Rainwater Catchment Pond for Small Family Farm

We are a small family farm in Creswell, Oregon, growing fruits and vegetables with organic and sustainable methods for a CSA that delivers fresh produce to around 90 households in our local area. We're fundraising to help cover the costs of installing a rainwater catchment pond for irrigating our crops going forwards. While this property has been the site of various agricultural enterprises for at least the past 70 years (and probably longer), we were informed by our local Watermaster late last year that it has never actually had official water rights! What that means is, we can no longer use our wells for irrigation (though we can still use the potable well water for washing produce and harvesting equipment). As you might imagine, that is a pretty big deal!

The only immediately viable option was to create a rainwater catchment pond that meets the legal requirements, meaning rainwater can only be harvested off the roof of structures and the pond must have an impermeable liner. We're grateful to "Founding Farmer" John for his advice and assistance on making that happen in short order, as we need to catch this winter's rain in order to be ready for next summer! So we now have a pond that will hold about 200,000 gallons for irrigation next year. While we were fortunate to get a loan to be able to proceed with construction, and to have a large barn complex already there with plenty of roof surface area to gather the rain, we now also have $10,000 of unexpected debt to deal with. We will also need to purchase a floating pond cover system before next summer in order to prevent excessive evaporation during the hot season. Any contributions are greatly appreciated, and if you can't spare any funds perhaps you could share this campaign with family, friends, and groups you think might be interested in helping out!

A little more about the pond from "Founding Farmer" John:

https://youtu.be/Dj50WKRR7Ds?si=b2BmWxZtwLev08mD

With heartfelt thanks,

Erica , Tom, and Isaac

Good Food Easy CSA