I woke up this morning after fourteen hours of much needed sleep to a thunderstorm. I always miss these storms because I'm at work or out doing other crap that doesn't matter, but this time I was home for it! Super stoked. So I got my shorts on and ran out in the peak of the storm to watch the water move.
My first dtube video that I talk in! Told y'all it'd happen eventually. Lol
At the end, you can hear Melissa yelling at me for being outside in the rain lol. She was brought up NOT to run outside in a storm, what a silly idea.
I found where most of our ground water flows from. The neighbors straight back to the west from us have a big concrete pad that washes across the easement to us. Much appreciated, we'll take it!
Then there's the water washing from the neighbors south of us. Part of their property drains to ours and washes along the south hugel and into the middle swale, which overflows to the bottom swale.
This time, the bottom swale didn't overflow. It drank everything. As soon as the rain slowed, the bottom swale showed how fast it was drinking. All that water went right into our soil, where it'll help establish a more resilient system that'll resist this Summer's drought. Cool thing is, it'll get better every year and with every storm. Thats the thing with regenerative systems! They keep getting better!
This is a huge learning experience here. Some things I've noted are that the chicken run still flooded. It drained much faster than last year, but I'll still need to work more on the ditch that fills the top swale. Another thing to consider will be the water running underneath the hugel. I may need to put a pipe or something through there to reduce soil erosion from that structure. The top swale also doesn't drain to the lower two. It'll take some more observation to see if we just need a much bigger rain or what, but it hasn't yet gotten full enough to fill the lower part of the system. Maybe I made it too big and need the drain point to be lower in that swale, but we'll see. It's early to be making that big of a change in this system yet.
What a cool little blessing, getting to observe and learn from all this today!
