The city of Columbia is giving away rain barrels. You still have to purchase the hardware, but you can pick up a 55-gallon barrel from stormwater educator Mike Heimos. Give him a call at 573-817-6447 or email him at mjheimos@gocolumbiamo.com to arrange for a pick-up.
Mike Heimos leads a group through a section of Flat Branch Creek to pick up bottles, cigarette butts and other debris that washed into the waterway.
After you pick up your barrel, you can watch Heimos video about how to assemble it, or check out my slide show and story at the Missourian.com.
Posted by Annette Triplett @ CoMo Homestead on July 30, 2010 at 10:10 pm
No way! FREE rain barrels?!? I am all over this! Thanks for the heads up!
Posted by Robin on August 27, 2010 at 6:29 pm
OK, your last post in the Missourian guilted me into posting a comment. You mentioned rain barrels and compost bins. My hudband and I installed 2 homemade rain barrels at our chicken/turkey pens. During a good 1″ rain, both 55 gallon barrels fill to over flowing from the run off from the chicken house and storage shed. We also installed a 275 gallon “tank in cage” rain barrel to use for our sheep pasture. We catch water runoff from our barn.
Grass clippings from our 1acre+ yard are raked or “swept” and stored in a grass bin in the barn. We use that for mulch for the gardens (gardens were a total loss this year due to rain), add to the compost bin, litter for the chicken and turkey houses, bedding for the sheep, litter in the chicken/turkey brooder, and filler for the nest boxes. That “yard waste” is too valuable for me to toss! And after the chickens, turkeys and sheep are finished with it, I toss some of the litter into the compost bin or on the garden for fertilizer.
We are doing what we can to raise our garden and animals “natural”, can’t afford the organic route 100%. I do use organic remedies for the animals. If something is amiss in the garden, I use organic or natural remedies for that also.
We have electric net fencing to keep the poultry and sheep in check. Those are powered by solar charged batteries,as is the led lighting in the chicken house. Now if I could just afford a wind turbine,
Keep up the good work.
Robin