Water

Here at the finca (farm), we don't have public water service.  We exclusively use rainwater and springwater for all of our bathing, dishwashing, toilet-flushing, clotheswashing, and animal-watering needs.  For drinking and cooking purposes, we have large water bottles (think: the water cooler at the office) that we refill in the city weekly.
Thanks to La Niña weather phenomenon, we had way more than enough water in our numerous, enormous, underground cisterns and above-ground tanks.  Our director (and neighbor) told us we were free to take long showers, flush the toilet even if it's just "yellow" (instead of "letting it mellow"), not have to save our shower water for flushing, not have to use water from the rain barrels to wash clothes... in fact, we needed more space in the cisterns to hold all that water!
Last week, he went up to check on a cistern that he had left filling from overflow from another tank.  Somehow the water is disappearing, even though he didn't find any leaks.  Now, instead of our overflowing supply, it looks like we only have less than three months' supply of water!

So now, we need to be very conservative with our shower and dish water; not using as much, and reusing it for flushing purposes.  And, as much as we like sun, we need rain.  We also need to find out if there is a leak, and fix it!

Two and a half years ago, when I first came up to live at the farm, there was a drought.  I'm talking severe dry spell.  All the neighbors were periodically buying truckloads of water to fill their tanks.  It wasn't raining, and the springs weren't flowing.  This went on for a few months.  We had to be good stewards of the little water we had, but even as frugal as we were (only washing clothes in the city, for example, and taking bucket-baths), there was no way we could still have water, because on top of the climatic situation, we discovered that the cistern was cracked.
Yet, we never ran out of water.  I learned to trust God as faithful provider of water.  (Jehovah Jireh H20?)

So now, it's time to conserve and be wise.  But it's also time to trust; not to worry!