Hey all! The growing season is fully underway and if you’re anything like us, you’ve been relying heavily on city water to keep your crops healthy and green. With the lack of steady rainfall, a rain water catchment system is a great way to optimize the little rainfall we have gotten. That is why Eastie Farm and Tree Eastie have partnered up to bring rain barrels to the community! Through donated barrels from The Orleans Packing Co (founded in Eastie!) who makes The Great American Rain Barrel and money granted from New England Grassroots Environment Fund (NEGEF), the two organizations have been able to retrofit the barrels into fully functioning rain barrels.
Rain barrels do more than collect fresh water (sans chlorine) for our beloved plants. They also help to keep our streets and basements from flooding and our harbor and rivers clean as the diverted water helps reduce the flow of pollutants into our waterways. This in turn keeps our drinking water cleaner and safer!
Both Tree Eastie and Eastie Farm have been working with Speak for the Trees to increase East Boston’s 7% tree canopy (the lowest in the city). As part of that work we not only need to get more street trees in open tree pits (which we’ve catalogued already), but we need to maintain the new trees to ensure they survive the first two critical years where they need at least 20 gallons of water a week! If you have a nascent street tree near your home, this is a wonderful way to better guarantee its health.
As of now, we’re making the rain barrels to order, so if you would like one (or many!) please email eastiefarm@gmail.com. If you want more than one barrel, we do have fittings that allow them to daisy chain together. We should have all our branding and instructions ready by the end of next week. We’re providing them on a sliding scale from $10-$30. Rain barrels this size from a manufacturer typically cost anywhere from $75 to over $100. The barrels were donated, but the hardware does cost so if you appreciate the program and want to help fund more in the future we could certainly use the donations! We accept cash, check, or Venmo.
