What about Water?

I can vaguely remember reading "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in high school.  The poem had a line in it that you'll remember:

"Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink."

It is quite ironic, because the quote in the poem describes the tragedy of the sailors being on a boat in the middle of the water and they are dehydrated and may die of thirst if they don't find water to drink.  Drinkable water is such a precious resource - for human and animal consumption, for plants, for sanitation.  

When I was growing up, we would watch the news and if a hurricane was brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, we would fill up the bathtubs with water.  If the storm disrupted the water supply, you would have lots of water in the bathtub to boil and drink and to flush the toilets.  It was a good lesson in preparedness.

We often think about what would happen to us or to our animals if the water supply would be cut off or contaminated.  Even though, like the hero in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, we have water all around us in South Louisiana, it is muddy and would require some filtration and boiling to be drinkable.  What would we do?  What would you do?

We decided, to be on the safe side, to stockpile some water.  Think of it like an insurance policy.  We found three FOOD GRADE barrels in a town not very far from us that were selling for $20 a piece.  They have 58 gallon capacity.  We drove over and bought them and brought them home.

There is a big cap that screws on and a rubber gasket that keeps a tight seal.  You can see that these barrels came from Greece and were filled with green olives stuffed with pimento paste.  I assume they were shipped over to America and the bulk olives repackaged into individual glass jars.  I really like olives.  Not sure that I could eat 58 gallons of them, though.

I washed out the barrels pretty good and now I'll further scrub the insides and sterilize them.  Then we'll fill them up with water and store - just in case we'd ever need it.  The insurance policy you hope to never have to use.  Every six months or so, we'll rotate out the water by using the water in the barrels to irrigate our garden.  Then we'll "rinse, wash, and repeat."