Blue Smoke
posted on
May 11, 2023
 The owners of this land are in a conflagration over its status.This is not uncommon. Ownership of land has inflamed many and wrought dispute throughout history. That such discussion should suddenly arise among these owners, like a wildfire, catches them all by surprise. Land is a potent resource, and its symbolism in our lives looms larger than we know. Competing points of view echo back and forth, trying to find consensus, in a maelstrom of dissension.
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Our newly planted trees seem to be on a stable trajectory. So far, we see little death loss, but they obviously have a long way to go. The cover crop of oats has finally come to life after a very dry fall and winter, and is doing its job insulating and protecting seedlings from deer and drought. The crop is now about three feet tall. The poplar seedling below was nipped by the late frost, but is doing fine.
We are discovering how well systematic tiling works to drain fields and how much water it carries away from them. When we break and obstruct tile lines to create wetlands, we wait with bated breath to see what happens. Usually nothing happens, which is disappointing. We have been hoping to see water at the surface within days. But we are realizing it takes a lot of water to saturate a 30-acre field from 3 feet down up to the surface. So we strive to be patient. The other phenomenon we are witnessing is the power of water to find its way to the nearest outlet regardless of what we do. In one field, we blocked the outlet near the stream, only to find the water had moved over and was flowing two feet away into the stream below. So, we blocked that, and the water then moved another two feet over, to flow unimpeded. We finally realized this is sandier soil than elsewhere, which allows water to flow around whatever obstructs it. So, Mike Garen, our artist and engineer with equipment, excavated clay from another field and built a subterranean wall in this area that is 8 ft. deep, 3 ft. wide, and 40 ft. long! That is holding so far. There is so much about life we do not know...
Now that the trees are planted, we have opened the valve feeding this pond from a spring-fed stream nearby. The pond is full, and it will be interesting to observe it come to life over the next months with amphibians, fish, and waterfowl. Two Canadian geese have already found it appealing. This pond will be continually fed by spring water. We will create other shallow ponds in our wetlands, but they will be mostly fed by ground water, and may become seasonally dry. We will see what unfolds. The plastic lines you see in the water are tile lines revealed when we excavated this area. Water from the pond is now flowing out into the field through these tile lines, helping to saturate soil. The question will be can the blockage we created at the outlet for this field hold all the pressure flowing from this pond.
May blue smoke bless us all.  |
