A couple of months ago, my husband took a really challenging listing. The property is way out in a gorgeous, rural area between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, in our "high desert" New Mexico environment, and the property has no well! Nope, no community water, either. And the owner hasn't been hauling water!

This property has an amazing, well-engineered rainwater catchment system that has been providiing all this client's household water needs for several years! This 3500 gallon system has handled nearly all of the household water needs since 2006, including kitchen uses, bathing, washing dishes and clothes, etc. Pretty impressive in the desert!

Here in New Mexico, water is such a crucial resource, iWn high demand and with limited availability. If this property at 74 Snowy Owl can get all its water needs filled by a rainwater catchment system, in a desert climate, surely the rest of us could use rainwater catchment for at least some of our needs? Maybe at least for watering lawns and flower beds, or maybe even hook it up for household uses like laundry? We desperately need to conserve water here in the Southwest; this would be an ideal means to achieve that end. Maybe we wouldn't need to "go green" by getting rid of all our green landscaping in favor of xeriscaping if we just kept our lawns and shrubs green with rainwater that otherwise is wasted, washing down the streets and into the sewer systems! Maybe Mayor Chavez wouldn't have to worry about people watering on the wrong day, or at the wrong time, if folks were just watering in an eco-friendly way, with what they had stored from what poured off their roofs during the last monsoon!

For more information about the listing on Snowy Owl, in the Albuquerque East Mountains, or other rural properties, just check out our rural properties website!