MyGardenPal Blog

Lower dam site

One of the goals for our water catchment was to create two new dams on the property.  The first of these is in an area at the bottom of the property where there was a considerable erosion.  Most of the water running down the hill is channeled through this area before leaving the property via a ‘summer creek’ that runs along the lowest point of our land.

Lower dam after first rain event

This area is at the foot of the existing horse arena, just off of the road and about 2 meters lower than the road vertically.  The area has a few coco’s palms and eucalyptus trees.  One of our goals is to convert the horse arena into a large flat garden with about half of this to be used as a community garden.  Putting a dam in this area close to the arena and just off of the road opened up the idea  of making a new entrance to the property for the community gardeners to use.  The wall of the new dam going into this area would be the driveway.

The day after the new dam is finished we get rain.  And it continues to rain for the next few days putting a hold on other earthworks.  I was actually hoping to have a few weeks without rain to allow

Dam spillway version 1

the new dam to ‘bake in’ if that makes any sense.  Probably not, but this is how I pictured it in my head.  The quite heavy rain event was actually great as it showed us that, hey the dam holds water, and that it does indeed capture most of the current run off from the hill.  The first version of the spill way from this dam was a v-drain (see photo) which we changed to a flat spillway after this first rain.

Spillway version 2

The dam wall is still about a meter below the road height making the ramp up to the road quite steep.  When wet this is quite slippery so we are intending on getting in a load of builders rubble (broken bits of concrete taken from construction sites) to press into the top of the wall.  This will provide a much harder surface to drive on.

On the lower side of the dam our neighbours had already planted a creeping bamboo, presumably to block their view of the mess that was there before the dam was built.  I love bamboo and this stuff was already starting to spread to cover the area between the dam wall and the property line.  It should look great once it grows up.

Bamboo along fence

Bamboo with dam

We intend to put in more clumping bamboo in various places around the property.  It makes for a great wind break and privacy screen and can be used for all sorts of things from fencing to irrigation pipes.  And it looks great!

This lower dam is now full after a week of rain, and the spillway is working as planned.  So far so good.  Once we get the builders rubble spread over the top of the wall we will start driving over it to see how it fairs.  The excavator used this driveway as its exit path to get off of the property.

Here are a few more photos of the dam at various stages.

There is no sweeter sight than a swale on contour.  OK, there are probably lots of other sweeter sights, but still, it is a fine sight, especially after our initial efforts.

Swale perfection!

Having the swales pegged out made it much easier for the excavator to take the right path across the hill, and the operator, armed with new knowledge did an excellent job of fixing up the bad swales and turning them into a thing of beauty (yes, I need to get out more).

Notice how wide the bed of the swale is now compared to the photos in the last post, and how they are on contour across the hill.  This is how a swale is supposed to be.  We put the overflow spill for the swales out the end so any excess water should spill out the ends and flow to a lower swale or into a dam rather than go over the swale mound and cause erosion.   Depending on your situation you might want a spillway elsewhere along the swale.  If I were to have one in the middle for example (if this was the best position for whatever reason), I’d probably line the spillway with rock to prevent erosion due to the steepness of my land, but the way we have these spilling out the ends should work well.  A rain event will answser that question, at which point we can fine tune.

Worried Koala

During the earth surgery we did have to lose a few trees, but as we will be adding at least 1000 new ones so I wasn’t too concerned, plus from a permaculture perspective the resident eucalyptus trees weren’t too useful.  We will be putting in many ‘nitrogen fixing’ trees (primarily legumes) that will help renew the soil as we chop and drop the foliage to create compost and release the nitrogen from the tree roots back into the soil.  In addition to the new trees, we have voluntarily segragated off about 3 acres of the property got the ‘Land for Wildlife’ program.  This means we leave this land as native bush so native flora and fauna can still thrive.  The koala in the photo might have been a little worried though, with a giant yellow tree eater stomping around.

Swales next to driveway

The swales in the photo to the right capture the water running down our driveway.  The driveway has drains that now feed into the swale rather than just running over the ground.

I think I mentioned I bought some chickens recently.  Of course we have had chickens before but they kept ending up dead.  From the last batch of three chickens there is only  one survivor – a tough old chick who has taken over the dog bed as her nest.  One egg a day wasn’t cutting it for our a family of four (plus the odd long stay visitor), so it was time to get more chicks.

To try to give them a chance to live at least until egg laying age I put the fluffy little yellow things in a cordoned off area in my office (a granny flat separate from the main house).  The stink soon got to me so after a week or two it was time to move them to the chook house proper.  My daughter Sai and I did a good survey of the chook pen.  We covered the top to keep the hawks we saw circling out, we

Full snake

covered up all the holes to keep the snakes out, and poked around in the pen to make sure all was nice and safe for the little fellows.

Ten chicks go in, four come out.  There was a hungry python hidden in the chook house (how we missed it I have no idea) and when

I went up the next day to check on them I find one very fat snake.

I managed to catch it and put it in a box and let it go in the bush about 10 kilometers away.  Hopefully it won’t find its way back looking for another easy feed.

Snake in a box

Here he is in the box.  He (or she?) wasn’t too happy and had a strike at my daughter, but luckily missed his target, before I put the lid on.

He was moving pretty slow when I dumped him in the bush.  I guess having six chickens in your gut will slow you down.

Free snake!

In my last post I made reference to a water catchment plan based on Permaculture principals.  Today I want to explain in a little more detail of what we are intending to do to help transform our property from a ‘bush block’ to a permaculture based organic farm that will one day produce enough food for us to be self sufficient (at least vege-wise).

In order to transform the hard rocky ground to fertile soil we need to halt the rapid ‘sheet’ flow of water, and try to capture as much as possible rather than let it just run off the property taking any nutrients with it.   So the goal is to slow down the flow of water and prevent erosion, and also capture water so it can slowly soak into the ground.   As our property is relatively steep it was determined the best way to slow the water flow down would be to cut a number of swales across the hill on countour so that the water sits in the swale and from here seeps into the ground.  Also, over time the swale will fill with organic material that will break down into a rich compost.

We also wanted to capture as much of the water as we could, so we planned on putting two additional dams in place as well as making our existing dam bigger.  All of this was planned out by Craig from the Permaculture Institute in northern NSW.

Having a plan is good.  As the saying goes, if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.  But it is also very important to make sure your earth works contractor understands the plan.  As we found out, most earth works folks are not familiar with the idea of having swales on contour.  Unless they have experience with permaculture, or keyline type earth surgery, they are more than likely experienced working on civil projects such as cutting in new roads, or new housing estates and the like.  With these ‘normal’ civil projects they try to take water away from the site, the exact opposite of what we want to do here.  So it is REALLY important to make sure your earth works contractor really understands what you want before he starts to operate on your property.  I found this out the hard way.  I was sure the excavator operator knew what I was saying, but it turns out we were not on the same page.  When I said “swale,” he heard “swale drain”, even though I said I wanted them on contour and that I was trying to retain the water.  It just didn’t sink in, at least not at first.

Survey pegs on-contour

Lesson:  Mark out where you want the earth works to be.

A common sense thing to do before any earth works are started is to get a dumpy level (surveying tool that measures contour levels) to peg out exactly where you want to place the swales and dams.  This will ensure your swales are on-contour (meaning flat across the hill so water will sit level in the swale across the length of the swale).  I have a bad habit of just jumping into things and figure it out as I go along.  As I’ll explain in a future post, this was a mistake, as I did not mark out exactly how I wanted the swales to run.  In my defence this is because I didn’t really have a clue myself.  I have never done anything like this before so figured the expert (the earth works guy) would know what I wanted when I told him and that he’d just go ahead and do it.  Wrong, wrong, wrong!

So the take away from this is to get a dumpy level, get a friend to help you peg out the swales on countour (or, if you are not as monetarily challenged as I am, pay a surveyor to do it for you).  I was lucky enough to have a good friend who had access to the surveying equipment, and the brains to know how to use it (thanks Matt!).  So after a false start (next blog entry I’ll discuss this), we pegged out all places that needed to be cut which made life much easier for the excavator driver.

Erosion

Being a property on the side of a hill, and formerly having horses as tenants, our property has hard, stony, dry compacted earth.  For us to have any hope of growing anything other than natives we needed to perform some major earth surgery!

Try digging into this!

With water catchment plan in had (designed by Craig Gallagher from the Permaculture Institute) it was time to bring in the ultimate big boys toys – earth moving equipment!

Being a thrifty soul, and having a thirst for adventure, my first thought was to go and buy a small excavator (I was thinking around 3 tons), do the work myself, then sell the machine – hopefully for a profit – with the end result being free earthworks.

However, there were two problems with this approach.

1.  I know absolutely nothing about earthworks or the tools to use (and after watching a professional I probably would have killed myself in the process)

2.  It turns out that the 3 ton excavator I was intending to buy would have been “no better than using a bucket and crowbar” (I’ll explain why below)

I’m lucky enough to have friends from a variety of backgrounds, one with way more experience at this sort of thing that me, who quickly talked me out of this foolishness and set me up with a good price from a local earthworks contractor.  Two days later a truck turns up with a 20 ton excavator on the back.   When I told the driver of my original plan to buy my own 3 tonner and do it myself, he just laughed and made the comment about the bucket and crowbar I quoted above.  You see, there is a LOT of rock we needed to cut through and this HUGE digger even had moments of hesitation trying to get through some of it.  More on this in another post…

Another tip for anyone about to transform their property as radically as we are is to take lots of photos before, during and after the process.  You will be astounded at the changes and it is great to look back on how things used to be (assuming it all goes to plan!).

In the spirit of this I am posting a few “Before” photos below so that you will have a good indication of the dramatic change in the landscape of our property as I post more entries.  As we go I’ll try to match up a before and after photo to give a better indicator of the changes taking place.  Although one mistake I made was to not establish point-of-view positions to take photos from the same perspective everytime so the change would be very evident.

Top paddock

Looking up the hill

Towards house from road

For my next post I’ll describe the plan in more detail, and provide updates on the earth surgery.

The foundations and workings of the permaculture way that we are going to implement on our property can be visualised in this video “Greening of the Desert II“.  This video is about half and hour long and shows the process of permaculture on a desert property in Jordan.  The property was first developed with permaculture 10 years ago and was viewed world wide in “The Greening of the Desert”.  Now this video gives a recap on the initial design and then revisits the property in October ’09 and catches up with what has happened 6 years later.

A must see video for anyone that cares about the future of our world.

These are the photos of the horse arena that we are going to start the veggie patch on.

Veggie Patch to be here

There is irrigation up to one end of the arena that comes from a spring fed creek. 

We are going to start off with a small patch about 10 meters x 10 meters and see how we go.

Since this land is on a firm rock base with sand we need to build it up over the next few months with organic matter before we can plant.

At first we thought we would have to buy in some organic soil by the truck load and spread it over the site.  But after some chats to various organic experts, namely Daniel Sheridan from On Foot Foods (expert in permaculture), also Greg Pevey from Wormtec, (check out his amazing work here www.wormtec.com.au), we have decided to try a couple of their suggestions.  

First we are going to invest in a worm farm.  The ones Wormtec recommend are the hanging sling type.  This costs about $180 AUD.  We will need more of these later but we are going to start with just one.  The worm castings taken from the bottom on the sling will provide natural bacteria to break down the Lucen and together this mixture should provide enough natural material to support a veggie patch.  Have a read of Wormtecs’ site as there is so much supporting material there to provide information about how this will feed our veggies and keep away pests naturally.  Click here to see how easy it is to keep a worm farm.

Then we are going to drive about 5 minuets up the road and collect free used horse hay from a polo club.  We will then  spread this over the sand at about 20 centermeters thick.

Once we have some worm castings this will go over the hay and sit for about 12 weeks before we can plant.

Well lets get going!