swale – Peacock Orchard

Sainfoin, a perspective

We are three years into our sainfoin experiment.

The 5 acres directly behind our house is where the former owners kept their horses contained the most. It was highly compacted and had almost 0 vegetation. The sainfoin we planted here is doing well. (pictured above) It’s getting taller and it has been self seeding. It is a wall of pink blossoms we are blessed to stare at every day. It has been an incredible pollinator attractant.

It is slowly breaking through our compacted ground.

Areas that are not compacted, well there it’s flourishing. It is taller, thicker, seeding easier, where it does not have to work as hard.

This is sainfoin in a Krater.

Sainfoin in a swale.

The best growing sainfoin in what I thought was the worst faring krater.

I can’t speak to it’s palatability yet. The pigs have wandered through it and didn’t take a bite. The birds don’t seem to be interested in eating it either. I’m undecided on it as a forage. Time will tell.

Rabbits and Permaculture

Permaculture is all about coming to peace with nature and it’s rhythms, at least to me it is. I haven’t had peace as far as the various pests we have are concerned. Rabbits are a big problem for me. They are for pretty much our entire region. The obsessive hunting of coyotes could have something to do with that. I’m not free of guilt there either. I’ve lost a lot of birds to coyotes and I wouldn’t think twice if someone was killing the ones in our area. Still, I do my best to close the gate to the barn and if anyone is left out..well good luck.

I’ve had trees eaten. Plants eaten. Everything has been eaten by rabbits around here. They are thick on the ground, protected somewhat by the presence of our LGD’s who are far too unintelligent and slow to ever catch one.

I couldn’t help but notice a few things this year though. I noticed rabbit digging in the kraters and the swales. I noticed seeds and other debris filling up these rabbit made holes. I also notices rabbit droppings thick on the ground, happily feeding my lacking sad little kraters.

How the trees are dealing with unseasonable weather

It’s hot. It’s even been in the 90’s a few times. This is not Wyoming weather. This is…..this is weather unfit for human kind. It’s also dry. Spring is when we get our rain. August, September and October are our dry months. We can go without a lick of rain that entire time. Now though, now is not good. This heat, this drought, this is not good on my young trees.

I’m discouraged. I can’t water. I don’t have the water rights to water. I’m taking water out to the most desperate trees but otherwise, I’m just praying. Praying for rain that is missing us every single time.

The kraters and swales do their job admirably. I think if the trees were established better the whole system would be stable against drought conditions. The trees aren’t established though. The most established tree is on it’s 3rd year. All the others are going on their second summer or even their first in a few cases. Their roots aren’t established enough to survive this.

They are drooping. They are yellowing. Their leaves are falling off. I’m near despair. Please, rain, please.

I think I need to mulch. I haven’t for various reasons. Ok, I actually have. The very first year I mulched the trees and it was utterly pointless. It all blew away. I haven’t bothered since. I think I need to try again though. Straw being my best bet. Perhaps fresher straw and not the half decomposed straw I used the first time.

Still, perhaps this is a lost cause. That’s the thought at the very back of my mind. That I’ve done something foolish thinking it was something brave. That I’ve spent years and thousands of dollars proving all of the nay sayers right. If a single dry spring can kill all of my work than this system doesn’t work.

It’s not all dead though. It’s simply dying. Come rain. Come and restore my plants and my spirit. We are all waiting for you.

Plum out of luck?

The plum trees are blooming. For Wyoming, it’s early. Too early.

The 5 acre orchard in front of the house is a learning experience for us. Everything we do here is ground breaking in our area. The plum tree currently in bloom is planted in one of our swale berms. Another plum tree close to bloom is planted on the side of a swale. The trees in the Kraters are not yet old enough to bloom, so the verdict is out on the success of that. Knowing that there are various ways you can plant trees to get desired results. I believe the plum trees, being early bloomers, should be planted in the bottom of the Kraters, to keep them dormant long enough for our late Wyoming storms to be over.

Wyoming often has storms up until, and sometimes through, the end of May. I was excited to see the plum blossoms, our first fruit, but nervous as well. When I heard the news, an expected foot of snow, I was even more nervous about the possibility of getting fruit. I kept tabs on the trees during and after the storm. It was not as bad as expected, a few inches of snow at most. Lots of wind and ice though.

The blooms seemed to be fine in spite of the ice.

There was a lot of ice as well.

After the storm the blooms that had not opened were fine, but those that had been open during the storm had shriveled and died.

Lots of blooms left, lots of time left for more snow and ice. Time will tell.

Proof that Permaculture WORKS!

As if you needed proof, I know. Still, I am excited today.

A review of the orchard shows more trees that survived the winter than I had anticipated. The mini kraters and swales have done amazing things. We are set to have a bumper crop of plums this year, so long as we don’t get a late freeze, fierce wind, or some other completely likely weather event.

Why would I say this small 5 acre orchard is proof that permaculture works? It is dry here. Very dry. Made worse by the incredible wind we suffer from. We are high up, cold, besotted with pests. There is no genetic material available from our state to base our plantings on. We have everything going against us, including public opinion.

“You can’t grow _____ in Wyoming!” I hear it every single time I talk to a local about the orchard. When we are open to the public minds are going to be blown!

If I can grow trees here with little to no watering (certainly no irrigation), than permaculture planting techniques are a blazing success.

This winter we harvested so much snow we even created an ideal place for pests to hide.

I do hate those ground animals.

I’ve also been successful at growing garlic and onions for the first time. Ruth Stoute and mulching, a real winner!

I’d highly recommend permaculture planting techniques to everyone and you should too.

Mini-Kraters and Swales handling winter melt

The temperatures are rising and our snow drifts are slowly melting. Snow harvesting was a wild success this year. If you’ve followed any previous posts than you know that the snow is a problem for our driveway but the melt is the real nightmare. Our driveway and road turn into a mud pit. So last summer we trenched with our new excavator and the results have been amazing!

That is one fabulously dry road!

The trenches are full and the area immediately around them is saturated, but the driveway has been maintained fabulously. So far. We’ll let you know if I’m still confident about our earth works after a heavy rain.

All of the water kept off the driveway is then trenched to various places. Our swales receive most of it but we also have some retention ponds that get rather full.

The swales harvested a tremendous amount of snow and that’s melting off right now.

The harvested snow was wonderful for both insulating our fruit trees and now for watering them. The ground around the swales is amazingly saturated.

The kraters (some more than others) are still really full of snow. About 1-2′.

They are holding strong and I couldn’t be more pleased with our decision to dig them!

A downside of such heavy snow harvest is that the trees can be covered quite far up the trunk. We’ve suffered quite a bit of rabbit loss. My best, hardiest fruit tree was attacked. I tried to Dr. it but who knows if it will pull through the damage.

Doctor’d apple tree

Osage orange poking out of snow.

Blackberry. I covered them heavily this year as last year they were all entirely eaten away.

As always children running about with moisture inevitably ends with really wet children. I was taking a picture of the gorgeous ice designs in our trench when Son decided to go ice skating and…… well he learned to check the ice thickness before clambering on.