Well, feeling rather weird at the moment as I’m visiting my folks back in South Wales. 

It’s lovely to be with family and friends but I am having difficulty relaxing my ‘save everything’ habits.   It’s the little things I’m really noticing.

My folks are lucky having a 1/2 acre garden so do grow some of their own veggies but the wet summer has reduced crops of just about everything this year.  It’s too weird not basing supper plans on whats good in the garden.  Instead we can have anything, as its all there at Sainsbury’s.  Now don’t get me wrong I’m enjoying it, but am feeling guilty about food miles and cost too.  It will be good to get back to mountain life where vegetable shopping means buying potatoes and mushrooms, and collecting pretty much everything else from our own land.  We’ve yet to provide ourselves with more than a three month supply of spuds and still haven’t got round to investing in a mushroom spore impregnated log though I long for one (though I’m not convinced of success in our climate).                                                                                                                                                                .

The other biggy is water waste.  At our finca we collect rainwater from the house roof for everything except drinking (which we get from a local spring).  If we run out, which tends to happen a few times in the summer, we need to get a tractor to bring us more.  As this costs us cash we are very frugal with our agua.  The washing machine outlet is used for watering veggies while the shower and wash basin outlet heads off, via a rather rustic filtration system to a pond.  The pond is great as it has increased our frog and toad population – lovely gardener’s friends that they are.  It also gives us spare water to use on flowering plants, as the herbs & veggies being more valuable to us get top priority in the watering stakes!  Even our dirty washing up water is kept in a bucket under the sink along with kitchen scraps and composted.  Its so dry at our place its necessary to keep the compost heap moist enough to do its thing.

As well as recycling waste water, we have dramatically reduced our consumption of it in the first place.  Taps are never left running, washing up is not rinsed, The washing machine is always on a short, cold, eco cycle, we have a dry compost loo and the shower is not used as a place to relax, meditate, zone out and just get an all over massage, NO, it is a place to wash and go! 

Here though in Wales water is everywhere.  My folks aren’t on a meter so flush as much as they like – ALL the time, rinse and empty waste water straight down the drain.  They know all the water pumped about the UK uses energy and to be fair use much less water than they did when I was a kid living with them, hey they even have water butts on each of the three greenhouses and two sheds (yes my dad has lots of things to store).  But still its not the same.  I am continually aware of all the water I’m letting literally go down the drain and cannot help but feel it incredible that all the water used by UK households is of drinking quality.  Why aren’t newbuilds always provided with a rainwater collection system, even if it just fed outside taps or toilets?  It’s been raining all day and eveything here seems to be damp and mossy at all times so there’s no shortage of water at the moment, in this part of the world but still it seems a waste.

That being said – today I had the longest shower I’ve had for years and tomorrow I might wash my jeans on a long warm cycle.  Well I need to get everything clean enough for the next four years on our mountain without much water!