What would be the best implement to dig a grass lined berm?

[Peace of Earth Farm]

We are looking to dig a grass lined berm to harvest mountain water runoff that washes through one of our fields. A grass lined berm is only 6″ deep and about 10-15′ wide. We would like to use our ox and not an excavator. Is there an implement that a single ox could pull to achieve this? We are in the process of designing the water harvesting plan for this field, but would like to figure out the animal powered part before we proceed. Thanks for any ideas, Jeffrey

[Andy Carson]

Does this give you any ideas? I would probably use a tool like this, but I would want to break up and sod and loosen the dirt before I went at it with a ditcher like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1hBe191-sU

Breaking up the sod/soil and then moving it will be hard work. You will probably want to make sure your ox is up to the task and watch him closely to make sure the work isn’t too hard. You won’t want to overwork him, and conditioning and the use of appropriately sized tools go a long way in preventing this from happening. I have no personal experience with this tool, but can tell you that using a single animal on a tool designed for a team is rarely appropriate without modifications to teh tool or the technique. I would guess you a good start would be to halve the weight on the tool. Maybe you have a very light person to stand on the ditcher or can fix less weight to it. Again, I have not used this tool, so am only guessing. There are several Tiller’s members on this site, though, and maybe they have more hand’s on experience with this tool and could offer thoguhts on how to modify it for a single. Normally, you can just cut tillage tools down to half the width to adjust from a team to a single, but I don’t think that would work for this tool, as it would likely put more pressure on the digging point and may not effect the draft significantly.

[sickle hocks]

Your berm sounds quite similar in function to what I have learned to call a swale.

Here’s an animation of swales so you can see what I mean..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFeylOa_S4c
…the size of it seems exaggerated in the video

Here’s a video of a series of swales constructed on contour by draft horse on an Amish farm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD0ibQCqhmQ

sorry about the cheesy tunes..

i think this looks like a great way to retain water in your soil and slow run-off, i’d really like to try this technique out, maybe this fall…

[Tim Harrigan]

What conditions are you starting with as far as grade, vegetation, etc? Where are you? Do you have many rainfall events that result in runoff? What is going on up-slope?

[Peace of Earth Farm]

Thank you all for your ideas and links to the videos, they have been very helpful. Especially when you go down the You Tube rabbit hole.
Tim, We are in Albany, VT and our grade is relatively flat , maybe a 2-3% grade. It would be a 400-500′ grass-lined berm. We have sandy soil with mostly grasses in that field. There are quite a few soft wood stumps from overgrown Christmas trees that we have been clearing. We don’t pull stumps, instead we cut them flush and sheet mulch for gardens. They slowly rot, which we consider long term nutrient management. We like to mimic the forest for our no-till farm. If we get more than an inch of rain then the field will flood, but most of the year it doesn’t flood. We would like to seed the berm with grass species that can handle occasional flooding. Does anyone recommend any grasses that could work, so we could graze our ox on? Up slope from us needs to be dealt with. It’s mostly before our property and the neighbor isn’t wanting to do anything about it. We are having a permaculture designer help us with this water issue. We will probably have to do some kind of mitigation on our property to slow down the water flow. In the field, I am envisioning a network of canals to divert water to our garden beds, which many of them will be Hugelkulture beds. So when the water leaves our property, it will be a trickle and not a raging stream. We’ll keep you posted.
Sickle hocks, The berm is similar to a swale, but a berm is more of a canal than swale. We will probably have swales branch off from the berm feeding into our garden beds.
Countymouse, That is a great idea. I wonder if a v-plow type thing would work for a single ox or their might be a ditcher for a single animal. Our friends suggested plowing first to remove the sod and then trench it somehow. We thought about having our pigs remove the sod by moving their paddock where we intend to build the berm.
Take care, Jeffrey

[Andy Carson]

Thinking about this again, I might take a very low-tech approach. A true ditcher might work great, but it sounds like you have a small amount of this work to do and then the ditcher is going to sit. Alternatively, you could plow a furrow and a drag a log through it lengthwise several times to move the dirt and sod out of the furrow. It would be more passes, but the size of the log can be controlled more to keep the draft appropriate, and then you just have a log sitting around, instead of an expensive metal “uni-tasker.” I might also be temped to plant some sort of brush, willow, etc on the downstream edge of the berm. You won’t loose much grass productivity and it would protect again erosion in flood situations. Just throwing out ideas. It seems that there is much to the design of these ditches and channels. Too shallow of a slope and sediment builds up, clogging the ditch. Too steep of a sloop and erosion digs at the walls. I imagine you want to keep a somewhat constant angle to avoid these two extremes and are probably following a contour. I would be tempted to err on the side of “too shallow” (if you have to pick one side or the other) because you always have the log to drag through again to remove sediment. Rebuilding the wall seems more challanging. This is an interesting project.

[Peace of Earth Farm]

Thanks for the low tech ideas Andy. We can’t wait until the permaculture design happens, because it should clarify a lot of our uncertainty. He has keyline design and coppicing knowledge. It would be nice to grow willow as a coppice on the edges of the berms or possibly some kind of fruit crop. We try to maximize our space as much as possible, plus having multiple functions for crops and animals.

[sickle hocks]

Nice to see a Permie using draft animals! I aspire to that combination but am not quite there with either…

Plus one for the coppice wood, and once it’s established it could be valuable browse for the oxen and other critters.

If you ever map this out, I’d really enjoy seeing what the layout looks like.

( i think it’s possible to combine functions with hugelkulture beds that function as swales, but you’re probably onto that…) cheers

[Tim Harrigan]

With relatively level ground, sandy soil and a grass cover I would expect very little overland flow of water with the exception of hurricanes and spring snow melt. So that makes me wonder about the practical benefit of this water harvesting system in your environment. Can you describe the runoff situation in a little more detail? You mention water leaving the land in a raging stream. That makes me think of water being channeled or something other than sheet flow. If that is the case there might be other alternatives for managing the water.

[Peace of Earth Farm]

Thanks Tim, Our biggest concern with the water runoff is that we are losing fertility every time it happens. The water is channeled until it hits our field and then it becomes a big sheet spread out over most of the field. As it begins to leave it starts to channel again. The channels are getting worse from season to season. We would also like to have a holding pond before the water leaves our property, so we would like to funnel all the water towards it. I don’t know what your rainfall amounts are in Central Michigan, but in Albany, VT from April-November we get about an average of 44″ of rain and then a little less than that for the winter. Spring time can be quite brutal depending on how much snow we get. Memorial Day this year we got 4″ in about an hour and last year during Hurricane Irene we got about 8″ in an afternoon. So harnessing as much as that as possible is critical for us. I can’t wait until our permaculture design happens. It will be interesting if it matches up with my intuition about what we should do. We also want to make this field a giant suntrap with many hugelbeds in the design. Thanks, Jeffrey

[near horse]

Hi Andy,

I used that Martin ditcher at Tiller’s years ago. It was really cool as it allows the rider to shift his weight on the moldboard and is good for working over ditches that have started to fill in (each year). I don’t know how effective it would be/is for opening a new ditch — maybe plow a furrow then use ditcher. If Tiller’s has plans available, personally I’d build one ….

For those of us who want to capture water (i.e. short supply in summer) —- there’s an article called “The Man Who Farms Water” highlighting a small farmer in southern Africa. Also, “Harvesting Rainwater” suggests using contour trenches backfilled with a more permeable substrate (straw/compost ….) to capture water.

If you’re thinking of channeling the water to a holding pond, have you considered harvesting some of the energy of moving water (i.e. Pelton wheel or some such thing)?

[near horse]

I used that Martin ditcher at Tiller’s years ago. It was really cool as it allows the rider to shift his weight on the moldboard and is good for working over ditches that have started to fill in (each year). I don’t know how effective it would be/is for opening a new ditch — maybe plow a furrow then use ditcher. If Tiller’s has plans available, personally I’d build one ….

[Author]

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