Farmerchuck’s land rises about 750’ in the three quarters of a mile from the Deerfield River to the ridge line that defines the back of the property. That’s a 19% grade for those interest in such things ...
Part of what I’m doing here on the farm is fixing fence, prepping the field for a grain crop of some sort, and water dominates both of these processes. I’ve been doing a bit of stream herding the last few weeks and I thought I’d share the imagery.
The land has a 19% grade but it isn’t uniform – there is a somewhat steep part near the river, and then a really steep part near the ridge, with the dividing line being roughly in the middle of the three quarter mile run. I got a bit of wheat flour in something a few days back, which as an autistic adult makes me absolutely miserable – feels like the stomach flu combined with a hangover. A gentle laxative and some rest is one prescription for this problem, but I picked the alternative – a mile and a half up and down that ridge in the pouring forty degree rain.
I followed the course of the largest stream on the property as high as I could, but it eventually became too rough, even for me. This was shot from a stone perch right in the middle of the steepest part I reached:
Looking up ...
And looking down ...
There are a number of streams on the property, but the largest forms high above due to the confluence of three smaller streams that drain the ridge line.
This two hundred year old stone wall is the diving line between Chuck’s land and the property of a fellow he calls "The Abutter". The abutter is technically a neighbor but he does not qualify for that particular honorific. One of his most annoying character flaws? He runs his logging roads straight up and down the mountain rather than properly switchbacking them, thusly doing things like creating this new (and unwelcome) stream that is going to eventually erode the rock wall and start taking Chuck’s topsoil. The newborn channel currently resides on the abutter’s land.
The big stream looks like this a hundred yards short of where it joins the Deerfield River. You probably can’t tell, but there is a fence in the middle of this muddle, anchored to the tree in the center and bending off to the right. It was meant to be a place for sheep to access the stream for drinking ... but the Icelandic variety Chuck and Terri keep have no fear of water crossings and a good flood last year made it completely unusable.
I don’t know if it can be made to do as it was intended, but I got busy with my bare hands, knee boots, a branch I picked up, and after a couple of hours I managed to get most of the water out of the fence area. I think this was more a meditation exercise for me than a fencing job; steel panels will be needed to finish the job and those are not cheap.
One finds small wonders everywhere in these hills if a little time and attention is given. These sprouted right in the midst of the flowing water and stone. I don’t know what species they are and they’re just beginning to open. I’ll try and catch them at full bloom and update this diary, but it’ll take at least a couple of days for that to come to pass.
That is a small problem, but here is the large one. This little guy passes through a culvert under the main road for the farm, down a little, rocky gully ...
And then it floods the only flat place on the farm suitable for planting grain:
Now this isn’t even a proper stream – more of a brook feeding a marsh, but it was a stream until just a couple of seasons ago, and it’s my job to put it back in its bed. The small farm tractor has a backhoe attachment but there are a hundred yards of tractor swallowing marsh no matter which way you come at this problem. There are places in that field that have green grass ... and water that’ll go right over the tops of knee boots.
I went at it the old fashion way – periodically visiting the area and adjust the little brook’s course. Over a couple of days I ended up hand trenching about a hundred feet of twelve inch deep channel.
This was a nice start, draining the upper half of the field and setting in motion the recreation of a proper, rock bottomed bed ... but the bottomland is intractable. There is a marshy channel thirty feet wide and even with the new channel above the equilibrium point leaves the field half flooded. Correcting this deficit would have me digging another trench of this size twice the distance in calf to knee deep water the whole way. I think we’ll probably give in and let a diesel powered excavator do this and complete an earthen dam for a small pond at the same time. The permitting has been done for this pond but as above it’ll take something much larger than Chuck’s little tractor to navigate the marshy ground and finish the work.
Oh, and maybe you didn’t get it at the beginning, but this is a food security and inflation article. The three to six hundred bushels of grain that will come from the three or four acres of land recovered by this process will save well over $5,000 for Chuck and Terri this year. Global grain stocks are at an all time low, prices are at an all time high, and yesterday Terri was flat amazed to find that a fifty pound bag of 16% protein grain mix for the goats was more expensive than the 20% protein grain mix, which had been formerly reserved for babies and nursing mothers. Ask a farmer anywhere and they’ll relate the same story – animal feed prices have always been based on protein content ... that is, until this year. Those of you in urban areas need only wait a few weeks ... then this increase will be flowing through to your dinner table.