A big factor to consider when doing dramatic earth works is what you are going to do with all of the dirt, wood, etc you create by doing it. If you are clearing trees to create a silvapasture, do you have a plan for those cleared? Hugukulture beds to create? When digging 35 acres worth of kraters around three feet deep that is a lot of dirt excavated out. What can you do with so much dirt?
That largely depends on the situation you are in and what kind of dirt you are excavating out. We have various types of earth being excavated from our kraters at the moment and three methods of dealing with them.
The black earth we excavate out is piled up and moved to the area where our natural swimming pond is being made as it is a great water holding clay. We appear to have more of this clay than I expected so perhaps we’ll be building a few more ponds in the future.
The gravel we excavate out is piled up and moved to our road and drive way which are in deplorable condition. I don’t know if we’ll ever dig up enough of this to fill our need.
Everything else is piled in one big pile and moved to our dam site. We have been building up the dam for awhile now but it has a long way to go before it will be sufficient to hold the amount of water we desire.
The top soil is scraped off before hand and piled up to be put back into the krater when excavation is complete.
I hope this look into our earth moving practices helps.