permaculture

[Mark <mpludwig@facstaff.wisc.edu>]

At 09:19 AM 8/5/02 -0400, you wrote:
> The western side consists of 70 acres of bottom land alongside a pristine
> creek that for the most part is a gentle, ever flowing creek about at least a
> foot or so until fed by rains when it can get much deeper, and wider and
> become a raging torrent if extremely heavy rains fall in a short period of
> time. Creek just flooded over top of banks, and over fence lines this past
> May 17.02 and dropped tons of debris including numerous downed logs some over
> 3' in diameter. Lots of decaying material but it's all caught in fence line
> or simply where dropped in field.

You need some electric flood gates.  where fence needs to cross a creek, 
put a single strand of good quality, heavy, smooth fence wire, ideally with 
it's own strainer, spring and a disconnect switch.  tie to this pieces of 
good quality polywire and tie a nut or some such weight to the dangling end 
of the line.  Space the drops about 6 inches/20cm apart.  a dab of hot glue 
would hold them in place, though it's not essential. power the thing 
through a resistor made just for the purpose, limits the amount of 
electricity that can flow to it so you don't ground out the system in a 
storm.  The poly wire should be able to float on top of most junk.  The 
fence packs quite a wallop when grounded through the stream.  My first one 
kept my neighbors starving heifers out of tall grass all summer.


Mark P. Ludwig
Poultry Research Lab
University of Wisconsin -Madison
608-262-1730 WK
608-846-7125 HM