Friday 4 September 2009

There's a Hole in the Gully

Dear Liza, dear Liza. Or something to that effect.

The time had finally come to put in our dam. Or as it turned out, a big hole in the ground. Unfortunately we did not have the right material in the gully to make a proper dam wall. Damn dam a wholly holey mess! So instead we dug in deep (keeping within council regs of course).

There was an existing hole in the ground, however it was fairly shallow. The main purpose of this new water collection area is for irrigation of the property, primarily focusing on the generation of edible goodies. However there were some important secondary reasons as well.

We wanted the resultant body of water to look good. We also want it to be deep enough so that we could swim in it without touching bottom. As well, we want our future ducks and geese to be able to use it.

We'll see how everything pans out once the water level fills up. However I am feeling rather good about it so far.

While I would have liked the western side to have been deeper, it will probably be for the best that it's not as reeds and other filtration type plants should establish well there. This should help maintain the water quality, which has always been extremely good. Obviously it looks a bit murky now, but with a bit of time all the particles should settle out.

I will post a video of the water surging into the dam after the temporary upstream bung wall was broken. The last two pictures were taken before the water was released into the dam.

2 comments:

  1. Nice! That looks like a fantastic spot to hide when you're meant to be working in the garden :-). It'll be good to have different levels etc for plants and animals. Do you get yabbies up there? Yum.

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  2. Hey Darren
    Yes it will be good to have the different levels. I will probably have the 26 ton excavator create some more plant shelves on the eastern side on Monday. There is still quite a bit of tidy up work to be done by the machine as there is a HUGE pile of earth at the back of our eastern paddock.
    Yes we do get yabbies here. We have a long shallow stretch of the creek on the property before it hits the new dam, so that will be prime habitat for them.

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