Written on Saturday 9/14
Rain offers a time to watch how sediment flows. Where is the water moving your precious soil? Is it flooding off your land when the easiest rainfall comes or does it take hard and fast rains? I should point out we should always try to keep our soil in place and not moving far from its point of origin. I have been given ample chances this week to observe where our soil is going, if anywhere at all.
We have almost had three days straight of rain (as of 9/14). The storms that have been rolling in have reminded me of home where in the fall months you might spend weeks at a time tromping through puddles and mud to get to and fro. The first day of our rain wasn't too bad, but the gloomy clouds and cool temperatures were, at first, depressing. The sky's of Norther New Mexico are almost always blue with the occasional big cumulous clouds building up as they head East towards the Sangres. I found that I missed the sun, initially. Feelings of being cheated filled me, I wanted the warm rays of sunshine to warm me and to dry up all this mud. I don't feel ready for Fall to come storming through our summery door yet, but, at last, I think she has arrived.
As of this morning we are just shy of three inches for the past two day and if you add the rain from Wednesday we are up to a total of thee and half inches! That deserves an exclamation mark. I report: this is the most rain I've seen in one and half years. Yesterday, Friday, the rain didn't stop until four PM, and picked back up several hours later. The humidity has my feet feeling cold and even with three layers on I still seem to be chilled. My friend Mark said yesterday, in a depressed mood, "Fall always seems to creep up and surprise me, I'm never prepared for it." I agree with him, Fall always sneaks up and hits you with a cool knock.
We have been lucky in someways that our rain has been steady and just enough breaks to let it all soak in, though we might now be at our water holding capacity. One thing that is extremely important here at the farm is not allowing there to be any bare ground. The driveway is about the only bare ground on the farm. By making sure to have living ground cover, the land is better prepared to act as a sponge and keep soil in place. If water does run, such as on the driveway, we attempt to slow the waters velocity. If water picks up enough speed it's scouring effect is much more powerful, and why much of the West has gullies and deep headcuts in arroyos and creeks--too much velocity. Some ways to slow down waters velocity is by adding swales that divert the running water onto a flat plain, which diffuses the waters energy across a wide area. The farm is on a hillside so every so often along our driveways we have swale ridges and channels for the water to divert into our fields where the plants and soils can absorb it and so we can make sure we keep every single drop of water that lands here, here.
Erosion is natural and is an important element of building new soils, but much of today's erosion is extreme and is faster than what nature may have intended. Natural systems are always trying to right themselves (find the equilibrium), but over-grazing, deforestation, burn-scars, and fields left fallow without a cover crops are more susceptible to mechanical erosion (wind, water, and gravity). When living roots and the symbiotic relationships with roots are lost, so is the topsoil. The US loses around 1.7 billion tons of topsoil a year, and that is an estimate from what is lost off of farm fields only. I once had a teacher compare the loss of soil in our country to losing the first foot of Maine into the Atlantic EACH YEAR. It takes over 500 years to regain one inch of topsoil. I believe this to be a major issue, one we need to take more action to prevent and understand we all are apart of the solution not just the forest managers, farmers, ranchers and land developers.
Land managers (farmers, ranchers, foresters, and non-food-and-fiber-producing land owners) need to be aware of soil instability around their landscapes. Yes, better grazing management, cover cropping, and selective timber cuts can all reduce mechanical erosion. This is not the time to go into details about land management decisions, but I do know most of my readers live in suburban or urban areas. So how do you contribute?
I remember in high school learning about the issues surrounding the sedimentation of the Chesapeake Bay. It wasn't just the soil from the farmers within the watershed, but also urban development. Have you ever seen around a construction sight those silt barriers? Have you ever seen them piled up with sediment and over flowing? Silt barriers are important, but if they are not enforced (most states and municipalities should have ordinances mandating their use) then there is far reaching effects than just the local stormwater catchment. Usually the local streams in the area catch the sediment and that eventually makes its way to a larger bodies of water.
So as a city dweller watching where your local stormwater flows to and making sure that your bare ground is covered will help a bit, but your participation would be even better if you captured every drop of water on your plot of land before it flowed into the street. Rain gardens, water catchment barrels, small swales that divert water into flower beds or your vegetable gardens, and porous walkways and driveways all can help.
Here are some great books to check out if you're interested in more ideas. http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/books/
We have had a little over 4 inches of rain this week!
Thanks for reading.
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