in today's video I'm gonna explain how we dug our swales and berms I feel like
there is no t-shirt in the world that better reflects my current life dillema
then this guy right here right I know what you feel like mr. bear I know
what you feel like here at Gold Shaw Farm we have more than 6,000 feet of
Swale and berm dug they're part of our permaculture orchard I've given tours of
that in past videos but for us it was important to put the swales and berms in
as a way to capture water and support the growth of trees we have about 600
chestnut hazelnut elderberry mulberry Siberian pea shrub apple and black
locust trees all on the back pasture we've planted back in October and we dug
the swales and berms back in July it's all relatively new we're here right now
I'm shooting this in April and this is the first opportunity that I have to see
how they're performing both kenefick with all the snowmelt and the brains
that we've been having so without further blathering let's go out and take
a look at the swales and berms
so for those of you who are saying I don't even know a swale and berm is let
me give you the quick basic explanation it's sort of a dig in and then a bump
again it's it's designed to retain water for our farm and our tree operation we
don't plan to do any real watering of the trees I might in a drought time run
out some water but other than that we don't have any irrigation lines we're in
a rather wet climate here in northern Vermont so we have that advantage
working for us but these swales and berms are designed
to catch water retain water and help provide the trees with a better
opportunity to grow and thrive so here you can see this is the orchard they are
a total of eight different swales and berms that we have and we have trees
planted on both the what I call the Swale side and the berm side as you can
see we have some pretty rocky soil here and we tried to keep them as level as
possible the reason that they're all you know crooked looking lines is because we
wanted to make sure that they're on contour which means that they stay level
with the the bends in the earth so for example if you look at this year you'll
notice it's wider up front but then it narrows here that's because the hill
gets steeper at that point to figure out all the contours it took me about it
about three days of measurement back in June out here I originally tried to
measure and Mark the contours
which is basically a fancy set of sticks and tubes that you can use to determine
the leveling my work in trying to do it was absolutely a total failure
I spent a full day out here trying to get it all measured and I ended up
marking about four points and to put that in perspective I ended up putting
in about 750 points of contour and that guided us when we did the digging for
those of you at home wondering and researching about how best to mark your
swales don't use a bunny up level you're just gonna waste your time particularly
if you're working at a larger scale just either borrow or figure out a way to get
a laser level when I when I did eventually get the laser level which was
loaned to me by my local NRCS office it only took me about three days to measure
and mark the entire space back here to mark the contour I used electric fencing
stakes you know the kind that you might use for a single strand poly wire fence
the reason I opted for those is I had originally thought about using like
little Flags like this guy here but the problem was when you're out here in July
you'll notice that the grass can get pretty darn high almost waist-high in
certain spots and I was afraid that the little flags would get lost so instead I
ended up using fiberglass fencing stakes like this guy right here
you know the reason for that was they're nice and tall so there I got there about
three feet tall and they were relatively cheap at Tractor Supply and so I opted
to get those I have a stash of him in the back we used of National Park trees
even here but it just was a more effective solution than trying to use
the the flags as I was researching the best way to dig the swales and berms
high tide with a number of different ideas I thought about bringing in a
bulldozer and you know pushing the the berm out I toyed with the idea of doing
simpler less deep swales and berms and using a key line plow but ultimately I
went with the excavator my neighbor he has this big excavator and
between the two of us we were able to dig all of these out most of the fine
digging and finishing was was done by by will I did some of the bigger digging
that required less finesse I've never used an excavator before and so it was a
new experience but I've got to admit it's fun and and it's one of my favorite
things about the farm is that I get to try all these new things that I've never
done before and build skill sets that I never thought I would have but playing
out there with the excavator I was in my absolute glory it was kind of like you
ever go to like a bowling alley and you see the the claw game where you try to
pick out the stuffed animal operating the the excavator was like that on a
much larger scale so let's talk about the things that haven't quite worked
with the swales and berms just yet well the first one is I've been trying like
heck to get this stuff receded and it hasn't done all that well you know you
can still see it they're mostly just look like big brown dirt lines in the
soil which every expert tells me is a bad thing and you don't want bare soil
it's like the worst thing in the world to have and so I'm trying to figure that
out the other thing is I had hoped that by putting in on this big slope here
eight different swales and berms that my area down below here wouldn't turn into
a swamp so you noticed though and you can see where that pile of brush is and
then over there it's just a marshy mucky mess it happened last year it's
happening this year during the snowmelt it'll stay marshy and mucky like that
probably until gosh you know probably until like maybe mid to late May that I
wish I could could actually dig it out I thought about digging it out and making
it a pond but the soil there is actually pretty sandy and lomi and would not
retain the water all that well to be a true pond and so I'm left with this
weird Marsh I think if I ever get ducks I might want to put a duck house like
right about there as you can tell I'm thinking about
getting ducks the idea what the Ducks would be I grazed them through here to
rotate them with some electric fencing throughout the spring summer and early
fall and then how's the duck house so down on this side is some of our
wettest marshiest stuff and you can see it here look water still sort of pools and
collects down here the Cedar Swamp is out back there just to give you some
context of where we are standing on the property I'm really rainy days it looks
like this all across the Swale by having these swells and berms my hope is that
it gets more water the trees gives the trees a better opportunity to grow and
and that's ultimately why I invested all the time and energy and giving a little
bit of money to to dig these out I know it's not perfect but I am very excited
about what this is gonna bring for those of you who weren't familiar with what
swales and berms are I hope this video gave you a better sense of why they are
important and why we put them in here on the farm
for the people who know all about swales and berms and have their you know
permaculture design course certification and all that good stuff this is just how
one Yahoo up in northern Vermont put his swales and berms in our farm is very
much a farm in progress and so any feedback thoughts or ideas that you have
will will help us to go to making this a better place