permaculture

[Mikal Jakubal <mjakubal@asis.com>]

The last few days have seen major craziness at my place. Had a Cat (a D5c
with a 6-way blade) and a backhoe running around tearing the place up for
two days. Then I rented a Bobcat and spent another day touching-up and
building garden beds, spreading wood chip mulch and re-doing things I
didn't like. All that in 100+ degree heat. Never have more than one piece
of equipment working at once! It was too hard to keep track of what
everyone was doing, and a bulldozer can do lots of damage in just a couple
minutes or so. While the Cat was working under a big oak by the house, I
used a long-handled pitch fork to lift some low-growing branches out of the
way each time it drove under. I even verbally emphasized being really
careful around the trees. Then when I went off doing something else, the
driver smacked the machine's tracks into the trunk, tearing off a big chunk
of bark. Won't kill the tree or anything, but it looks terrible, and is
right in a very visible spot. 

The Cat operator was really good, but not at all familiar with this kind of
work. I'm sure that trying to communicate pc design concepts or subtle
landscape relationships to operators who are mostly used to building roads
is a common problem. I first tried to explain things in performance terms
such as "I want this area to slope to the road in a series of wide, flat
terraces--about a blade wide each--on contour so that no water runs off
them." That not getting across too well, I switched to "scrape 8 inches off
from here to here, and spread it out over here to bring this up 4 inches."
That worked a little better. The problem was that he just couldn't
visualize what it was that I wanted. That's how the best operators work:
they get a picture of the finished product in their head and dig away
everything else. He just couldn't read my mind, and I just couldn't draw
him a clear enough picture. 

Anyway, after all has been said and done, I've got my terraces, swales,
paths and so on, more or less as I want them. The swales took four tries,
but I think they're right. The first two attempts with the Cat just didn't
seem right. Then I re-did them with the Bobcat (which, by the way, is a
small digging and scooping machine) a couple times. One still seems like it
doesn't fit, but I can't think of what else to do with it. The reason for
so much trial and error was that I've only been able to find and see three
examples of swaling and the available literature on design/performance
criteria seems to be slim. But this was a really good education--if
somewhat expensive at $90/hour Cat time.

Normally, I wouldn't dream of so totally rearranging the landscape like
this, but the whole site was already bulldozer altered by the previous
owners. Most of the topsoil from the upper end was pushed down as fill to
flatten the site. So one last thing to do is get the loader and a dump
truck back here next week and move the huge pile of extra top soil back up
where it came from. For now, the whole place is a huge dry dust bowl. As
soon as I finish the shovel and rake work, I'll water it down once and
cover all the bare dirt with straw. Best thing is, I finally get to plant
the melons!

Mikal