Rob Lancaster

George’s advice is amazing. I need to ponder on it a while.

“still puzzling over the photos. Were these ridges or erosion control. How deep are these ridges? Were they intended to drain water? Or was the idea to retain blowing snow in winter?”

These terraces for erosion control. They are slightly off contour, slow water down and direct it to the small concrete spillways in the main draw.  They are far enough off of contour to not work as swales Here is some info on them from ncrs.  These are broad base terraces. Used widely in Kansas to control erosion in crop fields.

Hopefully the link works. Still a newb to posting in forums.

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs142p2_006954.pdf

Thanks. This is really good stuff. Questions below.

“focus maybe 85% of your energy on observation and developing the mainframe design and base map”

I take this to mean:  don’t plant cover crops to control erosion, watch and plan.

“You are right to prioritize the flow of water.  It affects virtually everything.”

So should I repair the failed terraces, get water where the old farmer wanted it to go or simply observe this water flow until I’m ready to implement my plan?

“get a journal and base map started.  Find micro-ridges and fingers.  Consider how your main access roads and paths can one day follow these ridges.  Find micro-valleys.  Discover and mark out all key points, thinking about how future swales could be started on contour, with dams and ponds built to take water on its "longest path" through the land.  Chart the path of erosion with a GPS, and think of ways to slow it down”

My dad has a surveyors transit. I can learn to use that but is there some other way that I can use tech to do this. Is there an application that uses GPS to create a 1’ contour map? The best contour map I can find has 10’ contour lines. Not very useful in flatland.  Where do the 2+ concrete spillways fall into the plan.  Seems like they could be beneficial as spillways in the design. Maybe go ahead and make a contour line of stakes from those as well?  Not sure what is meant by chart the path of erosion with a GPS.  Where do I go to learn about doing the things in the above quoted paragraph?


“It will be way harder to analyze the land shape in just a year from now, unless you have machinery to knock back succession to near soil-level.  Recall that dormant seed banks last +100 years, so with this latest land disturbance and management change, all those weeds and latent seeds are going to explode with joy come spring.”

Again, I read this as:  just watch and let the weeds come up.  I can probably mow close to observe. In-fact, I should probably mow right before weeds go to seed to prevent more weed seeds.  Land has deep plow ruts. My grandparents let plow land go to pasture in the 70’s and to this day it is still very bumpy. Should I disturb it one last time (whether or not we are planting cover crops for erosion) with a cultivator or leveler to really get everything smooth before observing then let it grow and observe.

“streams are just gullies right now, they are still important.  Now is a good time for observation and planning.”

Let the gullies be and grow during observation or repair terraces and plant cover crops, don’t repair terraces and plant cover crops?

Recurring theme question: simply observe or make small, temporary landform and water flow changes to reduce erosion while observing?

My vision for it has been grazing meadows separated by wooded areas. Maybe on contour.

We do not intent to till going forward.  We will eventually plant perennial pasture mix. We would just plant the pasture mix now but I’ve read and heard on podcasts that if you don’t get a good base of biomass onto the soil first from cover crops, manure…etc, then the pasture mix might fail.

Climate is Temperate, zone 6b. Very cold, dry winters, very hot, humid summers. 34” of rain annually with high percentage of it coming early in the growing season

Yeah I like the idea of developing a small homesite first, planting cover crops on the rest and building that soil until we can put in fencing and a native pasture grass. Maybe graze that 37-ish acres for a few years and then move on to developing the rest.

So, it seems like the least amount of work would just be to seed it as is and let the water go where it wants. The risk is multiple drainage gullies.

Probably the second-least amount of work would be to repair the current terraces so that there is only one main drainage. This doesn’t sound like a bad idea because while we are planning what to do, erosion is kept to a minimum.

Thoughts?

We don’t know exactly what the plan will be but in the meantime we think building soil biomass and erosion control are the priorities.

We want to repair the soil as best as we can while also planning out a homesite.

We feel like doing nothing with it will result in a lot of weed pressure and deeper gullies. We don’t think that water retention is in the budget right away so this would be to just do something beneficial while we plan.  We were thinking cereal rye, manure and maybe sorghum-Sudan to get as much organic matter into this soil as possible before we plant a beef pasture mix in a few years. Once that is established we can begin planting trees, creating silvopasture, food producing perennials while grazing cattle.

That’s the pie in the sky dream but for now we feel we need to do something to set us up for future success.

Thanks. We are not buying the house. It is a big expensive, probably inefficient house.  Land is 45 acres and that 5 acre homesite will be split off.  We will end up with a mostly square property with a square notch in the NW corner.  We are living renting in town 10 minutes away.  We will build on the property after an evaluation period helps determine the homesite.

First Permies post. Apologies if it’s too long.

We are buying 40 acres in south central Kansas and eventually want to get to a system with elements from Mark Shepard, Geoff Lawton, Joel Salatin, Greg Judy…etc.  we are thinking lots of grazing, lots of fruits and nuts, growing enough food to eat for free and recreation. Swimming, fishing, biking, hiking.  We don’t have a plan yet but we need to do something with this tilled crop ground. We are thinking cover crops and manure over the next couple of years while we build a home and get fencing up.

Eventually rainwater retention will be paramount because we’ll water might not be available or may be salty.

Currently has drainage terraces that are failing and creating new drainage gullies.  Don’t have money for water retention earthworks yet. For cover crops and building biomass until we come up with a real plan should we fix the terraces and let it function as it has for years or should we completely smooth it out, remove the terraces, plant cover crops and begin the evaluation period with a clean slate?  See where the water wants to go if this land topography was restored to what we think it naturally looked like?

It is flatter than it looks in the photos. Only 1 10’ contour line on the whole property.  Alluvial Plane, on the border between Tallgrass and Mixed Grass Prairie.

We are thinking if we can’t find we’ll water, our structures will be up high and built tall to use gravity to water animals.