Permie newbie here. In process of buying out my siblings on on an acre sized family property with homestead in Northeast PA. We will be moving to the property in early July. Because I have access to the property and a desire to develop this property into a backyard permaculture food forest I have purchased around 40 trees and schrubs to plant this spring. My intial plan involved two good sized swales with hopes that one could feed a small pond. For a number of reasons primarily time and secondly resources (some basics unexpected nessicary home improvements killed my earthworks budget...for now) I will not be able to get the earthworks done in time as my trees arrived today. Any suggestions for planting trees with a plan to later introduce swales or have I made a rookie error in my thinking and planning? Having worked pruning some of the existing trees on the property the last few weekends I have noticed that water retention does not seem to be an issues and have thought I may eliminate one of the two planed swales from by plan. Many parts of the property were extremely wet as much as five days after some heavy rainfall including spots with standing water. My plan is to build some small hugekulture mounds on contour leaving space and access to fill in (hopefully in the fall) with the swales and connecting the mounds to burms down from the planed swales. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
