I'm on a large space of former
cattle pasture in the PNW. At some time, likely over a half century ago, the pasture was tiled, red clay pipe.
The pipes have broken in places over time, opening up sinkholes as the free flowing
water pulls any available dirt into the pipe and away.
I'm using the pasture for grazing sheep, and not planning on keeping any animals on it through the winter- but looking into remediating the pasture so it doesn't have the sinkholes and the resulting wet areas and wet area plants.
I've found one sure talking about taking care of this by breaking the pipe at the outflow end. I'm assuming this creates a choke point, slowing the flow of water, and allowing any silt to eventually clog the pipes. I've also considered maybe a single bar subsoiler, set deep
enough (though this might be tough) could break the pipes in numerous places if I did passes at 10-20' intervals. In any case, once the water flow us stopped, the pipes essentially become the same as buried rocks, minimal problem.
Im on a minimal slope, and not receiving a lot of water from off-site or the road, so just need to work in infiltrating this water once it's no longer in a high speed rush. Thinking of using
trees and planting to open up soil channels.
Anybody have
experience (hopefully positive) with this kind of problem, without doing significant earthwork? (I have no problem with swales and
berms)