UPDATE ON THE CREEK

[The Old Ram-Australia]

G'day, you may have noticed I have corrected a couple of things in my last post.The local village was settled in the mid 1800's,otherwise we would have been here before Cpt Cook,I also checked our approval and we can use up to an 8 inch case for the bore.

Down here BM we call these "swales" and yes we have quite a few they were installed about 30 odd years ago as near as I can tell to try yo repair "raging" erosion on our sloping ground.But subsequent owners did not manage them (at all)) and so by the time we purchased the farm they were in fact ineffective.

 

[Sheepshape]

Is that how your land is looking now TOR (largely brown and dry)? If so, I hope you get more rain soon.
I live high amongst the Welsh hills (just short of technically being mountains) where water usually gushes down in torrents. Last summer we had an uncharacteristic drought. Anyway, we have thin and sandy topsoil which is subject to constant erosion and is not highly water retentive.
Most of us in 'these here hills' live on a flattened out (terraced) bit of hillside. We have planted lots of saplings and have reinstated hedgerows as a way of keeping the soil stable. The added bonus is that the diversity of birds and wildlife is improved as well as the tree copses providing shelter for the animals both summer and winter.
Our bore hole has a 4 inch pipe.....is working nicely and produces about 7 gallons/minute which is more than enough for our usage.
What is your local village like TOR?. I love local history. My local village is about 2 miles away and consists of a farm, a church, an artisan bakery and about 8 other houses. It was settled in very early times (maybe pre-Roman) and the history of the church is fascinating. looks medieval, but said to date from 11th century. It is the church of the local saint who lived in a cave on the local hill where he had his head lopped off by an enemy. He is said to have picked up his head (as you do) and bought it down the hill, where he placed down the head. He walked about 30 yards and died. Where his body lay, the church was raised, and the head was marked by a yew sapling. Well there's an old church and an enormous yew tree....and a lovely bit of 'history'.
Anyway.... I hope the project is coming along well.

 

[The Old Ram-Australia]

G'day SS,actually the farm looks more like the third pic (BTW there is a 4 year time span in the three photos).In the last month we have had about 30 mm of rain ,it topped up our house tanks and put a little in some of the dams,but has only produced enough feed for the "rabbits and the kangaroos " in reality.The BOM is suggesting that we will get some more in the next day or so (here's hoping).

Our local village(the locals call it a town),the whole town and surrounds is Heritage Listed is Braidwood NSW,you can Google it and will see lots of stuff.The town was used for the movie "Ned Kelly" and gold was discovered in many parts of the region nearby.

Henry and I are getting along "famously" and once we have conquered the vacant Wombat holes and the rabbit warrens,work on the next stage of the concept will begin,but it will have to wait until the rains come so we are using a stable environment to work in.

It may be that you could use at least part of the concept to slow the rush of water down the drainage lines.Does your land cover the "top of the catchment" that is above your gullies?....T.O.R.

 

[Sheepshape]

Does your land cover the "top of the catchment" that is above your gullies?....T.O.R.

The hillside above our place is owned by a neighbour and is just bare fields with mesh fences. The surface water forms into a deep ravine on our land... magical little place really. Here it slows off and goes onto fairly flat land. We've added 200-300 saplings around here.

We've reinforced the hedges on our land with natives 'mix', so, as well as helping to stop the erosion we have wild roses, blackthorn and hawthorn flowers.

Interesting stuff about your local village...'Ned Kelly' town.

 

[The Old Ram-Australia]

G'day SS,from the photos it would appear that the water course is running over bed-rock.At the top is there a "head-cut" developing? I assume the land of your neighbors is used for cropping? How close to the gully is your boundary? On your side of the boundary is there a hedgerow? If I was on the receiving end I would be concerned about fert/chemical runoff onto my fields.

At the bottom of the gully does the water travel down an existing watercourse or flood onto your fields? How great is the fall (in feet) from top to bottom,roughly.The height is important as it will give some indication of the speed generated by the falling water.

If you have a satellite photo of your farm (from say Google) and its surrounds showing your fields ,the position of the gully/gully's,hedgerows and field boundary's and indicate the general fall of the land.From this distance I can only apply a "common sense" solution and suggestions,but I guess anything can assist.....T.O.R.

 

[Baymule]

They are called swales here too. My grandfather had them, built by the CCC, on his family farm, he called them terraces, so I did too.

 

[Sheepshape]

T.O.R we have the typical (around here) 'run off' which starts at the top of the hill as field drainage, gathers drainage from other fields where it eats through the topsoil down to the bedrock and ends up in a deep valley which winds down to the bottom of the hill. These may or may not flatten out along the course of the stretch and vary between dried up on the summer and raging torrents in the event of heavy and persistent rain.
This particular one drains off about 3 large fields of our neighbour and starts to form a gully on our land. The sides of the gully get steeper and steeper on our land (as shown in the pic above), then it starts to flatten out behind our sheep shed. It then falls gently for a while, goes through a very large culvert which we placed there, runs slowly downhill through our field, through a second very wide diameter culvert, across a gently sloping area by the side of our drive, enters our man-made mini lake and then goes on to form the tributary of a river. So generally we have steep areas interspersed with relatively flat areas.
Before we inserted the culverts and before the water course dropped away in one area we had flooding regularly of one field, occasionally of another, and flooded our old sheep shed after we had constant rain for 4 days and nights.Following the natural erosion, culvert insertion and a bit of cleaning up, the water 'stays put' even in the worst of downpours, but varies between dry and a torrent. We have had no field flooding or shed flooding at all.
We own the whole of the stream below the neighbour's 3 fields and the hedgerows.
As regards to fertiliser contamination, then I'm sure that there will be some. However, both we and our neighbour belong to a land stewardship scheme which demands that we use very little fertiliser in the fields which are part of that scheme. As there are trout and otters a short way down from us, the water of that river which starts on our land must be pretty clean.
It's rather strange here that an area known for it's heavy rainfall is starting to get droughts.....probably a graphic demonstration of climate change.
Well, TOR, after my rather complicated explanation of our drainage problems, I'll be interested to see how you and Henry go on with alleviating yours.

 

[The Old Ram-Australia]

G'day SS,how have you approached the "head-cut" at the top of the gully? Would it be possible to post a photo? If the head-cut is growing year by year then I would make this a "priority" as I think this will eventually impact not only your farm but your neighbors as well.

The work done previously on the creek solved almost all of the problems we had,if I was to do anything else it would be to replace the original weir as the gal iron has "rotted away" in the 10 years it has been in place.What I do want is to place some "new weirs" further up the catchment to reduce the pressure at the creek and spread the moisture sideways in the higher slope.When I advised our local chap about "Henry" he almost "fainted" and then asked if "before" I do anything could he do a new series of radar scans so the impacts can be measured,to which I agreed.I intend to wait until the current "dry spell" has broken before I look at this project as I have lots of rabbits and wombats to attend to first.

Henry and I have almost completed our first task which was to collapse the set of old Wombat tunnels and existing rabbit burrows, the site was about 1 ac in area with the tunnels crisscrossing the area which was covered in Bracken Fern ,which added to the difficulty.I must say that I have learned quite a lot in this task ,even how to get the machine out of a trench which "gave way" under the weight of Henry.We sat there for quite a few minutes as I considered just how I was going to get us out of this predicament.In the end I used the bucket and the grader blade to lift the machine "clear " of the trench and with a little "back and forth" using the tracks we got clear(another disaster avoided) and carried on with the task......T.O.R.