She approached the workers and discussing the sad waste of water asked if they can direct the flow of water. They replied that they can direct it anywhere they like. So Roshani asked why they don’t  send it onto people’s property. They replied that most people would actually be quite upset because it would make a mess. Well we have swales, and that is exactly what they are made for. 3000 gallons and 7 minutes later the top swale completely filled and trickled over the level sill onto the next swale. This was a really cool thing to witness, as it would be quite unlikely for a rain event to match the speed at which the swale filled, well not without help from road runoff. Heres to being at the right place at the right time, turing a problem into a solution.

Before…

On November 15th, a group of relative strangers gathered on the dry, red dirt of Moloka’i with the same question firing in their minds. How will we create permanent agriculture on this parched, eroded acre of red dust?

Once the proper introductions were made, our fearless leader, instructor Andrew Jones faced the burning question head-on. Both class and client got a quick review of the Permaculture design process before heading out for a site tour. Site conditions (minimal rainfall, soil erosion, landscape slope) and the challenges of a bustling axis deer super-highway bisecting the property were observed then discussed.

The next day’s visit to Perma-farmer Joe Kennedy’s 25 acres provided numerous examples of effective dry land systems. Dragonflies and bees bustled around the shady ponds he created, in sharp contrast to the neighboring expanse of Monsanto-land. We reaped many benefits from Joe’s 20 plus years of dedication to sustainable agriculture, the tastiest being the bucket-loads of produce we harvested from his farm (Sri-Lankan & cholesterol spinach, pomegranates, tropical almond papayas, 2 types of bananas and more).

In the afternoon we focused on water-harvesting techniques and a Baja case study involving heavy swale work. Then we got down to the business of constructing our swale survey tools (A-frame & bunyip) for measuring the contour lines for flagging the initial swale.

The next morning, we reviewed the design for the project and discussed additions including; deer exclusion strategies, water storage and expanding the potential plant species selection. A bustling axis deer super-highway means anywhere from 15-60 deer cruising directly through the site, everyday, looking for grinds. After much discussion, we decided to start planting areas closer to the house, and seeding the outer zones. Later in the week, a visit to the neighbor’s property would inspire us to try their solution to the crop-grinding deer problem; a tall thorny kiawe fence built from abundant on-site kiawe. It was a beautiful example of art in function. The sun-bleached wall of thorny bones, reaching out to protect its green charge. Less than a week after the course was finished, the clients built their own.

After lunch that day, we marked out the remaining swales and designed the kitchen garden using existing materials (relocating heavy planter boxes from the deer roadside rest stop to a space nearest to the well-used kitchen).

The following morning we were up before the sun, and fortunate enough to watch it light up Moloka’i from a friend’s sailboat as we cruised to the outer reef. An hour of snorkeling gave us a chance to appreciate Moloka’i’s blue underworld.

On our way back from the harbor, we contacted four potential earthmovers to carve our swales. We ended up finding Uncle Ray. Not only did we get the island’s best, we got two loads of mulch (free from dump) delivered before the sun went down. We investigated the piping system for grey and black water, working out the diversion of grey water from the leach field to the banana circle. If you’re gonna shower, you might was well grow some food. Wash your hands, water your taro.

After breakfast we were greeted by Uncle Ray, Penny and their heavy machinery. Once they fixed the driveway, they began fixing the site. Two consecutive “banana circles” or mulch gardens in the shape of a figure 8 and the lower swale and part of the second were dug. The swales were mulched and the greywater was re-directed to the mulch gardens. After we investigated the existing irrigation system layout, we walked over to the neighbor’s house in the golden light, waiting for the “green flash” to see their beautiful gardens and meet their magnificent fence.

The next day, at 7:00 am, Uncle Ray and Penny were at it again, completing the second and third swales. From Farmer Joe’s, we collected plant keikis (banana, taro, sweet potato). We rounded the deep pits dug for our “banana circles” and reinforced their outer walls with rocks found onsite. We mulched the pits with waste materials gathered from the site and stomped them down doing our little “danse composte” as we layered in dump mulch. After filling them to three feet above ground level, we watered down our giant stone-lined figure 8 to give the composting process a proper start. After planting the first of the circles with bananas, sweet potatoes and squash, we gave her another drink.

The final day of class was a busy and emotional one. We finished the top and final (or so we thought) swale, collected aged manure from a local paniolo for the kitchen garden, gathered and prepared additional wild-gathered seed for swales, harvested and diluted ocean water for the pre-existing fruit trees and the keikis in our crazy 8. After the course was wrapped up and evaluations were collected, it was so hard to leave this incredible group that instructors and faculty (Andrew, Nichole and I) almost missed our flight home to the Big Island. My last look at those four giant sleeping swales, snaking across the site, filled me with such joy and hope, hope for rain. Most of the students and the clients stayed on to tour Robin and Dano’s world-renowned perma-farm on the East side and get more plants and seeds into the quickly rehabilitating soil onsite.

After the students left, the work continued. First, our inspired clients took it upon themselves to build their own Kiawe fence. Then, ironically, the night the first big rains came in, their good friends, Robin and Dano happened to be at their home just in time to witness the swales fill to the top. The fab four put their heads together and calculated that, from those rains, 75,000 gallons of water was held in the ground instead of being dumped into the ocean where it chokes out the reef with eroded soil.

After the rain, the clients carefully observed the evolution of the swales and made necessary adjustments. They found mushrooms in their swales, a clear indicator of moisture retention. By observing the way the rainwater charged through the swales, they also determined that a fifth swale was needed. So they gave Uncle Ray a call, and got it done. This work was done only a month ago, working with what we had, using local resources – all chemical free. Looks like Permanent Agriculture to me.

One month later…

I’ve learned that Permaculture courses are often more than educational experiences designed to promote sustainable living. When people from varying backgrounds and generations tune their minds and actions into the harmony of a shared goal, a truly moving lesson in human-potential is learned. The teachers, students, clients, locals, contractors, faculty, family, friends and neighbors involved create a great human exchange. In the sprit of such flawless cooperation, we reshaped the earth to position it in time for Molokai’s allusive rainy season. Our clients are comforted in knowing they are now catching and keeping their topsoil. When our minds are focused and our actions are supported, we can move the Earth in beautiful ways.

On that note, I offer my heart-felt thanks to the following people for making this great work possible. To our clients, for their endless support and hospitality. To Farmer Joe for his generous supply of greens and keiki plants. To Angel Frau and her whirling dust devil of a husband for their utter joy of life. To Ali’i Tasi for her great love and dedication to Hawaii and her people. Mahalos to Auntie Bertha, what an honor to meet such a vital and gifted member of the community. To Uncle Ray and Penny for artfully moving the earth to heal the damage done by years of erosion. To Spurdy for having the intelligence and courage to clean (and mop!) the kitchen of the crowded house wearing only an expertly tied sarong. Thank you Nichole and Andrew for mastering the delicate balance of structure and chaos necessary to obtain true knowledge. To the up-and-comers, the bright and ambitious ones who have a lot of work ahead of them; Hunter, Rob, Eric and Laura, thanks for giving a damn and having the courage to do something about it. Mahalo Nui to Uncle Billy. On a magical night at Hotel Moloka’i, his words set the tempo for this great human experience. “You always gotta come from da heart, and Molokai is from da heart”. Good words to live by.

I’m forever inspired by this outstanding group of characters, and I eagerly wait to roll up my sleeves with the next class. At this moment, strangers from strange places unknowingly wait to become life-long friends. Judging by the momentum created from the connections made, I won’t be waiting long. Check the website for up-coming Moloka’i and greater Hawaii courses. Aloha and a hui ho.

* Our hosts/clients Roshani and John Nash wished to be named in the article. Their support and passion for Permaculture was key to getting this important work done. The fifth swale wasn’t done by Uncle Ray, they in-fact hand dug it.

It’s taken a while to find the time to sit down and report on Part B of our earthworks here at Rosella Waters, near Cairns in far North Queensland. Phase I Part A was documented whilst the process was taking place. This latest update however will rely on memory and hurried notes made during the process, together with numerous photos. Large excavations such as the two large dams we constructed in part A are considerably easier to direct and far less time consuming than the finer detail work using smaller machinery as we experienced in putting in Part B.

Once again we had an excellent earthmover that came on the recommendation of the guys who did the two large dams. Sparky, as he is known, is a very knowledgeable and experienced earthmover, having spent a great deal of the last 40 odd years driving a 46 tonne excavator, building large scale dams, roads and “opening up new country”, as the saying round here goes. Now he runs a private earthmoving business and has at his disposal an 85HP bobcat and a 4 tonne mini excavator with numerous attachments. All of the following work was done with these two small machines.

The first part of the process in Part B was to construct a gabion rock wall at the very top of our system, in the gully that feeds our two dams. Previously, we had done a catchment analysis and based on the 1000mm of rain we receive per year, we arrived at a figure of 5,000,000 liters moving through it. We used this figure to calculate levels and engineer our spillways, level sill heights, the freeboard on the dam walls, trickle pipes, lock pipes, etc. The gully in question begins on our neighbour’s property. It is fed from the hill behind it and also from the diversion drains the road department puts in on the dirt road leading to our front gate. The catchment is predominately regrowth after being cleared 30 years ago with two dozers and a ball and chain. The catchment area is not a well functioning bio-diverse eco system and as such there is little water infiltration and a lot of sheet flow that brings top soil/sediment run off into our system. During the wet season of 2008 we did a small trial by hand building a rock wall just inside our fence line to get an idea of how much material would be trapped and how long it would take to fill up. After only 3 rain events, the small rock wall was fully backed up with silt 1.5 feet deep and the moisture remained just under the surface of that material well into our dry season. With that experience and the slight scar constructed at the back of the Lap Pool dam during its construction, we decided on a larger than first thought gabion, to (a) repair the damage caused by the construction of the Lap Pool dam (b) trap silt/top soil and sediment, preventing it washing through our system and ultimately ending up on the Great Barrier Reef, and (c) provide a small scale example of a solution to dry eroded gullies, that run like rivers in the wet, utilizing a “waste” product of local agriculture.

The “waste” product I speak of are the mountains of volcanic rock that many farms in the area have piled up in massive windrows. Farmers spend up to $4000 an acre to pull them out in preparation for planting avocados, potatoes, mangoes, bananas, sugar cane, etc. Rosella Waters sits right on the edge on an ancient lava flow so the farms that surround us are littered with such rocks, some as large as a car down to rocks as small as a grapefruit. We approached our neighbours up the top of the hill, who grow avocados and mangos, and who had recently put in a mass planting of new trees. Prior to that they had a 20 tonne excavator and dump truck working for a week to pull every rock out. They followed this by traversing over the land with a pickup and five workers pulling the grapefruit sized ones out by hand. Anyway, they were more than happy for us to go onto their property and select as many rocks as we liked from the windrows, which they had conveniently separated into different sizes.

Gabion rock wall trapping silt/sediment & top soil

The cost in building the gabion was therefore the time for Sparky to load up the individually selected rocks into his tip truck and then place them one by one with a claw on the end of his excavator arm. The process took two days in total and we estimate that it cost us close to $1800 to build. As we had large rocks to work with we decided against both “keying in” the base of the gabion wall into the side of the gully and constructing a net meshing to encase them in.

The volume and more importantly the velocity of the water coming down the gully in this case didn’t necessitate us doing either. Choosing the largest rocks first, we placed each one exactly where we wanted to create a firm base on which to construct the wall. It was built much in the same way as a dam wall is built, starting out wide at the base, six meters in this case, and tapering up to two meters wide at the top. The height of the gabion is nearly three meters. After placing each rock, Sparky would firm it down, swivel it around until it was firmly wedged. This in itself is more difficult than it might seem and does take time, but it is VERY important to get right. In all, the wall required 7 full dump truck loads of rock to construct. Once the main frame of the wall was complete we got another two loads of grapefruit sized rock which we have since placed by hand to smooth out the top of the gabion, thus providing a great access path across the gully that we can push a wheel barrow across, drive an ATV over or lead a goat and cart. To repair the scars at the side of the back of the Lap Pool Dam, just in front of the gabion wall, we placed some large rocks on the ledge and back filled behind the rocks with some top soil we had had set aside from the construction of the two dams. This was immediately cover cropped with cowpea and a crotalaria variety called gambia pea. All of the seed we used to cover crop was bought from a local seed merchant as seconds, which means there is a low strike rate (around 40%) but at $1 per kilo and having used the correct inoculant, we gained excellent coverage and stabilized the area. It’s important to remember that seed is the cheapest herbicide!

The next element we tackled was the overflow swale and spillway connected to the larger Mushroom Dam at the bottom of the property. We decided that after completing the gabion it would be best to start at the bottom of the system and then work our way back towards the front gate so that by the time it was all done, Sparky could load up and head off without risk of doing any damage with his machinery.

The first swale was only fifteen odd meters in length and had a level sill spillway half way along it that would spread the overflow of the system over a 3 meter wide area right on a broad ridge point, making it very safe to discharge and presenting no danger of causing an erosion gully. The construction of this small element proved to be a major turning point in our working relationship with Sparky. In the end it took the best part of a day to complete, due to a number of factors including our newfound language barrier. There were some important miscommunicated terms that needed clarification as we went: level sill spillway, back cut, swale, swale mound, swale dish, bottom of the swale dish and most importantly LEVEL. The idea that we wanted to construct something that didn’t run and was in fact perfectly level and on contour was quite a paradigm shift for Sparky, as in his words he had “spent his whole life draining landscapes” and what we wanted to do was quite the opposite.

The swale needed to be constructed on a steepish slope and we decided that we wanted it to hold 300mm of water in the base and have the top of the swale mound 800mm high – thus a substantial 500mm freeboard on the swale mound. The freeboard on the dam wall is one meter, so if ever there was a chance of water spilling over it would go over the swale mound first. It is unlikely to occur as we have “over engineered” things, but if it did the swale mound can be repaired with a shovel unlike the dam wall! What we soon discovered in constructing the swale was that due to the slope of the land we just wouldn’t have enough material to make the swale mound as high as we wished. The answer was to dig further up the hill from the back cut, as gently as possible, in a 1:1 cut. We didn’t want to dig too far up the hill so we adjusted the level of the swale mound back to 700mm high and with a three-meter long level sill spillway, the swale mound still wouldn’t be at risk.

First swale constructed leading off the Mushroom Dam

The data records for the region showed that the largest single 24-hour rain event in the last 30 years had been 284mm. We rounded this out to 300mm and built the spillway to be able to deal with ½ cubic meter of water per second. Together with another spillway on the swale connected to the opposite side of the dam wall, we have more than ensured the dam wall’s safety. Another safety margin we designed into the system was a 110mm lock pipe set at the bottom of the Mushroom Dam wall. The lock pipe is 27 meters long and goes right through the bottom of the wall. On the outlet side there is a butterfly valve, which can be opened wide in the event that the spillways aren’t coping. At the bottom of our system, and being our primary aquaculture dam, it also means we can drain this dam if needed. The dam also faces West, which is likely to be the direction of any fire entering our property, so in the event of a fire we have the added security of being able to drain 2.5 mega liters of water in that direction.

For ease of construction we built this first swale with the 85HP bobcat, equipped with a 1.7 meter wide tilt bucket. Time is money with earthworks, so we decided to make the swales a bucket width wide. Sparky started by running across the slope with his bucket following the back cut line we had marked out, corresponding to the high water mark of the dam. The spill was flicked down slope forming the first part of the swale mound. Once we had the basic shape and marked the position of the level sill spillway, Sparky used his tilt bucket to scrape beyond the back cut line up the slope to get the material we needed to gain the swale mound height we were after. We also took quite a bit of material from the area leading onto the dam wall, progressively cutting back to smooth out the sharpness of the cut. Sparky did a great job and we can easily drive through this area and up and onto the dam wall, giving us access to the other side of the property. The swale runs dead level at 300mm deep all the way through, from the exit point at the dam to the end of the swale itself. On the final scraping run we asked Sparky to tilt the blade slightly down slope in the swale dish, meaning that water will be predominated into the swale mound during rain events. With our first swale complete, fully seeded and earthmover trained we we’re ready to attack the rest of the design. Together with a mix of gambia pea, cow pea and pigeon pea we also planted sweet potato cuttings, aibika, cassava, pumpkin seeds, etc… giving us full cover leading into the wet. In the last few days we have started to receive our first rains in 9 months, so now we have a good base in which to begin our major plantings.

The next swale was a short one connected to the opposite side of the dam wall. It was constructed in the same fashion and care was taken again to ensure a smooth driveway leading off the dam wall for ease of access. With not much room to play with within our boundary line, the swale was extended right up to the fence line with our neighbours and the three-meter level sill spillway will serve as discharge of excess water into the creek below, and also as access to behind the dam wall and our Zone IV area of the property.

Moving further up the slope, we then tackled the 25-meter long swale connected to the Lap Pool dam. With this swale we had a few important decisions to make. Firstly it was going to be the Lap Pool’s only swale and only level sill spillway, the overflow from this leading to the Mushroom dam. The placement of this level sill was therefore vitally important as it would be the major source of water that fills the Mushroom dam and we also have future plans for structures connected to the 6m x 3m jetty we placed on the dam. We saw the opportunity for the level sill to be a feature and a potential wet/dry growing area, in close proximity to the jetty and eventual cabin connected to it. We decided to step the overflow down into a further two level sills before it entered the Mushroom dam.

The step down spillways leading overflow from the Lap Pool Dam swale into the Mushroom Dam. Jetty posts in waiting.

In this way, we slow down the volume of water, create further edge and add an aesthetic feature in the process. The level ditches are slightly wider than the level sill on the swale itself and together with generous amounts of cover crop seed, we planted clumps of vetiver grass to further stabilize the area and slow down water flow. We used the same technique on all the level sill spillways. With such an abundance of rock at hand and a couple of quite steep spillways to stabilize, we saw this as our best option. On two steep spillways, we planted out clumps of vetiver grass across the slope, starting at the top and offset all the way down. Then we placed rocks from the bottom up, starting with larger rocks in an arc, wider than the spillway, followed by smaller rocks all the way up the spillway wall face. We left a 200mm space around each of the vetiver clumps and now 3 months later we have a very stable, rock wall face to our spillways, with large clumps of green vetiver grass breaking up the brown.

Back on the Lap Pool swale we asked Sparky to dig ½ meter deep x 1 meter long x ½ meter wide ditches within the swale dish itself. These ditches will hold water for longer than the rest of the 300mm deep swale and as such become growing zones for some wet crops. We now have these ditches planted out with Taro, with water chestnuts on the edges, all of which is shaded by bananas growing at the inside edge of the swale mound.

Lap Pool swale with newly planted Taro and water chestnuts in the pits and banana on the edges.

Again the whole swale was cover cropped with cowpea, Gambia pea, pigeon pea and dotted with cassava, Aibika, sweet potato and pumpkins. The larger long-term support species and variety of fruit and nut trees are now ready to be planted. We had considered putting all of plantings in at the same time but with no rain at all for close to 9 months we decided to get cover crops and shorter term nitrogen fixers going and wait for the beginning of the first rains before putting them in. The earthworks couldn’t be put back to a more appropriate time due to the availability of machinery.

The rice paddy system was by far the biggest challenge. To look at now, it seems all we have done is push a little dirt up to make a wall and dig a couple of holes for the ducks to live near. In a sense that’s true, but the process of constructing the 1:300 diversion drain from the Lap Pool dam to a duck pond connected to a rice paddy (the overflow of which runs along a diversion drain with a 20mm fall over 20 meters, to another duck pond connected to another rice paddy, the discharge of which drops down into a 25 meter long bio-filter which is itself a level sill spillway), dropping water into the Mushroom dam wasn’t that simple! Plus, the overflow of the second duck pond, leads to a short swale with level spillway that drops down to a 20-meter long swale, the spillway of which also drops into the bio-filter before being discharged into the Mushroom dam. Phew.

The rice paddies with bio-filter below. The beach area is on the edge of the Mushroom Dam with the back side of the Lap Pool Dam wall behind it.

A great deal of gravel road base material was taken out of the rice paddy area and we used this to repair/construct a proper ringed access road, our main access road on the property. The road has now been graded correctly so that water will run into drains leading along side it directed to water storages. On the road we have placed 150mm x 50mm x 4 meter long blue gum planks in sets of two, 4 inches apart, at an angle across the road, every 10-12 meters. We first heard of this idea from Rainbow Valley Farm in New Zealand who has the same system on much steeper roads. As water runs over the road it only has a short distance to run before it drops down into these drains that run across the road at a slight angle. By not allowing the water to build up speed over the road surface the material stays on the road rather than down the bottom of the hill, with obvious benefits.

The diversion drain leading to the 1st duck pond needed to fall at 1:300 and be set low enough in the Lap Pool dam so that it was the first water to leave the dam as it filled. We can regulate this fact by capping the end of the 150mm pipe. The level at which we set the150mm diversion pipe was 450mm below the high water mark of the dam which also corresponds to the level of the level sill spillway. That is 150mm lower than the depth of the swale and the level at which water exits the dam into the swale. As I said, setting the pipe at that level ensures we can control when the water heads to the duck ponds. We have a 30,000 L concrete water tank connected to our shed with approximately 100,000 L of potential roof catchment. We needed to decide what to do with the extra 70,000L. In a minor brain wave, we came up with the idea to pipe the overflow through a 90mm pipe down the side of the tank, under the road and into the 150mm diversion pipe with a t-piece. At the entry point into to first duck pond, we have rocked the spill and next to the 150mm diversion drain pipe we have another 150mm pipe under the road that collects all the water in the drain running alongside the road. At the end of the drain along the side of the road we have dug a meter deep silt trap, concreted the base and placed a grill over the top. This will keep silt out of the duck ponds and provide another source of potting mix from the material that does ultimately come from the road.

The main issue we faced with the levels we were dealing with was to get the duck ponds as high up the slope as we could, leaving us room to put in the proposed rice paddies. The duck ponds would end up being quite small as a result and have a 800mm slope at the back of them from the ridge road. We saw this back slope as another opportunity to be creative and decided to step this down in 300mm wide ledges to the high water level of the ponds. The end result is a duck pond amphitheatre on both ponds! This stepped area will be fully planted out with duck habitat and forage, shading the ponds in the process.

Duck ponds at the back of the paddies, connected by a diversion drain. The amphitheatres at the back of the ponds are well cover cropped and stable.

The two ponds are connected by a diversion drain that runs from 1st pond to 2nd pond, with a 20mm fall over its 20-meter length. This isn’t a great deal of fall, but it’s enough. It has meant we have been able to keep the 2nd pond up as high a possible to give us room for the paddy below. The water from the duck ponds are released into the paddies by way of gates we picked up from an old rice farmer up here. They used to grow two crops a season using the channel that leads from Tinaroo Dam as a source of their water. One of the reasons they gave it up was when the cost of water went from $8 p/ML to $18 p/ML. Now they flood irrigate sugar cane instead. We swapped the four gates for a case of beer and made metal plates that slide into the 3mm gap in the concrete gates, to control the flow of water. The same gates are used at the exit end of the paddies, to discharge the nutrient rich water into the bio-filter below before it heads to the Mushroom dam.

The bio-filter that acts a level sill, taking nutrient rich water from the paddies as well as the swale in the background at the base of the chicken tractor system, overflows into the Mushroom Dam.

The two paddies are separated by a meter wide bund and surrounded by a meter wide, meter high bund with a slight grade. All of this will become a growing zone for duck forage, mulch and some soft fruits such as pawpaw and banana. The meter high bunds, once planted out, will become a living fence keeping the ducks in the paddies during the rice-growing season. We plan to grow rice using the integrated rice and duck growing system I had learnt whilst living with Takao Furuno and his family in Japan. Takao is a social entrepreneur with the world economic forum with his rice duck growing system and has an excellent book out through Tagari publications titled “The Power of Duck”.

The short swale connected to the second duck pond drops down into a longer swale, which will form part of our chicken tractor system. This 20 meter long swale lies at the bottom of the contour chicken runs and borders the Mushroom dam. It’ll take excess nutrients from the chicken system and grow some large trees on the north side of the dam, providing shade. Due to this swale being constructed on less of a slope than the first, it was built with the four tonne excavator. Working from the downward side of the swale, the bucket cut on the back cut line and the spill was dropped to create the swale mound. Following Sparky along with the laser we ensured that the swale dish was 200mm level all along. It doesn’t need to be within a mm but it does help to make the dish as level as possible so as to get an even distribution of water along the swale in lesser rain fall events. Obviously the best way to check that level is to fill the completed swale with water and adjust accordingly with a shovel. It is cheaper to do this in your own time than to pay $100 an hour for a 4 tonne excavator to do it.

“Hairy Harry” stands tall on the island at the back of the Keyhole Dam.

The final element to put in was the Keyhole dam at the entrance to our property. We named this pond the Keyhole, as it is the key to the system that connects water on both sides of the property. The Keyhole sits on a central ridge that dissects the property and the idea was to create a small water storage in our Zone 2 area that can move water through either the system described above or to future water storages on the river side of the property, or both. We decided how large a storage of water we wanted and marked out the approximate position of the dam wall for Sparky to follow. We set a target level for our high water and corresponded this to the position of the two swales that were to direct water to the Keyhole via 150mm pipes placed under the access road. The wall was built using the bobcat, layering wetted clay followed by numerous track rolls with the same machine. Using the excavator to dig the hole of the dam, material was mixed using the tilt bucket with me standing close by, hose in hand, making sure there was the right amount of moisture to make the clay bond. Dam and pond walls are all about compaction and with enough of the right clay, a little mixing if the material is good and bad, and the correct amount of moisture, things should seal. We decided to create a small island at the back of the Keyhole as an aesthetic feature, duck habitat and for the fact that the palm we’ve named “Hairy Harry” was too good looking to lose.

Once the Keyhole was built with a 400mm freeboard on it, we set about marking the back cuts of the two swales that were to connect to it. The Mediterranean swale (so named due to quite granite soils in that part of the property) leads out towards the header tank and drops its spill down into the Lap Pool dam. It is connected to the Keyhole via a 150mm pipe, under the road with a slight 20mm drop towards the pond so as to not get stagnant water sitting in the pipe.

The Mediterranean swale connects to the Keyhole Dam via a 150mm pipe under the main access road. The level sill spills water into the Lap Pool Dam below.

The end of the pipe can be capped, if we wish to keep water in the Keyhole dam and direct any overflow via the 150mm pipe under the road on the other side that connects the Council swale to the same dam. We called that one the Council swale because its main catchment comes from a slight improvement to the dirt road the council recently graded. It was graded sloping towards our fence with no drain so in large rain events we would get large sheet flows of water moving through the landscape causing unnecessary erosion. We asked Sparky if he wouldn’t mind creating a little spoon drain 100 meters up to the neighbours gate entrance and directing that water through the culvert under our road entrance. The five meters beyond the culvert to our fence line continued as a drain before entering our property where it then becomes a level swale directing a substantial volume of water through the 150mm pipe, under the road, into the Keyhole dam and ultimately through our entire system.

Considering the volume of material we are likely to receive from the dirt road, we placed a 200mm deep x three-meter wide silt trap just inside the fence line. This can be dug out by hand when necessary. The level sill spillway of this Council swale directs overflow to a gully, which in future may become a dam or a large gabion, subject to future test holes to check for clay content.
Either pipe in either swale can be capped to control the direction of water movement through our system. This small dam feature is something we are really happy with for its aesthetic beauty and complex simplicity in functionality.

This spoon drain runs 100 meters long and will direct a large amount of water through our system via the Council swale that connects the Keyhole Dam.

For our first major earthworks the complexity involved in the design was substantial. It was quite a big undertaking, made even more so by the birth of our second son Dylan smack bang in the middle of it all. At this point I must give special recognition to my darling wife Georgie who at 41 weeks pregnant, kept us fed and watered, took all the photos and spent considerable time standing there with FRED ( Forever Ridiculous Electronic Device) i.e. the lazer level staff and receiver, in 33′C tropical heat. We took close to a year observing the site, designing, listening and talking to others, re-designing and planning the earthworks and the immediate repair work after they’re done. Once the earthworks began, concept became reality and the two can be quite different no matter how good the planning. Each evening after Sparky had left we spent time talking things over and making decisions for the next day’s work. We gave our laser level a really good working over, it has been a great investment; I don’t imagine we could have done all that we did without it.

Now that the mainframe infrastructure is in place, a little water is in the dams and the site is green with cover crops, the system has literally come alive. From seemingly nowhere frogs have descended upon the water storages attracting ever-increasing numbers of birds. The place must look like a red-light sale at a discount store – a hydrated green oasis in an otherwise dry landscape.

Overlooking the system from the header tank. A transformed landscape.

A natural spring we knew existed has started to recharge with the water in the swales from irrigating the cover crops. It moves through the sub-soil leaking out into the side of the dam. Our hope is that this recharged system will help to keep the water level more constant in the Mushroom dam by offsetting any evaporation.

In all, the earthworks took close to two months to complete from start to finish with a total of 16 days of actual earthworks involved. With the start of our seasonal wet season rains upon us, the next three months or more will be spent busily planting, planting and more planting. We know Sparky is coming back when the wet really hits – we made a pact to sit down with a beer together in the pouring rain and watch the system operate in full flight. Through a local NRM group we are also planning an open day, for local farmers to come and see the system. These major earthworks are just the start of a great adventure in the development of our Permaculture demonstration site for the wet/dry tropics of Northern Australia, Rosella Waters.

The partially completed swale is about to be extended.
The drain is near my right foot.

My latest project is a 25 square metre vegetable patch in subtropical Narangba, South East Queensland, Australia. I could choose the site, and although it wasn’t exactly ‘zone 1’, I settled on an area adjacent to the neighbour’s fence. The soil and solar access are good, and the adjacent fence reduced the amount of additional fencing needed to keep out the dogs, the most expensive purchase for the garden. Being out of the way was an advantage because the owners were not completely sold on having a vegetable patch. I was also hoping that the activity would encourage the neighbour to resurrect their neglected vegetable garden, and they did come out to enquire while the garden was being installed. There is hope.

These are all great qualities, but the main attraction was a downpipe from the house that drained onto the lawn. I could catch the water and distribute it along the length of the garden. Even a light shower would contribute. I have observed that apparently heavy showers can fail to penetrate more than a couple of inches of mulch, so I believe getting the water into the soil is important. I marked out the contour, used that as the upper boundary, and dug the swale trough about 20-25cm wide. I also put a few pavers in front of the drain to prevent erosion of the mound if the water came out in a gush. On the first day I did not get around to installing an overflow, and as it happened there was a storm the day after. The swale filled as predicted, but the water overflowed and flooded part of the garden, partly washing out the path.

The drain is at the bottom left, obscured by grass and pigeon pea.
The pavers for erosion prevention and flow restriction are visible.

The next task was to extend the swale away from the garden with a level sill spillway, as done in Geoff’s Harvesting Water DVD, so that the garden wouldn’t be flooded and it would release water gently onto the lawn. It took some time for me to observe this happening. In the meanwhile I heard that the extension was a little lower than the garden section – it was getting small downpours instead of the garden. Even if I leveled it properly the water could be wasted on the lawn. I placed another paver as a dam to the extension. On Christmas day I got to see it in action. The water didn’t gush, but the drain has since been cleaned so it could happen yet. The original garden section of the swale filled up and the paver slowed the water enough to direct it to the garden first. The mulch and absorption in the swale slowed the advance of the water as it moved through, so even with the paver the extension was getting some early water. While the swale was filling up, the water level on the garden side was higher. The spillway worked as designed when full, letting the water cascade down hill.

The swale is full and overflowing via the level sill spillway.

Further observation revealed that during heavy downpours, there was perhaps too much water in the garden. I had not noticed that the driveway and the neighbour’s driveway could feed the swale too. This explains the good soil, as the area is like a fertile valley, collecting water and sediment which is slowed by the grass and absorbed. After extended rains, the water was springing out of the garden and onto the path! A hole made for planting would fill up with water! To make use of this excess water, I’m considering installing another swale further up the hill, wide and shallow to prevent impeding vehicle access to the back yard. This should charge the soil above the first swale, providing a reserve for when the weather dries out.

The garden was a popular attraction on Christmas day. On the left you can see

the bean trellis, prayer flags and escaping pumpkin.

The garden, while it has some gaps in the planting, has so far been a success with only a few disappointments. There has been a constant supply of lettuce, zucchinis, cucumbers, and now some corn. The garden has pests but the predators seem to be keeping them in check after only 2 months. A 1kg zucchini was just harvested, there is a sunflower I can’t reach the top of, and the owners are talking about expansion!

Much more beautiful than lawn!

Download: You’ll see the option to download the 913 megabyte MP4 file at bottom right side of this page.

YouTube: The video can also be watched on YouTube, in four segments, here, here, here and here.

Greening the Desert II (including Part I) – Greening the Middle East
(Duration: 36 mins)
Tips for playing: If it’s slow to load, turn off High Definition (HD) on the player.
If you still have problems, click play (on low or high def) and then after it’s started,
click on pause. The video will then continue to buffer into your computer.
Play once fully loaded.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank Kelly Kellogg at this juncture. Kelly donated initial funding that enabled the purchase of the land for the Jordan Valley Permaculture Project site (aka ‘Greening the Desert – the Sequel’). But, upon watching the Greening the Desert Part II video, Kelly was inspired to donate an additional $20,000. These gifts are very encouraging to us as we try to solve problems at source (teach a man to fish…). Others who may feel inspired to donate to help us move this work forward faster can do so here.

A little background on the video follows:

Children in a school playground, Al Jawfa, Jordan Valley

When there’s no soil, no water, no shade, and where the sun beats down on you to the tune of over 50°C (122°F), the word ‘poverty’ begins to take on a whole new meaning. It is distinct and surreal. It’s a land of dust, flies, intense heat and almost complete dependency on supply lines outside of ones control. This is the remains of what was once called the ‘fertile crescent’. It is the result of thousands of years of abuse. It is a glimpse at a world where the environment – whose services provide for all human need – has all but completely abandoned us. This is a glimpse at the world our consumer society is inexorably moving towards, as our exponential-growth culture gorges itself at ever-increasing rates.

The original Greening the Desert video clip has been watched hundreds of thousands of times and has been posted to countless blogs and web pages in the datasphere. Although only five minutes long, it has inspired people around the globe, daring the lucid ones amongst us, those who can see the writing on the wall, to begin to hope and believe in an abundant future – a future where our survival doesn’t have to be based on undermining and depleting the very resources of soil, water, phosphorus, etc. that we depend on. The work profiled in that clip demonstrates that humanity can be a positive element within the biosphere. Man doesn’t have to destroy. Man can repair.

In the clip at top I introduce you today to Greening the Desert II. I shot the footage for this video last month (October 2009) and edited it on location in the Dead Sea Valley in Jordan – the lowest place on earth, at 400 metres below sea level. Much of it was shot in or near the village of Al Jawfa where I stayed, which is effectively a Palestinian refugee camp that has morphed over the decades since 1948 into something resembling a functional small town. It was first shown to delegates of the ninth International Permaculture Conference (IPC9) in Malawi, Africa at the very beginning of November and is now being released for general consumption. The video will take you to the original Greening the Desert site, letting you see its present condition after six years of neglect when funding ran out in 2003. You’ll also be introduced to our new project site – the Jordan Valley Permaculture Project, aka ‘Greening the Desert, the Sequel’ – and see some of the spin-off effects within Jordan from the influence of the original site; promises of much more to come.

The work we’re undertaking in Jordan is in accordance with what we call the ‘Permaculture Master Plan‘, where the project’s future is assured through funding from running educational courses. Project sites thus become self-sufficient, and self-replicating.

Geoff Lawton instructs students in a school yard in Jordan, one that PRI has
just created and begun the implementation of a design for, so its
many children can see, experience and learn permaculture first hand

Through this work we envision thousands of educational demonstration sites worldwide – all inspiring and teaching communities around them how to begin to tackle at root the massive challenges we now face after decades of short-term profit-based thinking has all but ‘consumed’ our planet and dismantled the social constructs that the human race has always depended on for its survival. Through this work we see desertification stopped in its tracks, and reversed. We see this century’s dire water issues getting resolved. We see productive work for millions in bypassing the irrelevant efforts of our ‘leaders’, to instead build a new kind of culture – a culture based on cooperative effort and learning. It’s a culture where its members have regained a sense of their place in creation, where they become land-based stewards of remaining resources; creating a culture where we at last find ultimate satisfaction – promoting and building peace and low-carbon, relocalised, community-based prosperity.

We have many such ‘Master Plan’ projects in various stages of development worldwide, and a steady stream of enquiries from people around the globe wanting to get involved and help widen this cooperative network. Perhaps it’s time you took a look at Permaculture? After all, do you have something more worthwhile to do?

Jordan Valley

Geoff Lawton and Darren Doherty are the two highest profile people in Australian Permaculture when it comes to broadacre water harvesting earthworks. They’ve both had success in some very tough environments, and yet it’s interesting that their styles are quite different, particularly when it comes to infiltration strategies.

This article is a short comparison of their approaches, along with an idea I had recently for amalgamating the benefits of each.

To help illustrate, I’ve put a set of boundaries on a section of a topographic map (figure 1.1). 

Figure 1.1 – Base Map

I realise that both Geoff and Darren would be salivating as they looked up the hill at the potential dam sites above, but I’ve deliberately left them out of the equation to keep things simple and limit the comparison to their infiltration strategies.

Similarly, although I haven’t marked it in, each of them would put in a small dam/wetland/silt-trap in each of the valleys to dissipate the flow coming on site and prevent their mounds blowing out.

Geoff Lawton’s approach

Geoff’s style for infiltrating water into the landscape is to use swales (often connected to dams but that’s another story). His aim is to catch water as high as he can in the landscape and use the dead level swale to spread the water across the length of the land. This water is held in the swale, giving it time to infiltrate into the soil, and it then plumes downhill, recharging the ground water for the benefit of trees planted below (figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1 – Soil water movement after swale infiltration
See this animation for more details

He often builds his swales with a bulldozer, resulting in a large capacity (eg a bulldozer blade wide and deep as in figure 2.2 – the back and front walls are battered on the subsequent passes).

 
Figure 2.2 - Front view of a bulldozer building a swale 

This is well suited to the sub-tropics where 50-100mm events are common and also in arid areas where the few rain events that occur can be a deluge. A large volume of water is held in the swale, giving it time to infiltrate into the landscape, for the benefit of the trees planted below.

A design constant we can work with is that water flows at 90 degrees to contour, both above and below the soil surface. Each large red dot in figure 2.3 represents an even amount of water that has infiltrated along the length of the swale. The red lines show the path that the water takes as it moves down through the soil profile.

Figure 2.3 Swale infiltration (red) path

Natural water flow in the landscape

A natural pattern in the landscape is that valleys are moist whereas ridges are dry. You can see this in the vegetation in any undulating National Park you go walking in, with lush, moisture loving plants in the valleys, and dry sclerophyll forest on the ridges.

In figure 3.1, each large blue dot represents an even amount of rainwater that has infiltrated into the land above our boundary. The dotted lines show the path that the water takes (90 degrees to contour) as it moves down through the soil profile. This image clearly illustrating why it is that the ridges are much drier than the valleys.

Figure 3.1 – Movement of soil moisture

Darren’s argument against swales in some instances

In figure 4.1 below, I’ve overlayed the swale infiltration path (figure 2.2) over the top of the rainfall infiltration (figure 3.1). As you’ll notice, the swale tends to direct far more water towards the valleys and hasn’t really fixed the issue of our dry ridgelines.

Figure 4.1 Swale infiltration (red) in relation to moisture entering site (light blue)

Recognising this issue, Darren prefers to set out tree lines using a keyline pattern. In this aerial shot of George Howson’s agroforestry property, ‘Dalpura’ (figure 4.2), the tree mounds aren’t on contour but rather they gently slope away from the valleys (the naturally moist areas) towards the ridges (the naturally dry areas), therefore aiming to even out the moisture levels across the landscape.

Figure 4.2 Dalpura tree lines from above

He creates his tree lines using a ripper and mounder, common in forestry plantings, which have a small gutter on the upper and lower sides which help to direct the water.  This is a cheaper and more fuel efficient option than a bulldozer or excavator, and works well in climates where rainfall events are generally consistent but small, such as in many temperate landscapes.

The green dots and arrows in figure 4.3 indicate the infiltration of the keyline mound during a small event. Water has been directed away from the valleys and encouraged to infiltrate on the ridge instead. You’ll notice that when combined with the water naturally moving down through the landscape from above, the moisture distribution is far more even than in the swale in figure 4.1

Figure 4.3 – Keyline mound infiltration (green) in a small rain event

Despite the obvious benefits, one downside I see to this approach is that the gutters on the sides of the tree mounds have a relatively small water holding capacity. If the landscape has dried out significantly, for instance during a long drought, it’s highly possible that the soils will become hydrophobic, and therefore there will be little water infiltrating as it travels along the gutters. During a large rain event, which occasionally come during the summer when moisture is most needed, due to the small capacity of the gutters, only a small amount of water will be held and given time to infiltrate. The rest will spill over the mound and down the ridge (figure 4.4). This would particularly be the case where there is a large catchment above as in the example used.

Figure 4.4 – Keyline mound overflow during a large rain event

(Note: At this point, I should mention that despite Darren’s mounds being smaller than Geoff’s swales, he places one for every line of trees, meaning that water infiltrates right at the base of each tree. Also, in the widescale forestry example of figure 4.2, the pasture in between the rows has been ripped using a keyline plow, which further increases the infiltration capacity. Similarly, when water does spill, it is in the best place possible – right up on the ridge where the water will fan out and have further opportunity to infiltrate)

The comparison in brief

Geoff’s swales – hold plenty of water in a large event but distribute the water less evenly in the landscape below

Darren’s keyline mounds – distributes soil water more evenly across the land, but holds and infiltrates less during a large event.

The keyline swale

With the benefits of each in mind, I came up with a hybrid, which you could call a keyline-swale.

It’s built just like a swale, set out on contour, except that the base of the swale isn’t level, rather it slopes from the valley out towards the ridges.

To build the keyline-swale, pegs are set out on contour. Starting at the ridge, a mark is made on each peg, rising at 1 in 500 towards the valleys. This is the guide for the blade depth (figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1 – Side section view of a bulldozer building a keyline swale

During a small rainfall event (figures 5.2 & 5.3), water is directed along the trench from the valleys to the ridges, where it infiltrates in a very similar pattern to Darren’s keyline mound.

Figure 5.2 Side section of a keyline swale during a small rain event

Figure 5.3 – Keyline swale (dark blue) infiltrating during a small rain event

During a large event, the water would fill up along the length like Geoff’s large swale, however the water depth wouldn’t be constant. One possible benefit of having a greater depth of water out on the ridges is that there will be more pressure here, causing water to infiltrate at a faster rate than it will in the valleys (figures 5.4 5.5). As the water level drops, it will of course infiltrate the remaining water on the ridge.

Figure 5.4 – Keyline swale full

Figure 5.5 – Keyline swale (dark blue) infiltrating during a large rain event

If this was a temperate climate where large rainfall events are rare, on this landscape I would go for a keyline swale at the very top of the property, and then use Darren’s keyline mounds parallel to this down the slope. This means you’ll get the benefits of water being infiltrated at the base of each of the tree rows (by the mounds), hydration of the ridgelines, while also capturing any large flows that enter the property, infiltrating them right at the top of the slope.

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Cam Wilson runs Forest Edge Permaculture Design, a Melbourne based consultancy offering permaculture Design, Education and Implementation. See the website for more details.

Kanawai. Ka-na-wai literally means “belonging-to-the-waters”. Under traditional Hawaiian law it meant the equal sharing of water. The Hawaiian people planted taro farms along water systems shared by everyone. A farmer took as much as he needed, then closed his inlet so the next farmer could get his share of water. This meant using only what was needed and looking out for your neighbor’s needs. Unfortunately for the island of Moloka’i (and most of her sister islands) the big agricultural corporations that use the majority of the island’s water reserves, “got no Kanawai”. This didn’t sit well with Permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison when he spent time on Molokai twenty plus years ago, and next month we’ll let the people of Molokai know that it doesn’t sit well with us (PRI USA).

Few realize that due to deforestation and overuse by corporate farms, Molokai is facing a water shortage of epic proportions. Reserves intended for farms on Hawaiian Homelands are being over-tapped by industrial farms, resulting in shortages of available water for family farms. We can try and fight the man and push for better legislation on water use, or we can dig in and share what we already know. Bill Mollison has taught volumes on creating and harvesting rainwater. Rather than waste our time chasing windmills (another subject entirely), we’ve decided to put his knowledge to work.

click for full view

Volumes can, should, and have been written on the subject of deforestation and resulting droughts. In the name of ranching and industrial agriculture, thousands of acres of trees have been removed from Molokai’s leeward (western) side. Easter Island serves as a prime example of how an island (or any land) can’t survive without trees to attract and re-circulate rain. Ocean surface water evaporates into air, where wind blows inland. Of the rain that falls, 25% again re-evaporates from tree crown leaves and 50% is transpired, adding moisture to clouds. These clouds travel on inland to rain again. From this process, trees multiply actual rainfall. As air rises inland, precipitation and condensation increases.

In nature, even domesticated animals have the instinct to find drinking water. Large leaves serve as water bowls, providing sufficient water for any animal intelligent enough to gather it. As humans, our intelligence is often lacking in such matters. But, through earthworks, such as swales, we can catch rainwater and reduce evaporation. Swales are passive rainwater harvesting features, built as a series of ditches on contour to the landscape. Each swale has a soft mound of uncompacted soil and organic material on its downslope outer bank. Swales collect and hold residual rainwater, soaking it into the ground and the associated swale mound. They also re-charge groundwater. Trees, an essential element to swale systems, are planted along the banks. Their roots condition and aerate soil and they make transpiration possible. Even minimally sloped landscape (nearly flat) can efficiently store scarce rainfall, and create gardens from desert. Catch, absorb, and intentionally distribute. Water harvesting is the only working solution to industry-created drought.

Swale building

As an island formerly known for its agricultural wealth, Moloka’i was once considered “the richest of the Hawaiian Islands”. Now residents wait for weekly barges to bring food. Enough already. It’s time for action. A local effort to revive a once highly productive fish pond system is already underway. In our continuing effort to help secure a sustainable food supply for Moloka’i we’ve reached out to endless sources. Federal, state, and non-profit agencies, all flying the sustainable flag, continue to ignore the only sustainable solution to food security. Permaculture. It’s silly to expect support from the very system that made the mess. A movement for “Permanent-Culture/Agriculture” is after all about us saving our own asses. Let’s do it.

On November 15th, PRI USA will continue its efforts to re-create an agriculturally sustainable Molokai. With returning course instructor Andrew Jones, and co-instructor Nichole Ross, we’ll work on establishing food security at two distinct sites; a two-acre homestead in arid Kawela and a modest food-forest designed to provide locals with a community food supply. Both sites were designed last spring when PRI USA taught it’s first Permaculture Design Certification Course at the Kawela site. This course is an opportunity for hands-on experience implementing a Permaculture design. Through various earthworks and composting, we’ll lay the foundation for productive and self-sufficient food forests. Mature food forests will help increase food security for Molokai’i and they’ll attract and recharge diminishing rainclouds. More trees, mo’ bettah.

Click here for information about the 7-day course (tuition deeply discounted for Moloka’i kama’aina) and here to make your tax-deductable donation to this grass-roots effort. The class is filling up quickly, which gives us hope.

Perhaps the people still got Kanawai.

By David Perkins (Dharmadeva) – Farm Manager and resident permaculture designer and educator at Kailash-Akhara.

This report provides an overview of many aspects of creating a retreat center and living sustainably using the principles of permaculture. Short updates will be given regularly to keep our wider community informed. See Part I and Part II if you haven’t already.

First phase of building is now complete

The dormitory

After a year and a half of construction in the core area, painting was completed just before an opening ceremony and party to celebrate the annual festival of Guru Purnima on the full moon in July. Four buildings make up the core area: The Temple/Training Hall, Dormitory, Kitchen-Dining Room, and Bath House with composting toilets. We are now practicing, sleeping, cooking, eating, showering, doing laundry, and recycling our poop in shiny new surroundings – a level of relative luxury compared to the stripped-down facilities we began with.

Fruit from grey water

Banana circle, 9 months after planting

Water from personal bathing, washing dishes, and laundry, is dirty, but it is far from being waste. Our system for treating this ‘grey water’, as it is called, is to feed it to thirsty plants in a feature of the landscape known as a ‘banana circle’. We have 6 circles, each with 6 – 8 banana plants, and 1 or 2 papaya trees. To begin this system, a shallow pit is dug, about 2 meters diameter, which is then filled with food scraps and cut vegetation to provide the extra nutrition needed by these heavy feeders. Then, a shower stall or dishwashing station can be placed directly in the middle of the circle, or greywater is piped from sinks to the circles. The first ones were planted at the beginning of 2008; now, 15-18 months later, they are producing fruit in abundance. We have cut the first few bunches, and I just counted at least 9 more coming along… at this rate we’ll be enjoying fruit and giving away our surplus for many months to come.

Electricity from the sun

Kitchen/Dining Hall

This is an off-grid site. We have kept our need for electric power to a minimum by smart design, and currently the extent of our need for electricity is low wattage lighting for 2 buildings, charging laptops and phones, and running the occasional power tool. Photovoltaic panels have been installed on the south-facing roof of the bath house, with the juice being stored in deep-cycle batteries, and supplied around the site through a 700W inverter. It’s a system that is sufficient to meet our needs for now, with potential for future expansion.

“There’s no such place as ‘away’”

Staff in kitchen

It’s a favorite quote of mine, and we have inevitably been forced to answer the problem that it points to: after reducing, re-using and recycling as much as possible, where do we throw stuff away? In a remote rural location like this, how do we responsibly handle the need for waste disposal? The local custom is to use designated spots on the side of the road, as a dumping and burning ground. Not satisfied with adding to that situation, we created our own on-site landfill. 2 pits were dug by excavator, 4 x 3 x 3 meters deep, which swallowed up all the construction debris, leaving some room for future ‘dump runs’. When burning is necessary, a homemade incinerator gives a useful second life to an oil drum, and it helps us burn as hot and clean as possible.

Swales

Azuki bean & Crotalaria provide good vegetation cover on swale berm

Leguminous trees, shrubs and plants mingle with fruit trees in newly planted food forest near a swale

We continue to work on establishing a system of swales for passively harvesting rainwater – not only in tanks and ponds – but also in the soil itself, by means of infiltrating runoff. We now have around 1,100m of swales on the land. The initial excavation work was completed in 12 days in April, and was followed immediately by sowing seeds and planting the pioneer species. The vegetation grew rapidly with the early rains, and is doing its job to stabilize the disturbed soil and minimize erosion. The heaviest rain we’ve had so far was 35mm in 2 hours. That certainly tested the swales, which performed well, filling to about 60% capacity, and infiltrating completely within 24 hours. Rainwater will now more effectively hydrate most of the entire site (about 25 acres/10 hectares) rather than race to the bottom of the hill.

Food forest

A Mango tree puts on new growth in food forest

Following the guidelines for creating a food forest, we are planting plenty of nitrogen fixing trees and shrubs in amongst the tree crops we want to grow. The crop trees we’ve planted so far include: guava, mango, jackfruit, star fruit, tamarind, pomegranate, and mangosteen. Not forgetting of course, the one tree generally regarded as having the greatest number of uses, the coconut. We are looking into good sources for more crops, namely coffee and macadamia nuts. It’s early days – we still have a lot of planting to do, and it’ll be a while before we taste the rewards, but as the saying goes, “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now”.

Rehabilitation of areas heavily impacted by construction

After 18 months of building, there are some areas that are showing the scars left behind after construction work. Specifically, hard compacted soil where roads where carved by repeated driving. These traffic patterns made sense at the time, but now that major construction is done we don’t need roads between our buildings – we need footpaths and attractive landscaping. The first step in this transition is a kind of permaculture first-aid. Small swales were dug to intercept the excessive runoff from the hard bald ground. A thick mulch of rice straw was applied all over, and footpaths of woodchips were laid. Shrubs that will tolerate these poor conditions are being planted, whose roots will help break up the compaction. A nice touch is that the small swales are now planted with flowers that we’ll use in ritual offerings, thereby keeping a supply of fresh picked flower heads at hand on the way to the temple.

A swale helps restore the site of a former dirt road

As with any major event in one’s life, there was an air of excited anticipation and a slightly sick feeling in our stomachs. Just like the one you can get when you go travelling in far-flung places. You feel as ready as you’ll ever be but not 100% sure how things will pan out. Since doing our PDCs at the PRI over 2 years ago, these are our first major earthworks and time to put all that theory into practice!

During our April PDC with Darren Doherty, we dug 8 test holes with a 5 tonne excavator to see what kind of material we had to play with and if the quality of the clay was going to be there to hold water in our proposed dams. I would definitely recommend this practice when considering building a dam, as the expense of $300 to get the holes dug gave us piece of mind knowing that we had decent material before we began.

After that, we had a survey of the half of the property where the earthworks were to be done, by a friend, which made our little place look like the Swiss Alps. Marking out the swales connecting to the dams and the correct placement of the spillways became quite a challenge.

The thing to remember is that the height of the level sill spillway is the same height as the high water mark for the dam. What we were placing down on paper was essentially a concept plan as a few mm here or there doesn’t really concern a 20 tonne dozer…. as we were to find out.

The start of the process was to clear the site of close to 20 trees, mostly white gums and a couple of boxwoods. 90% of the trees were hollow after being eaten out by white ants so their core was filled with mud and not much cop for chain sawing through. The little bit of chain sawing we did to cut off the crowns and root systems, quickly blunted the blades. The dilemma we faced was what to do with close to 20 cubic meters of wood?

One suggestion we had was to use the 20 tonne excavator to crush it all into smallish pieces and spread it out over the landscape where the proposed swales were going. This way the whole lot could be cast with cover crop and in a couple of wet seasons it would all break down and feed the soil microbiology. On suggestion of this to the earthmovers, they somewhat politely responded in typical north Queensland colourful language.. No #$%!*&.way! The guys are married to their machines and the ones we have on site look like absolute dinosaurs. Both are relics from a bygone era having been built in the early 80s, leaking oil and with battle scars from years of “clearing scrub” and logging in Papua New Guinea. Still, the boys swear by them, hate the modern ones with computers and after 100 years of combined earthworks experience between the two brothers, they wouldn’t use anything else.

We’re saving a couple of the logs for fence posts, sawing some for nesting boxes for native animals, birds and bats, a little for fire wood and the rest will be sent through a “Tub Grinder”. As the name suggest, this massive washing machine gets brought in on a semi trailer and grinds whole logs and branches into mulch. It’s the machine councils often hire to mulch all the green waste at dumpsites. It’s actually quite reasonably priced at only $6 per sq metre of mulch produced. Needless to say we’ll have enough mulch to compost and spread out over the entire site.

Following clearing of the site, all the valuable topsoil was scraped off and set aside, to be placed back over the dam walls at the end. A cover crop can then be sown and lightly sprinkled with mulch to help stabilise things after the machines roll out. After that, the keyway of the first dam was dug. We decided to call this dam the Lap pool as it looks like one and is likely to be used often for such. Prior to the machines arriving we had marked out the approximate position of the middle of the dam wall and the proposed water line that we wanted to achieve.

The base of the dam wall was to be 15 meters wide at the base, tapering up to a 3-meter wide road at the top. That’s quite a lot of material required to reach our wall height and the 750mm freeboard that we were after. For those that don’t know, the freeboard is the safety margin between the highest level of water in the dam and the top of the dam wall. Together with correctly set spillways, it ensures you’ll never get water go over your dam wall, which would be an absolute disaster. More on that later.

Putting in the key required the excavator to dig down 2 feet wide enough to cater for the 6 tonne roller that would be used to compact the best clay we had on site to construct the key. It’s important to use the best clay and compact the key very well as this is one of reason why dams can fail if not done properly. Our earthwork brothers thought we we’re mad building dam in such a way for a body of water that was only going to hold approximately .3 of a mega litre. They’re used to suing this kind of technique on HUGE dams that cost $100,000 to build. Still, they did admit that it is the best way to do it. Ofcourse at $150 per hour for the machines it’s more expensive that simply pushing up a wall, but as the saying goes…poor man pays twice.

Something else we needed was a water truck on site. Fortunately the brothers had one of those, which meant we didn’t need to pay someone $100 per hour to sit there all day and get the odd load of water to help with compaction. We only got charged for the hours the truck worked and a neighbour at the top of the hill was happy for us to take some water from dam that he wants to drain and empty of “those invasive bulrushes”. I told him we’d be happy to take them too as long as he didn’t threaten them with roundup!

Once the key was dug, the dozer swung into action and started the repetitive process that lasted the rest of the day. Pushing material in the key, building the wall in layers, watering it down as required and track rolling it for compaction. One point on moisture is that you only want enough moisture so that when you squeeze the material it holds it shape. If you make the material too wet and compact it, it’ll crack as it dries and end up leaking water. The dozer had 3 rigid tyne rippers on the back and used them to rip the soil before pushing it up onto the wall with its front bucket, followed by water and track rolling and so on and so on…

All was going swimmingly until…a hiss of spurting oil and we we’re down for 1.5 days. One of the hydraulic hoses that control the rippers split in half. The hose was as old as the hills and the entire undercarriage of the dozer had to be taken off to access it. Over 20 years of oil mixed with dust was an extra addition to our soils as the machine was fixed on site by one of the brothers who’d been “doing it for 20 years”. The hose required wasn’t available in Mareeba (10 minutes away) so a 2.5 hour return trip to Cairns later we had a new one. By Thursday afternoon the machine fired up again and went back to ripping and pushing dirt up the face of the wall. A channel 1 metre or so deep was dug back up the gully to the high water level we had sprayed blue after checking things again with our laser level. At the point in the gully where the water will enter our property we have marked out a suitable location for a 3-metre wide rock wall otherwise known as a gabion. This will trap an enormous amount of silt each year and provide us with all the potting mix we need. The gully has an annual catchment of 5 mega litres and the small test gabion we made by hand earlier last year showed us we really needed to build a bigger version. The 3-metre wide rock wall will also provide access across the back of the dam to the orchard area.
In the process of digging out the channel at the back of the gully we were starting to struggle a little for material to reach our proposed dam wall height with a 750mm freeboard. The pressure of making decisions with a dozer putting away at $150 per hour led us to make an error of judgement and a small scar was created. We decided to cut a 500mm wide bench AT water level, which created quite a vertical drop from the original landscape. Luckily we realised our mistake and with the sun setting we had a good chat to the operator who next day admitted it was probably not the best and we should have benched BELOW the high water mark. However, with a little excess topsoil put aside at the end of the construction, we’ve decided to leave it as is, use the topsoil to back fill and what we’ve mistakenly ended up with is a wet/dry extended edge at the back of the dam which when its full will support many a beneficial aquatic species and habitat. In fact, we’re now looking at putting a slightly narrower bench around the entire inside edge of both dams to create a green edge, which will look really nice we think. We have also decided to bring the proposed gabion forward by 2 metres and make it much larger (3 metres wide) than we initially expected. This will heal the worst of the vertical drop and incision in the side of the gully.

The following day we begun work on the keyway of the second larger dam we have called the Mushroom because of its obvious shape. The excavator had dug it the day before so now the process was much the same as previously stated with the dozer ripping, pushing, followed by the water truck and then 6 tonne track roller. Once we had come up to original ground level, we then set about digging a channel to place our 27 metre long lock pipe fitted with 3 baffle plates. There were a couple of reasons for placing this in the wall, and once again the brothers shook their heads in disbelief as usually much larger dams holding much more water and being used for stock water or flood irrigation install such things. Still, being the bottom of our system we wanted the ability to be able to drain the dam if required, as this will be our primary aquaculture body of water on the property. The lock pipe also faces directly west and in the event of a fire we also now the option of opening up the taps to drain close to a mega litre of water in the likely direction of an incoming fire, making it nice and damp in between it and our structures which lie east of the dam. Living in the wet tropics we have designed our system to cope with the 1:100 year events that DO happen. If we were to get a 100 inch in a week event as we did in 1979 then we like having the ability to again open the pipes, leaving next to no chance of any water reaching the top of the dam wall. On that point, with the Mushroom we designed for a 1-metre freeboard and will place two level sill spillways on both swales that extend from the dam wall, 3 metres wide to deal with overflow.

Once the trench was dug, three of us carried the lock pipe and set it in place. The lock pipe consists of PN10 grade polypipe and is made from four 6 metre long sections. Each baffle plate (also poly) is 750mm x 750mm and has been electro welded to two .5 metre lengths of the same PN10 poly. All seven pieces were assembled onsite with couplings that fit over two sections of pipe and fuse together using an electrical charge. The couplings have a + and – node to which clamps are attached sending an electric charge through which melts the poly inside the coupling, fusing it forever to the poly. We have gone with a butterfly valve for the exit end as it allows us to regulate the flow from the lock pipe easily. At the intake end we have an elbow with a further 1 meter length of pipe which we drill ½” holes in to act as a filter. The cap on top of that section is screwed on with three stainless steel screws just in case we drain the dam and need to take it off. We hired a “wacker packer” from the local hire centre and with subsequent layers of material placed on top of the pipe, compacted the soil around it and the baffle plates. It is important not to over compact using such a machine that compacts soil much differently than a roller. It is possible to “over compact” the soil which when it inevitably soaks up moisture can lead that area to crack once again leading to potential leakage. Once we had a good 400mm of compacted soil over the lock pipe we then started to layer material again using the dozer followed by more track rolling.

During this whole process I had the lazer level out and was marking a clear high water mark line in blue spray paint for the operators as a guide. We had asked them to grade the sides of the dam walls at 1:1 starting from the high water mark line. This is nice and gentle and gives the dams a nice shape. It also means that any stock and humans can enter and exit the dam without shear drop offs into the void. With red paint I marked on a tree, at both ends of the dam wall, our target dam wall height, which in this case was 1 metre above the high water mark.

The rest of the process for the Mushroom went pretty much according to plan and what we had thought would be a 3.5 metre deep body of water ended up being 4.5 metres deep, which will greatly assist with evaporation. With that depth you get thermal cycling of cool and warm water, which is important in our scenario as we have 9 months of the year when the evaporation rate is over rainfall. We found a couple of patched of rock in the hole which I have subsequently picked out and set aside for future gabion plans in the small creek at the back of the property. There were also a couple of sand streams which are unlikely to be a problem but if it does end up holding water like a bucket full of holes there is enough clay left in the bottom of the dam to have the guys come back, dig them out and plug the holes with good clay. There wasn’t any point in doing this until we see what happens as everywhere else we dug through a bit of sand, we hit good clay behind it.

Another thing, which will be of interest, is the little spring we found when we initially had test holes dug. Sub-surface streams of water run through this place and in general are caught in a layer of sand between two layers of clay, top and bottom. These clay layers can be top/bottom, side/side in fact any which way, and we wont know until later exactly where the spring decided to surface. Once all of our water harvesting structures are in place, and there is another 5 days work to do, the landscape will be fully hydrated come the wet season. The little spring we found was at the back of the Mushroom and the intent was to dig through it and hopefully provide the dam with an offset of water to compensate for evaporation. We had placed a 90mm PVC pipe in the back filled hole when the tests were done and with a length of bamboo kept a regular check on the level of water moving through the landscape. What we notice was that the height of the water fluctuated with the moon and on full moon it was at it’s highest at close to 1 metre of water. Leading up to that time early in August will be interesting and we’re waiting to see if we get any water seeping through. At the moment there is nothing. Depending on the pressure of the mass of water that will sit on top of that point once the dam is full, the spring exit point could be in a totally different location. Water always finds the path of least resistance.

The following day, Sunday, was a half day spent cleaning up the site a little and spreading the last of the remaining top soil over the back of the dam walls. What we now have is two dams within the one gully that combined will hold close to 1.5 mega litres of water when fully charged. That still leaves a substantial 3.5-mega litres of water to flow through the system, charge the connecting swales, which are yet to be built, and fill the other 3 bodies of water we have planned. To do the remaining earthworks of Phase 1, we have enlisted another operator with a much smaller 5 tonne excavator with a tilt bucket. He will be putting in swales either side of the Mushroom and their spillways, a 50cm deep kids bathing area on the edge of the Mushroom under a large tree, a swale and diversion drain to another small duck pond on the Lap Pool, holes for a 3m x 3m jetty and 6m x 6m jetty on wither dam, another diversion drain and further duck pond with connecting swale with spillway, 150 sqm of terraced rice paddy, approximately 200 meters of other swales, another small water feature at the entrance of the property shaped like a dew drop, the Lap Pool 3-metre wide gabion and finally reshaping of the access roads and instillation of new irrigation lines. More on all of that later! So at this stage we have only cover cropped the back of the mushroom with cow pea as he’ll need full access to the site and will be roughing things up a little more yet.

All in all it’s been a pretty full on but very interesting and rewarding experience thus far. The bill so far has been just over $9000 plus the lock pipe, which was $1200. At first glance it seems like a bit of money but when you consider the value we have added to the property, the potential for growing systems with entrapped water, aquaculture and the eco-systemic services we are providing by keeping all that silt of the Barrier Reef, it’s OK.

A big thanks to our friends, Geoff & Nadia Lawton of the PRI, Darren Doherty of Australian Felix Permaculture, Paul Taylor of Trust Nature, Nick Ritar & Kirsten Bradley of Milkwood and all our past PDC students for their advice, support and ideas, many of which you’ll be happy to know have been put in place! Part B of Phase 1 coming soon….

Continue to the next post in this series….

Greywater mulch-pits provide an excellent solution when re-using greywater on your garden – they are cheap to construct, they improve the quality of water entering your soil and after some time provide you with valuable compost. They’re very easy to construct too. You basically just dig a hole, wack in some 100mm ag-pipe and then fill it up with nice chunky mulch.

Where possible a number of pits should be constructed around the garden. This enables you to rotate your greywater around and prevent the inevitable waterlogging that occurs if you leave your hose in one spot too long. For flat ground it’s great to create round pits, with each one midway between a few fruit trees. If on a slope, they will be on contour and can double as a swale.

The volume of each pit should be about 4 times the peak flow that leaves your house at any one time. For example if your washing machine pumps out 100 litres, the size of the hole needs to be 400litres (as a guide, 1m3 = 1,000litres). This is to allow for the space taken up by the woody mulch (about 2/3 of the volume) plus a bit extra. 40 cm is plenty deep enough, or else you’ll start to send most of the water down below the main feeder/drinker roots of your trees.

If you have very sandy soils in which most water just disappears straight down, it can pay to line the inside of your pit with plastic. A few punctured holes here and there allow you to infiltrate the water in the direction(s) of your choice. It also gives the critters more time to clean up the water.

With the huge increase in the use of greywater on Australian gardens, particularly here in Victoria where we’ve been on restrictions for a number of years now, there is concern about the effect it will have on soils in the long term. Even if using liquid detergents, which are much lower in sodium and phosphorus than powders (see lanfaxlabs for more info), the alkaline nature of soaps will affect soil pH. Fats and oils from our bodies can also clog up soil pores and make them hydrophobic and any bleaches or harsh cleaners will of course have a huge impact on soil life.

By filling these pits with chunky mulch, this acts to filter and clean the water, resulting in better quality irrigation for your valuable fruit trees. It’s not the mulch that does the filtering but rather the tiny soil critters that will colonise its surface and just like in a reedbed system, they greedily grab onto any nutrient that passes by. Inevitably, this mulch will be broken down into compost, at which time you should say “Awesome!” and fork it out of your pit straight onto the fruit trees beside. Then, give your local tree lopper a call and get a free/very cheap load of mulch delivered and refill them. (By the way, this is so much easier than cleaning out a clogged up reedbed, plus you get the compost out of it instead of a mess of aggregate you don’t know what to do with.)

The simplest way to get water to each pit is by extending the washing machine outlet hose. You can rotate this hose once a week or so. A few tips to prevent your washing machine’s engine from burning out: 1. Utilise gravity as much as possible; 2. Over 10m+, ensure the extension hose is at least 50mm to reduce strain on the pump; and 3. Don’t pump uphill (if you do need to, you’ll have to get a pump built for this purpose).

If you include an appropriate length of 100mm ag-pipe inside each pit, with one end just slightly sticking out, this means that you can poke your washing machine hose down inside so that the water infiltrates sub-surface as regulations rightly demand (stops kids and pets getting sick from the pretty nasty pathogens that greywater can contain).

If you want to utilise your bath and shower water also, by law you’re supposed to get a plumber in to divert the water. From here, a more permanent option is to construct branched drains which evenly distribute the water around the garden. Detailed design and installation instructions are available for this method in Art Ludwig’s book The New Create an Oasis Using Greywater.

You can irrigate a 1/8 acre suburban orchard for under $200, which is pretty good value I reckon compared to the $10,000-$20,000 approved treatment systems.