Water quality.

This is a big and cumbersome topic. Emily Fitzgerald who works at Microbial Earth Farms as our education and communications co-ordinator has a very keen sense of smell. She has repeatedly mentioned that she was not happy with the smell of the water at our house, as well as at her friend's house, and that it worried her.

After visiting Canada for several weeks, we drove back and entered Texas through Texarkana, which had the worst water we had experienced for several weeks. Thank God Austin's water quality is better than that, but I again personally realized an increase in headaches and drowsiness, which could easily have been attributed to the heat. We decided to install a chloramine and flouride plus standard filter water filtration system under the counter. Wow, that has made a big difference in how I feel. Many of our friends can tell the difference with the "taste" test. Sometimes we cannot appreciate the difference of something until we actually experience it. Please check out our water page  under soil improvement for more information.

We know from our work with microbes that water quality is a huge factor in our success.  Rain water is always the best, but with such climate variability, our risks of poorer water quality increase.  People who own fish tanks know that they cannot use city water untreated or it will kill the fish.  Some species of animals at the zoo cannot be given city water.  We cannot use city water in the production of bokashi or comost tea/extract.

Various customers and friends have discussed this topic with us over the last 6 months.  Gardens that are regularly watered with city water just don't perform like those that get regular rain water.  If we don't have enough rainwater, what do we do?  If city water is the only viable option, then we must use it to protect our plants.  Plants, and the microbes in our soil, will not thrive with city water, but they will stay alive.  We prefer that they thrive on city water and the way to do that is to install water filtration.

When it comes to microbes, whether they be in the soil, or in your stomach, clean water is huge.