Can we outsmart Mother Nature?

This is the dead hedge we built 2 weeks ago. It is a V-shape and extends in both directions beyond the picture. In the bottom right corner of the picture, there is a bit of red clay dirt that can be seen with a stick at the bottom edge. This is the bottom of the ravine that carries a significant amount of water from the pasture onto our property. As temporizing measures to slow the flow of water down we have filled the ravine with stones and pieces of telephone poles and sticks and stones. However the water just routes itself around the “stuff” meant to slow the flow of water and run across the property. Yesterday was our day to clean out the ravine, straighten it, shore up the downside edge with BIG stones to prevent rerouting. We want the water to stay in the ravine and dump into the wide area upslope from the dead hedge. We had a half an inch of rain early Monday morning and there was no standing water upslope from the dead hedge so that suggests we have not created a dam.

This is what we started with. Left is closest to the dead hedge, Middle photo is mid slope and right one is the entire length from the fence line with the pasture to the dead hedge at the bottom. It didn’t take as long to get the ravine emptied as I thought it would and Craig and Katie the Kioti made digging and straightening the ravine go pretty quickly.

The left photo is where we were at lunch break and the other two are at quitting time at sunset. A lot of work was done to move stones to create the down slope edge of the ravine, The ravine is shallow now but with the coming rain it will naturally deepen and as we see how the water flows we can decide how we need to further reinforce and define the ravine to keep water in the ravine running straight to the dead hedge without expansion of the ravine on the top or bottom side.

We are expecting .5 inches of rain on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. 1.5 inches will give us some idea of how we are doing. We have continued to move fallen logs to fence lines and along grass edges in attempt to mitigate flow of water across the driveway. Everything we have done over the past year has helped BUT we have plenty of other mitigating retaining walls to build in the yard itself before we are done.