40. SWALES

Occupy a garden, that is my advice and right now the plants are listening!

 

Green and growing

It is not raining it is pouring, nonstop, thank goodness for good swales! A swale is a depression/ditch that runs along the exact contour of a piece of land. That is to say, it is level all along its length. It is a water collection device and it works like this; Rain falls on your property, but instead of running straight down the slope and right through everything, it runs into the swale and gathers. There it soaks in slowly, forming a lens of water underneath the swale. Your plants do not get flooded and the swales collects eroded soil.

Digging swales is one of the very first things you should do, it should be part of your garden design. We had a long enough dry spell to get us a bit worried and now it is raining and raining and still raining. Our low water bridge is flooded, but that is not all, there is a little side stream, this normally does not even run, even that is in full flood, there is water everywhere but the garden is fine, thanks to the swales.

 

New swale

At least all the rainwater tanks are full and overflowing. I think if we had another 60 tanks we would have filled those too. Here is my one problem with thatch roofs, you cannot collect your rain water, actually you can, but it is a whole complicated story with special gutters and the water is always a brown color.

Niki went to town yesterday and last night Kevan and Riaan had to launch a whole rescue mission to get her and her friend (who came to visit) across the river. She had to leave the car on the other side. We have always been worried about getting stuck on the farm, but I have now realized it is much worse to be stuck outside - your house is so near, yet so far.

We have been made an offer to look after another house here at KD, until October next year and by then we should be ready to build our own place. The question is, do we still want to be here?

Funny how quick things and plans can change.