Our Homesteading Vision: This Years Earthworks Plan

One of the most exciting elements of permaculture are swales and earthworks. Altering the landscape can enhance water collection, infiltration, and the growing capacity of the land. Everyone wants to do earthworks, even people who have land that doesn't really need any improvements. Earthworks are sexy!

This is a rough rendition of what we have in mind for the earthworks this year. While, there are some details left out and it isn't to scale this should at least give you an idea of what we are up to. Keep this picture in mind for later on in the article.

In our last homesteading vision post, I outlined our long term plans for the property, including the possible development of several ponds. Our plan is a very ambitious one and I acknowledged that it was far more than I would be able to accomplish in a short time frame.

The big goal we have for our property this year is to put an energy efficient house up that will be our initial base of operations. In order to do this, we will need to put in a driveway and yard site.

Yard Site

The yard site will be fairly high up, on one of the hills on the property, but still has a natural wind break from the trees located on the north and east sides. We will be removing a fairly large chunk of trees, that are also on this hill, in order to make the yard site bigger, Removing the trees will allow us to tuck the house further back into the bush to get some north westerly protection as well.

The predominate winds, that need to be blocked, are the strong, cold winds that come mainly from the north and northwest in the winter. Past experience, living at different locations, has taught me that not having adequate protection from these winds makes for a very miserable outdoor experience.

Driveway

The driveway will come off the county road and along the tree line. You can see in the picture below that vehicles have been coming onto the property from the road and through the pasture. As it turns out, this path is where putting the driveway makes the most sense. This is the shortest route to where we want the yard and is pretty much on contour already.

One aspect to keep in mind about road building is that access roads should either be on contour or follow ridgelines, if possible. By not having dips and low spots in your road you can prevent the formation of mud holes and eroded areas over time.

Here you can see the contour of the property. The road will follow one of these contours along the tree line.

As I thought about the path the driveway would take, I realized a few things: being on the side of a hill, on contour, meant that water would flow down the hill onto the road if I didn't mound the road up and create a ditch. Once there was a ditch I would probably need to have a couple of culverts to prevent the water from building up and creating problems, like washing out the the road.

Another observation I made was that there was still one low spot that the road would have to cross, about 3/4 of the way to the yard site. During spring run off and heavy rains, I have noticed water moving through this area slowly on the surface starting from the field and moving towards the trees. I would definitely have to put a culvert in this area as well.

The Pond

After recognizing these water pathways an idea sort of dawned on me; since I would already have the earth moving equipment rented and on the property to push down the trees, flatten the yard site, and build the driveway, putting a pond into the low spot at the same time wouldn't be that much more work or cost. The ditch, protecting the driveway, could be used to collect the run off from the hill and concentrate it into the low area to fill the pond! This would also mean getting rid of at least one culvert which would save us some money.

The only question I had was whether or not using the road as a dam to hold water back was safe. I know there are methodologies that can be used to make earthen dams and we are in a near optimal spot for it since the subsoil is all gumbo clay with no rocks or gravel. We even dug a few test holes last summer to verify our soil composition.

At first, I thought I would use the road to hold back a lot of water but, after more consideration, I decided to play it safe and dig out the pond and use the road to only hold back 3-4 feet of water. I plan to have two overflows for the pond. One being a culvert that would go under the road and another being at the far side of the pond down the hill towards the creek.

This overhead shot shows all the elements we plan on incorporating and the water flows after we have altered the land.

Overall, I am happy with this plan. I didn't expect to add any ponds this year, since our main priority is building the house. The pond will be at the edge of what you might call the "yard" which will be a nice feature. In the winter, it might even be used as a skating rink.

The main, large windows of the house will be on the south for solar gain and will look right at the new pond too! Once the trees and shrubs we intend to plant around it have matured a little, the view should be beautiful.

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