still use them to fill water troughs). Then my dad came to visit. The hauling of water in buckets was too “Little House on the Prairie” for him and a ditch witch was rented. I now have hoses in all sorts of places. It’s a big time saver and I didn’t have to get divorced trying to attempt plumbing with my husband because men, it turns out, LIKE to work on plumbing with power tools and other men who are focused on the job at hand. (When I help my husband I often hold a tool only to set it down somewhere and run in the house to stir some thing on the stove and before running back decide to throw in a load of laundry, come back outside, look for the tool, can’t find it but notice one of the rabbits is plucking hair from her belly and immediately go find a box from Costco that is just right size for whelping, all the while leaving the husband to work alone. Distracted? Yes, I have focus issues).

In the end we got irrigation and we even got a nifty sign which my husband crafted by himself (I was recruited to help with the clamping but got distracted).

 

About Me

My name is Kim. I’m not really a morning person. A strong but perfectly brewed cup of coffee usually fixes that. See below.

 

I live on a five acre farm in northwest Portland, Oregon. The pacific northwest is a great place to grow a beautiful flower gardens and raise goats. I have a small herd of milking goats and make goat milk soap and cheese. I love soap and my family often asks, “What’s for dinner???” when I have been making soap all day. Since we can’t eat soap, I try to think up something for dinner BEFORE spending the day making soap. (This is where a crock pot comes in handy).

I make soap in small batches using high quality ingredients to produce a high quality product. The goats provide milk twice a day (we have LOTS of milk) and the milk goes into the soap to make a nourishing bar that is gentle on your skin. I also have bee hives and I use beeswax to make lotion bars and something we call “Body Yum” which is like a body butter but better.

I sell my soap at local shops and online at Etsy.com. Here is a link to my shop:

 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/RainBarrelAcresFarm?ref=search_shop_redirect

 

if all else fails…you can find it on Etsy.com by searching Rain Barrel Acres Farm.

Thanks for reading my Blog,

Great Soap comes from Happy Goats!

Cheers!

Kim.