The Umbrella: Summer 2020
THE UMBRELLA:
A catch-all of resources,
events, media, and more
from Brad Lancaster
In this time of Covid-19 and spending more time at home to be safe, I’ve been grateful for the solace, inspiration, and bountiful sustenance my water-harvesting gardens, landscape, and neighborhood forest has provided me, my family, friends, and neighbors.
Record summer heat and drought has resulted in our Santa Catalina mountains burning, but we have also had record harvests of mesquite pods, saguaro fruit, prickly pear fruit, cholla cactus flower buds, and barrel cactus fruit in our water-harvesting landscapes and forests that made the most of our winter rains, extending the availability of that winter moisture long into the hot, dry summer.
And while we have only had a fraction of our normal summer rains, we’ve made the most of what little precipitation has fallen, wasting not a single drop.
The home time has also given me a chance to catch up on a number of local projects that have global reach. For more on that keep reading, plant the rain, and make sure you are registered to vote!
Check out the new Neighborhood Foresters website:
www.DunbarSpringNeighborhoodForesters.org
Its a great resource for anyone or any neighborhood in the growing/stewarding of rain-irrigated, community-building, native food forests and reciprocal life.
Simple & Effective Gravity-fed Greywater Harvesting Systems Legalized in Utah
—and How You Can Help Make Such Change Where You Are
Get the story here
Recent podcast interviews with Brad
• Urban Farm U podcast 540: Brad Lancaster on Planting the Rain
• Permaculture For the Future podcast 003: Harvesting Rainwater For a Greener Future with Brad Lancaster
Work on Spanish edition of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1 is underway
The book is titled Cosecha de Agua de LLuvia para Zonas Áridas y Más Allá, and will be published as an eBook to make it more accessible and affordable, since eBooks avoid paper, warehousing, and shipping costs. This is key, as the Spanish edition will be longer than the English edition since Spanish tends to be wordier than English (and often poetic).
Work on eBook edition of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2 is underway
Hope to have this out sometime this November.
For the eBook edition of Volume 1 see here
The new full-color editions of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volumes 1 and 2 won book awards
Get the story here
If you’ve read, and enjoyed, the new full-color editions of my books please rate and review them online
This really helps improve the books’ visibility and accessibility. You can do so on the books’ webpages of various on-line sellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble (even if you did not buy the book from them). Goodreads is another great site to leave ratings and reviews. Once on the link, scroll down and you’ll see my books and the review links. Reviews can be as short as a single word, sentence, or paragraph.
Please spread the word on how to buy my books direct from me at deep discount
By cutting out the costs of middle men I can direct more resources from direct book sales to the creation of more books, revisions, and other resources such as those on this website. And when you buy direct from me, you also get signed copies! See: https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/shop/
Recent blog essays by Brad
• Cool Yourself, Your Neighborhood, and the Planet with the Water-Harvesting Soil-Carbon Sponge
• Revised and Expanded List of Plants for Chickens in the Sonoran Desert
• Planting, Harvesting, Eating, Enjoying, and Learning from Cholla Cactus
New Brad social media outlets
• Brad’s instagram