Posts Tagged ‘drainage swale’
Flowing Along
If the weather predictions for today come true, we may literally be flowing along by the end of the day. Reminiscent of a year ago, when the Tour of Minnesota bike trip faced epic amounts of rain and flooding, today Wintervale Ranch is included in a flash flood watch. Remnants of what was Pacific Hurricane Blanca will be bringing us torrential rainfall with potential flooding this afternoon and overnight.
Cyndie and I ventured out last evening to contemplate our preparedness, and it became apparent there is little we can do but let mother nature have her way and react to whatever aftermath we face. I don’t have any idea yet about how we might mitigate the erosion that is happening on the hill around the barn. Heavy rain today will likely expand on the current ruts created by the last two significant rain events.
After walking the back pasture last night and surveying the drainage swale again, I felt inclined to just leave it be as is and see if flowing water will carve a path through the sediment that has accumulated in order to reach the ditch at our property border. It won’t look like the precise, wide slope of a swale that I had in mind, but I can adapt my vision.
Delilah received some quality attention in the form of a thorough brushing, which has become a daily occurrence lately in attempt to rid her of the underlying fur left over from winter. Wednesday was an exceptionally hot and humid day for this time of year and she appeared to struggle with keeping herself comfortable.
My exercise in throttling back my daily sugar consumption continues to leave me feeling tired and lacking in stamina. It has me wondering about the intense weight loss regimens that drive participants to do heavy workouts while also making strict diet corrections. I don’t think I could do both at the same time. I know the physical abilities of my former self, and right now I can’t achieve a fraction of what I use to do when I was eating unconscious amounts of sugar.
So, lacking any other strong motivation, I am settling in with a frame of mind to just go with the flow. What will be, will be.
Let it rain.
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Uh Oh
I’ve got a problem with my little drainage swale that we paid to have excavated last fall. It is already filled up with sediment.
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Part of me wanted the swale to be a bit deeper than it ended up, but we had to go with the existing geography of the surrounding land, and to achieve the gentle slope we want, over the full distance we need to cross, it can only be cut so deep.
One source of my problem is that the excavation happened so late in the year that I wasn’t able to get good coverage of grass growing over the full distance to hold the soil in place. The other source of my problem is one I overlooked. There is a lot of runoff coming from the paddocks. I’m not sure what I am going to do about that.
It frustrates me to think that I need to re-dig the swale already, and destroy the areas of grass planted last year that did take, but right now, that seems like the thing to do. Get it dug out now and allow myself plenty of time to get grass growing along the full length.
Solving the runoff from the paddocks is the bigger challenge. I could probably install the little plastic fence that is commonly seen at construction sites, but that is an ugly-looking solution. I want the water to drain, but I don’t want it to carry any topsoil away when it does.
I’m going to need to do some research on that one. Just like so many things in nature, it’s a complex situation with multiple influences and the full range of possible outcomes. Maybe a little pond at the low spot of the paddock to act as a catch basin that can then overflow excess water into the swale, without the sediment.
Then I would just need to dig out the pond occasionally, and I could move the soil back uphill where it came from. I’ll take some time to pond-er the possibilities of that potential solution.
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Glimpse Success
On Saturday we enjoyed a day of sunshine with temperatures above freezing right from the start. What little snow cover we had acquired just a day prior was no match for the warm rays. I was very happy to be able to get the deck shoveled clean first thing in the morning, to take advantage of the solar drying mechanism.
When it got above 40°F, I talked Cyndie into taking her walker for a little stroll on the nicely dried deck to soak up some of that direct sunlight. It helped to lift her spirits a bit while getting in some exercise for that new hip joint. As far as we can tell, the new joint is doing fine. The residual pain of the surgery is still commanding her attention, and that certainly limits her abilities for the time being.
While making my rounds down to the barn I was happy to discover a glimpse of success for a portion of the drain tile we had buried in the fall. They ran a tube right off the barn gutter downspout down into the ground and buried it in a trench that runs down beyond the paddock fence.
The water was flowing audibly down into that tube on Saturday, so I walked across the paddock to the outlet in the newly carved drainage swale to see what it looked like.
It was working brilliantly! There was a perfect trickle of water flowing out of the pea-gravel, turning the snow in the swale a telltale gray with saturation. It is but one part of three drainage solutions which we had installed, but it gives me hope that we will see similar success in the other areas when spring ultimately rolls around.
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No Matter
No matter how much preparation I have done for the onset of the snow season, the first significant accumulation seems to always burst on the scene when I still have too much to do. This morning I discovered news of a likely accumulating snowfall anticipated for Monday. I better get after a few things, especially moving the rest of that fresh pile of split firewood into the shed.
I had hoped to get the round pen surface of lime screenings sufficiently packed so we could order dump truck loads of sand for the finishing touch. I was allowing time —as in, the passing of days— to aid in the settling. I also drove around in there on the 4-wheeler, pulled an arena drag across it, and re-raked it prior to a final packing with a tamper. I’m not confident I’ll get that done now, although it doesn’t matter so much if, with a new snow covering, we wouldn’t be able to get a truck in there to dump the sand anyway.
Suddenly, this weekend I need to:
- Move the pile of left-over pea gravel that came with the drain tile installation. I have several potential uses for the pea gravel. Just need to commit to one.
- Finish the ends of small berms that were started around the paddocks when the drain tile was installed.
- Move two piles of dirt that linger. One is left from the rock pile and one is from the excavation of our drainage swale through the pasture. I now have a place they can go:
- Add dirt to the high spot I’m creating in the paddock around the hay feeder. I need to get that done and packed so I can:
- Use up the left-over pile of lime screenings that were spread in the round pen, by packing them on the new high-spot around the hay feeder.
- Pull out the snow tires for Cyndie’s Audi.
- Re-arrange the shop garage to get the plow blades out from storage.
- Change the tires on the Grizzly ATV to the more aggressive winter tires.
- Move the deck furniture into storage.
- Hopefully, get that pile of split firewood moved and stacked in the woodshed.
On the bright side, we are more than content about the major accomplishments we have achieved in preparation for the winter snows. With the drainage swale and drain tile in place, the spring runoff should be much improved. Also the south drainage ditch is cleared wide open for the full distance of our property. There is a fresh application of lime screenings on the slopes in the paddock, a new high spot for horses to stand on, and berms around the upper perimeters. Plus, we buried the drain of the barn gutter downspout so it will dump its water directly into the drainage swale beyond the paddock fence. With the back pasture properly fenced, we will now be able to turn them out on some higher ground, earlier in the season than we were able last year.
I better get to work on the other things. That is, after I go downstairs and replace the battery in the smoke detector that has been chirping since the godawful early hours of this morning. It caused some crazy avoidance/anxiety dreams for hours this morning as I repeatedly tried to fall back asleep so as to delay dealing with it until daytime.
It’s all good!
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First Test
Yesterday we received a steady rain that coincidentally arrived on the day work was supposed to begin to install drain tile above the barn and paddocks. 
Instead of making a muddy mess by bringing in digging equipment, they limited their effort to delivering the tubing and pea gravel. It was a bummer that the project I have been pining for all summer was delayed one more day, but it was great to have our water problems vividly visible in real-time for the guys who are about to install a system to mitigate the flow.
Meanwhile, although it was a bit sooner than I hoped, I witnessed the first real test of our newly defined drainage swale. The grass seed I planted at the end of last week has barely had time to germinate, so I fear a good percentage of it was probably set in motion down stream by the flowing water.
There are some wispy visible sprouts making an appearance at the far end, so I’m hoping all is not lost. The good news is that, despite some of the minor undulations that concerned me, the water appeared to make a nicely controlled flow the full length across the pasture into the ditch on our south border.
I declare that we successfully passed the first test!
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Perfectly Annoying
Suffering under my tendency towards perfectionism, I am experiencing some frustration with a few features of the swale that the excavator created. I am able to see some undulations that I anticipate could interfere with optimal flow, and his final path has a bend to it. I was hoping for a straight shot.
The guy who did the work on Monday was back again yesterday, bringing more loads of lime screenings for our paddocks. Lime screenings are similar to, if not exactly the same as, what is used for the infield of a baseball diamond.
I asked him if it was possible to eliminate the undulations in the swale by grading it more, or if trying to do so would actually make them worse. He indicated the latter. He assured me the slope is good and that, over time, the flow of water will smooth it out.
Too bad I couldn’t help finding out for myself. Late yesterday, I tried dragging our rake attachment behind the ATV, and then went and got the diesel tractor with the front loader to see if I could reduce the curve he had created. Daylight faded before I could make it too much worse than when I started. We’ll see what this morning’s light reveals. The low light from the east in the early morning does wonders to reveal high spots.
Meanwhile, I am very pleased with the new footing for the horses. I think they like it, too. Dezirea wasted no time in laying down and rolling in it. I hope they get plenty of time to pack it down before the next significant rainfall. It should make a solid base to keep them up out of the mud.
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In classic project form, halfway through spreading the piles, an oil leak was discovered in their skid loader tractor. Progress came to a halt while they tore it apart to deduce the cause. Of course, the replacement part was not available and would need to be shipped overnight. They were able to limp the loader back onto a trailer and take it back to their shop for repairs. Better the oil leaks at their place than into our paddock dirt. As it was, they needed to dig out a small section of oily top soil and put it in a pail for proper disposal.
Later in the afternoon, the driver came back with a different tractor and was able to finish spreading the second pile.
After he was gone, I felt free to start messing with the swale to enact my attempts at tweaking it toward perfect. I already know this much: He made it look a lot easier than it truly is.
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Relative Something 