Life on the farm is full of adventures, so I have been told. I have been told there will be good days and there will be bad. There will be good harvests and there will be poor. There will be sunshine and days and days of rain. What they all forgot to tell me about; was the Swale Suckers. Why I was not told about this is beyond me. But I suppose I had to learn sooner or later.

On Friday I drove out to see how well the rainwater from last week was soaking into the ground. There is a rule of thumb that a full swale should take about a week or so to soak in. While I was slowly driving down the dirt driveway observing the swales my car came to an abrupt stop. No more going forward and no backing out. What in the world had happened. The drive was pretty dry. As I opened the car door there was water and mud. What I failed to see was that although the drive was dry and although the swale where the drive passes through looked dry, it was anything but. So the Swale Suckers took advantage of the situation and latched onto my car. I tried digging her out. I put gravel under the tires. I even tried rocking the car back n forth thanks to her manual transmission, but to no avail. Thanks to my brother-in-law who called a friend who lives in the next town over. Eventually my car was pulled out of the clutches of the Swale Suckers and all was fine. Nothing that a good car wash won't clean up. Plus I meet a new neighbor in the process.




All you Permaculture People out there beware.
You never know where the Swale Suckers may strike next. It could be your place or a friends.

 

 

Oh, and just in case you were wondering how the swales were doing. Here is Swale 1, top. As you can see this one has soaked in rather well.













Here is the middle - Swale 2. It still has a good deal of rain water in it but the level is dropping.


I am doing some calculations on about how much water the 3 swales have the capacity to hold. I will have a couple illustrations to go along with the math in a week or so.