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  • From: Paul Wheaton <paul@richsoil.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] terrace widths
  • Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:27:05 -0800 (PST)

We're commited to converting eight sloped acres into terraces. Between the
terraces
would be lots of trees. On each terrace, crops such as alfalfa or grain
could be grown.


There has been some debate over the width of the terrace. Clearly, the more
trees and
the less mono-crop you have, the more soil building benefit you have. But
there is also
a desire to be able to raise this crops and machine harvest them. Or, at
least have the
option to machine harvest them.

A terrace that is 25 feet wide might be enough for a small tractor with a
small baler to
get in (which is all that we have any way). But the first pass is going to
have the
tractor driving on some of the crop. So the wider the terrace, the lower the
percentage
of crop lost to driving on it.

Our slopes here are not that steep. We could probably get 100 foot terraces.
But I
think that would make the center of the terrace be too far away from trees.
Perhaps 50
to 75 feet?

Part of what I'm trying to do here is to demonstrate to the conventional ag
folks the
value of permaculture. So while I could focus on doing this with manual
labor, I would
like to show how a tractor addicted farmer could pull it off too.





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