Orchard Helper

Earthworks Update

I had originally planned on doing a single post to sum up the earthworks I had done. However, it was so long I had to break it into two parts. The previous Earthworks post was all about the construction. This post is all about the swales and basins in action.

Our driveway is a nightmare in all but bone dry conditions. Our driveway is lower than the surrounding land and simply collects and stores water. The ducks appreciate that and move from the pond I built them to the driveway after every rain storm.

We appreciate it a bit less as our cars are small and have to be towed out of the mud regularly. So I finally decided to dig a trench on one side of the driveway with the tractor. We were able to do that and use the back blade to make it fairly decent. The dirt dug from the trench was put back onto the driveway to try to get it crowned. It is working fairly well.

Here is the amount of water our driveway holds after a single rainstorm. This is just a small section of our driveway as well. This water used to spread out into large ponds all over our driveway. The trench has kept the water to one side for the most part. The trench is also draining into a small retention pond.

This is one of my swales collecting driveway water. It is slowly draining away. Works great!

This i a diversion ditch we dug from the driveway and into the swale.Another angle of the diversion ditch with the swale seen through the bushes.

My ditch digging helper!

Now all of that was just one rain storm. I also took some pictures after a snow storm.

I just had to share a picture of this rabbit trail. It is insane how many rabbits we have!

This is a swale on the nut forest side of our orchard. So far I only have a few walnuts planted in it. These swales were a bit smaller than the fruit tree swales. As you get closer to the edge of our property the swales completely disappeared under the snow. They held a lot of snow for us.

Now this was the retention pond I did at the lowest point of our property. It is hard to see how deep the snow is here but it was over a foot. It filled up quite well. My son is in this picture doing snow angels in it. He loved our adventure out into the snow.

This is what the fruit tree swales looked like. They did collect a fair amount of snow.

And this is the retention basin that our driveway drains into. It is over 2 feet deep and it filled in completely. I think this shows me how great retention basins are for our property with the wind. I am going to do many, many more in 2015.

My First Earthworks

Once I caught on to permaculture it took very little time for me to put it into action. My first priority was to set up a few swales for the fruit trees I’d ordered.

It took me several days to dig out all of the swales. Of course, it may have gone faster if I hadn’t been doing it with kids on my lap. They’d inevitably fall asleep and then I’d have dead weight and drool on my arm. I’d just dig until I couldn’t take the weight anymore. The kids loved watching me dig though.

My swales are not exactly on contour. I eye balled it and then what happened in the tractor, happened. I wanted water to drain into the swales and away from the driveway. So far that has been successful, so these swales are perfect for our needs.

There is a large amount of space between my swales. I have debated extensively on what I should do. More swales? Infiltration Basins? Free space? I finally decided on infiltration basins that will have trees planted into the bottom. I think with our wind blown environment that plantings done below ground level do the best. I actually tested planting bushes into 1′ deep holes. I documented that here.

This is a pic of how far the first swale is from the house.

So this is my busy little tractor with the back blade smoothing out the base of the swales.

This is a finished swale. Not the most even berm on the downhill side of it, but I’m happy! I worried about the electrical line coming through at that low spot so I did not dig as deep and I did not plant any trees near it.

Lovely little tractor in the swale. I didn’t have the foresight to get pics WHILE I was doing it. It was only when I was done that I thought to take pictures.

Now, this is not a swale. This is a mini retention basin. This is the lowest part of our property and I was hoping to keep some water and dirt on my property and not the farmers. So this was done on both sides of that fence (which is soon to be removed). I hoped it would also help with the road which is AWFUL at all the low spots. I must say I haven’t seen a difference in the road there yet. Unfortunate! I’m going to be working more on this basin I believe. I hope to turn it into a full blown pond. Permits will be needed for that and probably an excavator.

This is from the bottom of the retention basin. You can barely see the tractor at the top of the slope there. It’s steep here but the rest of the property is pretty flat.

All told I made 4 swales and 3 basins. One of the basins is ineffective and I’ll be filling it in this spring, but the rest were wonderful. I intend to dig many, many mini basins in the future to help catch blowing snow.

An Introduction!

I’d like to welcome you to Peacock Orchard. I am excited to have you join me in my pursuit of a sustainable and delicious life for myself and my children. I thought I would start with some background:

I was born in the “burbs” in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I know, don’t laugh, I really am saying Wyoming has suburbs. My mother always had the best garden in the area. Her flowers would grow taller than the fence. I loved to sit with her and dig in the dirt talking flowers. I am now looking forward to giving that to my children.

Our farm is 40 acres of former wheat fields 20 minutes outside of Cheyenne. Up until 2014 I had not taken much interest in the state of our land. It seemed a rather hopeless case having been severely over grazed by the previous owners. We did not have livestock so it seemed unimportant at the time and my energies went elsewhere. Now that we have children I am becoming more interested in what we are feeding them and how absolutely horrible it is. We started with chickens which quickly spiraled into ducks, guineas, turkeys and peacocks. I hope to add larger livestock to the mix soon.

Our land is basically dead. I began researching how to reverse that and came upon Keyline design which led me into permaculture. This is my permaculture journey. My struggle to raise trees in the harsh Wyoming climate. My mission, my life, my passion. Welcome!