First Swale

Digging First Swale:

Our project, Marvelous Wonderful Farm, took another step, or tentative toe prod, as I began digging the first swale today. We're in the Pacific Northwest, just north of Portland, Oregon, so we get a lot of rain. Or, more accurately, we get a lot of drizzle. It adds up to about 40 inches a year, but most of that comes in the November to May period, the rest of the time it's pretty dry. So swales are important here as they help control water both when you have it and when it is scarce.

They can't be seen in the photograph, but I also planted a few black locust, redbud and white dogwood trees on the top of the little berm I built. All of the water now in the swale was previously draining straight into the swampy area at the foot of our property. Now we slow it a little. When the other swales are in (and the thousand or so trees) we'll really be slowing the water.

I've been waiting to purchase a track hoe or a tractor with a hoe, even, but our financial reality has finally gotten through my thick head. So the thick head told the hands to dig. And dig I did.

Enjoy the process, that's what I told myself. And, really, this represents only a couple of hours of digging so the process was short. We've got somewhere around 400 trees coming this year, the rest to be planted next winter, so I still have quite a bit of swale-ing to be done. I'd like to dig all of the swales this year while the soil is full of moisture and soft.

How many swales? I dunno, I'm planning as I go. I'm not religious about this permaculture experiment--I'm not 'certified'. I've watched every video I can find and I've read a number of books. So much of permaculture seems to be site specific and intuitive that I just can't see paying for non site specific expertise. I also hesitate because I'm afraid of what all of the earthworks and trees will do to our property value. We will need a loan, eventually, to build our house, and a 20 or 30K hit would hurt. Taking our property from (from the perspective of the typical McMansion Minded American) pristine grassy--view--sunset--open to treed--terraced--wildlands could drop our values pretty dramatically. But I can't wait another year to start, so dig I did.