My 410 gallon system consists of eight former olive shipping barrels. The first two I’ve had since the 1990s, when the City of Seattle had a program that made these 55 gallon barrels available for only $25 to any city resident.

The remaining six barrels were added to my system after moving to Vashon in 2005. These 50-gallon barrels came from Dan Borba in Tacoma–who at the time sold them for about $50.00 each. Dan was known to many as “The Rain Barrel Man.” He was a fierce environmentalist, devoting over 30 years of his life to the practice of harvesting and reusing the rain. Sadly, Dan died in March of this year. Read more about Dan in the Tacoma Daily Index.