permaculture

["paul wheaton" <paul@richsoil.com>]

> > Where does the water come from?
>
> Out of the sky.

(might .... fight .... urge .... to .... kick ... man .... in .... the
nuts ... )

So there are no trickles of water anywhere the get routed from terrace
to terrace?

It seems like a warm day would evaporate nearly all of that water.

Plus, when there is too much water (hard rain) ....  it seems like
there could be problems with blowouts - especially the lower terraces.

> > What do they do each year to maintain those?
>
> Rice growing is a religious affair for Vietnamese. The people in farming 
> communities, villages and outlying regions
> do all the work partly by hand, draft animals and motor-driven tillage 
> machines. Sometimes harvest is done, on
> large flat areas, with small ride-on rice harvesters.

I'm imagining that they must walk on the edges of the terraces and
check for leaks regularly.  Then plug the leaks with ....  clay they
pack in?  If they tried to plug leaks with muck from inside the
terrace, the muck wouldn't last long.

I'm curious how much maintenance is required to keep those terraces in shape.

> > As permaculture folks, I suspect that we would want to say "not enough 
> trees", but ....
> > where might one plant trees so that the tree roots don't compromise a berm 
> and let all
> > the water out?
>
> Forest gardens.

I don't see that sort of thing in the pics.  ???

The lip on the terrace seems to be pretty thin.  So it wouldn't take
much to compromise it.  A small push slightly downhill of the terrace
could send a root up to the water of the terrace and then the water
could start to follow the root.  As the water starts to travel along
the root, it erodes a pathway, causing a drain hole in the terrace.

And if you don't have some kind of growies on that lip, rain water
might erode it ....