That is am awesome location.
I suppose that a lack of
water is not a major issue, but that erosion and runoff is.
The advice I have heard over and over again is to build the first swale at the top of the property, and then work downward.
In your case, you will have difficulty in building wide swale, clearly a 2m wide swale would be challenging.
You might start with 1m wide swale, .5m deep, and space them closer together than I would where I might have a 4% slope.
I would place the swales really close together, 10-12 meters apart (center to center, assuming the the swale and the mound are about 2m wide) which, until the trees mature, will give you plenty of space between to run animals through the system.
When the trees grow up a bit, maybe in ten years, you will be largely a
closed canopy system, unless you do some thinning.
Plant your most common trees and support species from seed or from cuttings. That will be your most affordable way to plant them. You will not be able to afford to plant nursery grown trees on one acre planted like this, as it comes to a line of trees 2.5 miles long at a spacing of 10 meters.
For those keeping count, that will involve over 2500 plantings at a five foot spacing (which would probably be light) and as many as 800 productive trees.
Good luck! Please post pictures as you make progress! Very exciting!
