Adventures In Homesteading (Day 46-48)

Hello Everyone!

Naps gone awry, Rainy weather, So much digging, Wasting my data, Farm pond status & Then there was an earthen bridge!

Alright, it seems that I missed my writing routine altogether there for a few days... and now on the morning of the forty-eighth day... I have to play catch-up... and write about a day that is yet to happen. Oddly enough, both yesterday and the day before I began working before dawn... and stopped around one in the afternoon... just as it began raining... which lead to me sleeping... not only the rest of the day... but the night as well.

Twice that happened and neither time was there any way that I was going to be able to make it to the writing tent. The reason for that was because if I was 'awake and moving' all my focus was upon the 'farm pond' (which is more likely going to be a storm/root cellar at this point) and constructing the two large berms that span the gulch between camps.

For two days now it has rained a good bit... and neither time was there any water in the 'pond' nor in that main spring site... where I have those small pools constructed. As much as it seemed to rain for I did not collect all that much in all my containers... but I did finally start getting enough water from the rain-catchment system... to begin filling the gravity-fed system's holding tank.

The constant digging of what is to be a cellar... has been rather straight forward... yet painstakingly slow given the density of the clay. A big part that kept stumping me with the berm building... is where to get the longer logs that I needed... which of course lead me to thinning out some swamp gums and even a small poplar or two from the surrounding forest.

I made a really good video yesterday... but after it failing to upload half a dozen times (probably wasting a gigabyte of my data plan) I quit trying to get it shared. In it though, I go over how I layered the binder material (tree branches, logs, sticks) into the berm... and some of the techniques used with the design... and where the 'drainage, supply and overflow' are going to go on either end of the berm... but not through or under the berm itself.

While I have been working on that project, I have by no means been taking my time... and the only part that I have been skipping doing... is using the tamp on my rock-bar to really compact the clay and force it to fill all the crevices super well. Since my primary goal was to get my calf muscles to stop taking such a beating... I just focused on the berm being 'solid enough' with plenty of room for it all to settle later.

Basically, by skipping that step I also could stretch the small amount of clay that I would have from the hole... as far as I could... whilst achieving maximum rise from it going vertically from the bottom of the gulch. In most places along that entire main berm (the one with the cedar posts) there is only two or three inches of clay between each layer of the binder material.

As far as earthen bridges go... I am super happy with it... and from what I could tell after those recent rains it was a really good decision to put that other berm in first to help protect the larger one as I worked on it. During a later phase of that project, I will be adding a third berm just below the main one... to create a terrace for a shallow pool downhill of all the berms.

It is kind of funny because aside from not hitting water while digging my farm pond (turned cellar) that entire area is coming out pretty much exactly how I was daydreaming that it would before moving here. There is actually a lot more space in the gulch above the current dig site... and everything that I am doing now is sort of preliminary work for later when I remove some hazardous trees... and can put in a pond that can hold around three thousand gallons of water.

Essentially since I did not find a spring... my current digging and berming is all below where an actual pond (or water impoundment area) will be located closer to the top of the hill. By and large I am installing the 'drain' before getting involved with anything uphill... not only because I want to contain all the silt... but I want a place, plan and the 'plumping' (even if just in hole or trench form) to be there in case a lot of water moves downhill suddenly or even not-so-suddenly.

Having dealt with so many problems created by poor planning and proper site preparation in regards to water runoff and silt... I am probably over-killing it with what I am currently doing with it all. That 'overkill' combined with a slow steady site development... will keep it so that I do not need to use anything other than the years of brush in the gulch downhill to deal with any errant silt.

Through the last few rains the berm seems to have 'stuck together' quite well... but while walking on it this morning I noticed that it also flexes a bit more than I would like it to when saturated. My current solution is to perhaps use very stout trees to span the last layer of the berm... and instead of just packing in clay to also include some of the crusher run to 'cement' it all together.

That project was such a 'I just have to make it happen' kind of thing... that once I saw just how much a small berm helped relieve my calves from aching... I just kept going as high as I could... as fast as I could to remove as much slope (on both sides) as possible. By late afternoon yesterday, I was finally at the point where I had to focus on making the walkway smooth (and double sloped for drainage) because I had gotten so involved with focusing on getting it as tall as I could!

The last few days have by far been my most intense as far as raw calorie burning goes... and I pretty much used all those groceries that buddy brought me to fuel myself along the way. It was so worth it to finally be able to not have to navigate that gulch dozens of times a day... and doing so while (more often than not) trying to carry stuff in my hands... or gods forbid... in the wagon... was way too much!

Well, I have run out of words for now... and I best get to moving my body outdoors... so that I can work towards finishing what I started on the terraforming projects. I hope that everyone is doing well. Ciao for now during this long hot leto.