We have a well but, the water from the well is full of Iron and minerals that make it undesirable, Anyone who has this issue knows how unpleasant it is to brush your teeth in the morning and the water has a rotten egg smell, oh... and white clothes are
never an option, The sinks and the toilet become stained an orange color and when you boil the water it turns black....yuck! We have a filter that helps a little, but not enough!
So how do we solve this problem? One way is to collect rain water for cleaning
and the other option is to find another source, which is what we have done for years now. We are fortunate enough to live near a tourist town with world renowned water and they offer it free for the taking at a spring source in the park, the problem with that location was that "we" became a tourist attraction and people would approach us asking to take our picture! We tried to go very early in the morning but there would be many other folks doing the same thing ( I am sure they have had the same experiences) but, we would still end up being an entertaining source from people who live in the City and have no idea that we were just carrying out our way of life!
A few months ago we found another great source in a cute little church camp and this place allows us the ability to obtain clean, cold, mountain spring water without being the talk at the dinner table in some fancy restaurant or tales from a trip to the country!
It is a lot of work to fill, carry, unload and store our water but, it has become a normal part of life for us and the water tastes great!
This water is coming right out of the spring underground and stays a consistent temperature all year, We use, clean and then re use our water jugs until they are too worn out to continue using them. I feel good about reusing and not adding to the land fill, some times we re purpose the worn out jugs for other uses around the garden or barn... they make great funnels, scoops and are great for plant protection in the garden!
We use old milk totes to contain the gallon jugs of water and generally fill around 100 jugs a trip, we Only need to make a water trip about every three months, depending on our usage; canning season requires more use than other months. These jugs are then stored in a cool, dry location until we need them in the kitchen. It is a lot of work to load, haul, unload and store all these jugs but, very worth it for good clean spring water!
