Ohiofarmgirl's Adventures in The Good Land is largely a fish out of water tale about how I eventually found my footing on a small farm in an Amish town. We are a mostly organic, somewhat self sufficient, sustainable farm in Ohio. There's action and adventure and I'll always tell you the truth about farming.


Wednesday, March 13, 2013

The Worst Project Ever Pays Off

Remember The Worst Project Ever? Hauling all that gravel and moving and removing all that dirt was awful...but wow! It's really payed off.

Dog#1 says that using a "french drain" method of controlling extra water is the best thing ever!

One of the worst things about winter chores is dealing with all the frozen water buckets. Even if they aren't frozen solid you still have to empty all that water somewhere. We have a lot of water buckets. Just the Turkey House side has four buckets....each with a gallon or two...that is a lot of water to be dumped on the frozen ground. We either ended up with a soggy, muddy place or it froze and then we had a big frozen spot.

So I was thrilled to dump all that used water out in the gravel over where we trenched. It worked perfectly. In fact, I moved the goose tub over on the gravel so they can splish and splash all over and then I can easily dump it out in the gravel.

We used some of the gravel from Friday to fill in some of the muddy spots between the Turkey House and the square garden. One of the benefits of moving the garden away from the Turkey House when we trenched was that Kai and Zander now have unobstructed access for their rat killing adventures. But we had some dug up spots to fill.

Doing all that trenching really was a pain but it really payed off - in more ways then just keeping the water out of the basement. I'm pretty sure we are going to use this method in some of our other soggy spots.

Happy Wednesday everyone! How do you deal with emptying your buckets?


4 comments:

Blue Feather Micro-Farm said...

With the garden being so close to the duck pen, I just take the big chunks of frozen water and distribute them over the planting beds. Helps keep the wind for totally drying out the soil when we don't have snow cover and it is slow release watering on warmer days.

SixSchlabies said...

I noticed a comment you left on cold antler farm the other day. You said that you keep your goats with the ma until you have a buyer "ASAP". I am picking up a one week old who's been with her ma. Do you think it's ok to switch her to dairy replacer at a week old? Is this basically how you do it when you sell your kids? I just want to make sure I'm making the right decision getting a bottle baby. Thanks

Heavens Door Acres said...

Great work!! Mud is the number one enemy here on our farm. We fight it like the battle on Pork Chop hill. Just that our battle is muddy, not bloody. LOVE the look on the dogs face....like he did all the work and is worn out! :) We have been putting in drainage pipes for the last few years...as we can afford, and have time. Lucky for us we have a "natural ditch" along the property line where we move all the water towards.

Rachel said...

We have a 'worst project ever' area that needs to be trenched and filled with gravel. I'm glad to hear that it works but not looking forward to the chore...

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