Dryland harvesting home hacks sun, rain, food & surroundings

When Brad Lancaster and his brother bought their home in burghal Tucson, the streetscape was a arenaceous place, bare of copse or any vegetation. In 1998, Lancaster took a handsaw and cut abroad allotment of his barrier to alter rainwater into the alone space. Aback the sidewalk in advanced of his home sprouted with life- mesquite and palo verde trees- abounding of his neighbors capital to cut their curbs as well. Lancaster approached the burghal to argue them to accomplish his baptize harvesting address legal. It took three years for the burghal to change the rules. Today, three abode of the neighbors on his block are harvesting rainwater.
Tucson receives aloof 12 inches of rainwater per year, but Brad argues this is enough. “Tuscan has over a 4,000 year history of connected agriculture admitting this actuality a drylands arid community. Bodies advance creating crops, domesticating crops that are abnormally acclimatized to this climate, but in beneath than 100 years we about wiped it out by acceptable codicillary on actual extractive pumps, extracting the groundwater, breach the river to the admeasurement that we absolutely dead our river, we alone our groundwater table over 300 anxiety so we didn’t appetite to bung into that paradigm.”
Today, Lancaster’s burghal Tucson adjacency (Dunbar Springs) is animate with drought-tolerant, food-bearing copse and association autumn from the butt cactus (chutneys, beard conditioner from fruit), the annoying pear (juice, abstract & accustomed sweeteners from fruit), the ironwood timberline (peanut-flavored nuts, candy like edamame), jojoba (oil, coffee substitute), mesquite (“native carob”, flour) and sweets from the “iconic Saguaro cactus”.
Lancaster’s analysis continues on his property: he calls the eighth of an acre armpit that he shares with his brother’s family, his “living laboratory”. Actuality he plants about the greywater from his alfresco shower, bathtub and abrasion machine. He captures 100,000 gallons of rainwater per year from his and his brother’s roof. He cooks with a solar oven and heats his baptize application a 2 salvaged, accepted gas heaters afraid (stripped of insulation and corrective black) to aggregate the sun’s rays.
Lancaster adapted the old barn on the acreage into his 200-square-foot “garottage” (garage cottage) or “shondo” (shed condo). About all the copse and abstracts are salvaged. The garage’s aboriginal cinder block walls weren’t cloistral so he added 2 inches of cream insulation on the exoteric to actualize “ex-sulation”. Lancaster relies mostly on acquiescent solar to calefaction and air-conditioned his home, admitting he uses an evaporative acknowledgment (swamp cooler) on hotter evenings.
His kitchen is outside: a rainwater-plumbed sink, a afraid chest-freezer-turned-refrigerator and a propane camping stove.
His toilet is addition experiment. “You can currently get a admixture toilet that is bogus and NSF approved, but it costs $3000 or more. So we capital to try some models that alone amount $300.” His models accommodate a urine-diverting butt admixture toilet (the urine is adulterated to baptize plants and the begrimed amount sits for a year or added afore actuality acclimated as fertilizer) and a water-less continuing urinal.
“We’re aggravating to use our property, our backyard and aggregate as affectionate of an beginning lab, a amphitheater and again we’re aggravating to allotment our successes with the association at large,” explains Lancaster. “When we started accomplishing this we were the alone association accomplishing this now 75% of association active on our block are harvesting baptize for artery trees. And you can go to aloof about any adjacency in Tucson and you will see at atomic one being accomplishing it and already that one being starts added bodies will see, collaborate and they’ll alpha accomplishing it. You bulb that berry and it spreads.”
To allotment added capacity of his acquaintance for bodies in added cities and countries, Lancaster has accounting a how-to appearance book “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond” (in English and Arabic)
“If we’re activity to accompany aback our Santa Cruz River, a river that acclimated to breeze year annular through burghal Tucson for bags of years, I anticipate we can accompany it aback by every backyard is a accidental sub-watershed to the beyond watershed and the added analytical accumulation we get the greater the success of the all-embracing endeavor.”
- Brad’s website:
- Agrarian Food Growing and Harvesting:
- Brad’s youtube channel: --
- Street-Runoff Harvesting:
- Greywater Harvesting (including tips on soaps and detergents to use:
- Multi-use Rain Garden Bulb Lists:
Original story: dryland-harvesting-home-hacks-sun-rain-food-surroundings