Design for catastrophe

Here at Spiral Ridge Permaculture Gardens we designed our water works first. With a design in hand and some paid machinery we set out to harvest as much rainwater as possible. We are on a ridge here with a road cursing through the top like a serpent. This road collects the rain and sends it to the many swales that have been carved out. The swales slowly move water through the landscape into ponds as well as sinking into the earth to water the orchards and gardens. This system was tested two days after the implementation with 5 inches of rain in one day. Like all good rookie permaculture designs we thankfully had many mistakes. A breeched pond and swales not exactly on a 400 to 1 drop was a major heartbreak. We are still observing the design and need to make more adjustments.

The need to make these adjustments became very evident over the last two days. 12 inches of rain fell on Spiral Ridge in 36 hours and the system showed some resilience but not quite enough. Our contour earth dam at the top of the site almost breeched because the spillway was not at the right height for a 2 foot freeboard. With some digging tools we made the changes needed and saved the day. However we need to have more earthworks done to fix the contour earth dam, reshape the swales, and fix the breeched pond mid slope in the system.

Haste indeed makes waste but it also gives us a good platform to learn from on all levels of development. In our need to set up a system we neglected to finish the earthworks properly. I am happy the rain is over and glad to see that there is still so much to learn. For pictures of our site see www.spiralridgepermaculture.ning.com

Peace

Cliff Davis