80 acres, 8 years, 800 species
Well, we made it, in the 8th month, too. With a comfortable little margin to make up for errors I might've made. And another four months to add more species in case I've made even more errors.
Of course we didn't personally put every one of those 800 species on the place. Many were here to start with. I can say we've seen an increase in every ( Read more... )
Of course we didn't personally put every one of those 800 species on the place. Many were here to start with. I can say we've seen an increase in every ( Read more... )
"Manage the water, the land will care for itself" The better your management of water, the better your land will fare. What this means in practice: control runoff to control erosion, increase water entering the soil, increase water entering the subsurface water table and thus water availability to plants, restoration of seeps & springs, etc.
You control runoff by slowing it down. You slow it down with both structural (check dams, gabions, etc.) and vegetational (plantings) interventions. As water slows down, it can't carry along soil particles, bits of plant, etc. Thus it's less turbid...and since everything water carries along acts as a tool for carving away more stuff, the less turbidity, the less the water *can* erode. Slow-moving or standing water doesn't wash your soil away. If your neighbors' land is shedding turbid water onto yours, slowing it down lets you collect *their* topsoil. Your soil gets deeper.
Slowing runoff gives the plants and soil time to make use of rainfall and other peoples' runoff. Every soil type can absorb a specific amount of water in a given time...give it more time, and it will soak up more water. Water that your vegetation can then use. Filtering water through surface structures (rocks of a checkdam or gabion, plant stems, leaves, debris) and subsurface structures (plant roots, soil itself) purifies it as it gets down to the water table level. This is where springs come from--water that's gone into the ground and, filtered, emerges cleaner than it was on the surface. Spring flow can be restored and increased by managing runoff on the surface.
How: sweat equity. You look at the land, you see where water has dug little channels that are eroding headward, where it flows in and after a hard rain. You find (or buy) small rocks and build check dams and (for higher water-flow areas where a check dam isn't enough) gabions (little rocks enclosed in wire--chain link, heavy-gauge chicken wire, etc.) Perfect is that every drop of water that falls on your land stays there...near-perfection is that most of it stays there and the runoff is perfectly clear, like water from the tap. Excellent is that more than half the water stays there and the water is clearer running off your land than it is running onto it. Sprinkle a native grass seed behind every check dam (gabions may be planned as tiny reservoirs...depends on your land's topography. Eventually grass and other plants will grow on the soil that washes in behind the check dams and further stablize your soil.
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