Evolution of Design

Several weeks ago, I sketched out my first ideas for the part of our land that we call the Pond Pasture. It doesn't actually have a pond yet, just a low area that is a seep. We're working on directing most of the drainage from that half of the farm into it, and plan to dig out a pond to catch it. Here is a rough map of the area. The pond and the hedge (the hatched part near the top) don't exist yet, the drainage stream and the fence and gate do. Click for a larger, easier to read version.


We want to put the pond, hedge, and fruit trees in this area. It would also be the recreational part of the farm, with picnic tables, a fishing spot, and other enjoyable activities available. In that same vein, I wanted to put in a labyrinth for meditation. I made one out of large rocks in Arizona and really enjoyed using it.


However, even using a small design, I figure that I need a 30' diameter circle for a labyrinth, and the Pond Pasture just isn't large enough to justify using that much space for something mostly decorative. My first design did include a labyrinth, though. Even with a cherry tree in the middle and the outer edge surrounded by blueberries, it was an inefficient use of space.


After creating this first design, I read the book Forest Gardening, by Robert Hart. I realized that I could fit many more plants into the space by using the principles in the book. I also thought deeply about my desire for a labyrinth, and I began to see that a winding path through a forest would offer a similar meditative setting. So I decided that in my next design I would attempt to incorporate the elements of the labyrinth in the entire area, rather than concentrating them into a small part.

To help me organize my thoughts and what I had learned, I made lists of the crops and uses I wanted for each environment on the farm.

Pond

• fish (food and recreation, duck feed)
• aquatic plants (food, fish and duck feed)
• water storage
• ice production?

Pond Edge/Marsh

• willow coppice (baskets and other crafts)
• rushes/reeds (thatching)
• cattails (edible parts and basket-making)
• blueberries, cranberries, etc (food)

Open Land (in Pond Pasture)

• fruit trees (apple, pear, plum, peach, cherry, etc)
• nut trees
• bramble bushes (raspberry, blackberry, etc)
• other fruit shrubs (gooseberry, currant, etc)
• herbs
• roots
• vines (grapes, beans, squash and gourds?)

Current Forest

• fine timber (black walnut and maple, already established, intermediate crops of nuts and syrup)
• fruit and nut trees in more open areas
• shade-loving plants and fungus under maples

Hedgerow

• construction coppice (osage orange, black locust, cedar?)
• Bouché-Thomas* pippins** (apple tree hedge, apples for cider and livestock feed)
• willows? (allowed to grow larger than in marsh)

Taking all of that into consideration, here is my most recent sketch. About the only thing it has in common with the first one is that the foot-bridge over the drainage ditch is in the same place. That's because we normally cross in that spot when walking across the field.


The double line of willows at the south end of the pond are to collect winter snow drifts so that they can melt into the pond in spring. The Rs and Cs in the pond are reeds and cattails, and the boundary between pasture and orchard is made with bricks. There is a whole pile of yellow bricks in the forest that I could salvage for that. I think everything else is labeled. I don't expect this to be the final design, as things will change as we actually start to implement them, but I think it is much closer than my first one.

*Bouché-Thomas is a method of growing apples where the trees are planted slanted so that the branches interlace and form a hedge. It was mentioned and briefly described in Forest Gardening, but I can find very little additional information on the web.

**This is probably just a British usage, but Hart defined a pippin as an apple grown from seed (or pips). I'll need to differentiate between the seedling-apples and grafted apples, and pippin is not a commonly used word in American English, so I have adopted his definition.

Found It!

I took a closer look at the neighbor's pastures, and found the source of the pond's water. There is a little stream that runs down the hillside and into the old creek bed. It should not be too difficult to pipe that over to a trough for livestock.

There is a lot of wildlife back in there. Yesterday I got a close look at a blue heron in the pond, and tonight I conversed with a screech owl. It called to me, and I whistled the song back. I tried to get a picture, since it was sitting just above me, but it was too dark to turn out very well. After lightening the photo, you can kind of see the owl in the middle of the picture.

It rained a lot yesterday, so I wasn't able to go out to the land to work on the water system. Instead, I worked hard on the roof to the brooder, which is covered with greenhouse plastic to allow light and warmth in. I got it all done just before sunset during a lull in the rain, which promptly started up again harder than ever.

A few hours later I went out to bring Balto in for the night, and discovered that the roof wasn't sloped nearly as much as I had thought it was. Consequently, the rain had collected instead of running off, and one of the pieces of wood had broken under the weight. *sigh* Back to the drawing board.

I kicked around ideas for putting more of a slant in the roof, but none of them really seemed to work. I was still thinking about it this morning when I drove to St. Clairsville for more plumbing supplies. On the way, there is a nursery with several greenhouses. They look like they use the same kind of plastic, and they are built on a hoophouse model. That got me thinking about how I could implement a similar design for my brooder roof.

Several months ago I ran across a website that had instructions for making a hoop-style greenhouse out of pvc pipe. I figured the measurements for something like that today, and it looks like it will work. Luckily, I have enough of the greenhouse plastic left to cover a second roof. The first plastic, which is full of holes now from being screwed into the wood frame, will be used to cover the ends of the hoops.

At Lowes, I managed to navigate the plumbing department all on my own and figure out how to add in a valve between the tank and the start of the pipe. I had quickly realized, as I was setting the system up two days ago, that it would be very helpful to be able to turn off the water before it got to the pipes.

It sprinkled a bit while I was working, but the threatening clouds held off for a few hours. As soon as I installed the valve on the tank, I set up the pump to begin filling it. I knew that it would take quite a while to pump 300 gallons about ten feet above the creek, so I wanted it to fill while I worked.

While I was at Lowes, I picked up another 100' of pipe, which took the water line almost to the end of the field. I discovered that the best way to uncoil the pipe was to anchor one end to the fence and then stretch it straight on the ground. It took me very little time to set up two more tees and valves on the line. Since there is now a valve at the tank, I can easily add more tees or more pipe at any time.

It took about an hour and a half to completely fill the tank. The water is slightly murky from all of the rain, but it wasn't too bad. The 300 gallons add a good bit of pressure to the water so that it gushes out even at the end of the line. The Foxtail Farm water system is now live!

Paul unexpectedly had the day off today, so we went shopping at Lowes for farm stuff. I got most of the rest of what I needed for the water system and all of the supplies for a portable chicken pen. That's enough to keep me busy for a while.

After shopping, I worked on the water system until the sun went down. I'm using a 800-gph bilge pump and pvc pipe to move water from the creek to a 305-gallon storage tank. At the base of the tank there is flexible pipe to take the water down the field. Periodically, there are tees with spigots so that a garden hose can be attached.

I really don't have any experience with plumbing, so I wasn't completely convinced that all of this would work until I got it hooked up tonight. The only difficulty is that the bilge pump's wires are very short, so I had to have the battery perched at the very edge of the creek. I plan to get some alligator clips to act as an extension cord. In the meantime, I tried it with jumper cables and it worked fine. It was such a rush to hear the water start flowing into the tank when I hooked up the battery. I hadn't been sure that the pump would be powerful enough to move the water all the way up the bank and to the top of the tank. I thought I might have to get a second pump and send the water up in two trips, but that turned out to be unneccessary.

The water tank has a 2" outlet, but the pipe is 3/4". I spent about half an hour looking at the different fittings at Lowes, trying to figure out the right combination to make that reduction. Finally, I found a guy who worked in the plumbing department and he was able to find what I needed. I ended up with three different kinds of plastic, and three different kinds of connection (threaded, cement, and compression), but it all works.

The flexible polyethylene pipe is a pain to work with. It comes in 100' coils, and it does not like to uncoil. I finally gave it up for the night because I think that it will be more flexible if the temperature is warmer. I'll try again tomorrow.

The best part about this watering system that I've cobbled together is that it only cost around $600 to provide running water to two acres. Half of that was the cost of the storage tank. Six months ago I had no idea how we were going to get water for livestock short of drilling a well. There was all that water going by in the creek, but I couldn't figure out how to capture it without spending far more money than we have. Luckily, I stumbled across Joel Salatin's books this winter and they taught me about bilge pumps and gravity-powered water systems (among many other things).

This autumn, we want to dig out a pond near the road where there's already a seep. Once the pond is there, I'll move the storage tank and the pipe across the field so that I can pump out of there instead of the creek.