The studio dam, the one halfway up the ridge and in the middle of our system, was the first one we all sunk our teeth into. And boy oh boy...earthworks are something else... it's like having your skin torn off in large slabs, while someone tells you it's not skin, it's just butter. No problem...

Strange analogy, perhaps... but until I had witnessed these earthworks, the landscape of Milkwood to me was a solid and impermeable mass... something that you could get a shovel into if you were lucky, but essentially one big, solid object. And then the bulldozer showed up. And now everything looks like a completely different place.

We were actually really lucky with what is usually a  traumatic time (don't get me wrong... it was still pretty scary) when setting up a property... hydrology earthworks are something that you want to only do once, if at all possible. Nick and I had chewed over the Permaculture earthworks design for months, and to add excitement to the situation, we invited the very fabulous Geoff Lawton to Milkwood to teach a Permaculture Earthworks course during the first three days of the madness that has been the terra-forming of Milkwood.

So then we had 35 farmers and earthmovers on-site at Milkwood for three days. The course was great, and many of the participants came up to me during or after to express thanks that such a course had been run... you have to understand that there are bugger-all courses or workshops in sustainable hydrology earthworks for farmers and earthmovers around... unless they want to do a PDC, which for most of them might be a bridge too far, for various reasons.

But back to our fabulous dam. The minute it was finished, the rain came down... which was not at all what we wanted (sorry, rain) because we wanted to mulch and plant out the dam wall first. At the final stage of the dam's construction, our earthmover re-covered the earthworks with the topsoil that he's scraped off at the start, before he began his digging proper. This meant that our completed dam was covered in topsoil, which meant that we could plant stuff into it, and reasonably expect it to grow. Not trees, mind you... taproots (ie most trees) and dam wall = bad. Hairnet roots (perennial grasses, clumping bamboos) and dam wall = good.

A couple of weeks after this video was made, Nick turned a neighbor's disaster into our Christmas present, and pumped the contents of a failing dam ('she's about to blow, boys!') across the valley into our dam with a fire-fighters pump and a very long hose. Despite growing up by the ocean and always eschewing muddy water when it came to swimming, I am in love with my dam! And I am proud to say we already have four froggy friends that have moved in, and sing us to sleep all this summer long...

Technical bits:

• We sowed the dam wall with a 50-50 mix of Lablab and Cowpea seeds, both of which had been inoculated with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which will help them grow (you just ask for the to be inoculated before you buy the bags of seed). Geoff recommended sowing at between 4-8 times the commercially recommended rate - the idea is to get that dam wall jumping with growth asap, and growing with the species you want.
• Both these species are nitrogen-fixing legumes, which means they will improve the topsoil quick smart so we can plant some other things in there .
• Over the top of the broadcast seeds, we did a 'feather mulch' of oaten straw, which we got cheap because it was all a bit wet and rotten. A 'feather mulch' is where you lightly mulch the ground so that you can only *just* not see the soil. This mulch holds dew, protects the seed from birds and increases the germination rate of the seeds, all without blocking out all the light.
• We hit good clay in in this dam, which should mean that it doesn't leak much at all. We also hit a lot of huge rocks. 
• A dam this size when full, will hold just under 1 Megalitre. It took about 3 days (24 hours) to build with one bulldozer and Nick manning the laser level to check heights of various bits. The bulldozer (with a driver in it) cost us $150 p/h. So that's about $3,600 for this dam. Which is not much at all, really, for the multi-purpose resource that it will be for Milkwood.
• In terms of dam size on Australian rural properties, this is a very small dam. We wanted it small and deep, in order to minimize surface area (evaporation) and  so that it would be on a complimentary scale to the other elements in the system nearby.
• By putting in multiple small, deep dams, rather than one big-kahuna dam, we are spreading the many benefits a body of water brings to its immediate environment around the property, hedging our bets in case one dam leaks badly or gives way all together, minimizing evaporation and generally creating diversity in the landscape. Diversity in a productive landscape = good.

Once we had all made it through the first four days of earthworks, things started hotting up with Nick and the Bulldozer... top dam, top swale, middle swale, bottom dam, studio site... it was on for young and old... at an hourly rate of $150 - yikes... and we've got approximately 3 weeks of work for the bulldozer.. so... better have a cake stall sometime soon, I think...

Having grand plans is all very fine, but there comes a time when one must make the first, single, decisive gesture towards action.

For us, this meant placing a small wooden peg, painted white, at the southern boundary of Milkwood. And then surveying a contour which continued aaaallllll the way around the hillside at the same height as that first peg, right around to the other boundary of Milkwood on the western side of the ridge. This first contour was important to mark out for a couple of reasons:

• it will mark the 'level' for the middle swale of our Permaculture design, and therefore the level of the middle dam (and in turn, therefore, the position of the studio)
• being roughly in the middle of the system, this contour will be used to define the placement of features above and below it (like greenhouse/chookhouse combos, the kitchen garden, the orchard, the bath house)
• as swales are tree growing systems, this contour will define where a belt of trees (all productive, food bearing ones) runs through the centre of the Permaculture system
  
• because you have to start somewhere

And so we whacked the first peg into the soil of Milkwood. Which wasn't too easy at the time, given the 6-year drought - the soil was quite un-enthused about opening up for our peg. But even the soil of Milkwood (in it's sorry, overgrazed state) was no match for our collective enthusiasm. And in a year or so, that soil will be hydrated, friable and hopping with life.

Following the experience of the Cowley level and the laser level, it was clear that the laser level was going to be an indespensable tool for the amount of surveying and earthworks we intended to carry out at Milkwood. And having one around would be quite handy for outside projects and teaching, too. So  we went out and sourced a cheap laser level at auction, and now we are lasering our little hearts out. It's so good. You can re-check levels in the blink of an eye... and earthworks is like carpentry, only to the power of 10... measure twice, measure twice again, cut once.

One of the great things about surveying out a site is that you go through the entire landscape very slowly. You're looking in all directions as you move around the contour, and you begin to appreciate exactly what bits are level with what, and what features are markedly higher than others. And this makes a big difference, when you're trying to analyze how the rainwater runoff 'works' within a particular landscape.  

As i write this, we have finished just about all of the surveying for Milkwood. Everything has been pegged, measured, and re-measured within an inch of its life. All of the swales, dams, access ways and structure sites exist in a language of little white pegs throughout the grassy hillside. It's all action stations from here on in... fingers crossed... bring on the bulldozers... 

Aerial photo of Kirwin, with Milkwood top left-ish. Taken in about 2002, we think. 

Standing on a bare hilltop, with the creek below and a small creekflat to the left, it all seemed so easy when we first got here... all we had to do was figure out where to put some structures, avoid the big trees, and build a bridge over the creek to get in. Grow something on the creekflat, put in a vegie garden, and get water from the sky... and the rest of it all, all those complex ideas and fiddly bits, could just wait till we were nicely set up.

 However, the more we sat and looked, and the more we thought about it, we realised that establishing a well-functioning Permaculture system was going to take a bit of planning. Rushing in putting down a driveway, and putting up a studio, wasn't an option. So, we went back to the basics of Permaculture design: Water. Access. Structure. In that order. Hard to stick to, when it gets down to -17 here in winter... but we're still here, now on the sunny-side of that first winter, and we're now ready to implement our Permaculture design for Milkwood.

 Milkwood - Permaculture Design

I know the above design may look fairly un-interesting at first glance - but I assure you it is TREMENDOUSLY EXCITING and, in addition, quite a damn fine Permaculture design, as far as designs go. The blue bits are dams, the dark-brown lines are swales, and the yellow thing is the studio, with the kitchen garden next to it (the little green bit). The lighter brown lines are the access roads, to enable us to get vehicles everywhere that we need to during system establishment, and the greeny-blue line is the existing creek.

 The swales are the thing we are most excited about. Without going into a lengthy explanation, swales are water-harvesting elements (they look like long ditches), made exactly on-contour within the landscape. Basically, everything uphill from the swale (in terms of rain + nutrient run-off) flows downhill into the swale. At this point, the water is captured, and ends up sitting in the swale, rather than rushing off downhill to the creek. The swale then fills up along its entire length, until the overflow pours into the dam that is attached to it at some point.

If you have a series of these systems, you end up with long canals of water in the landscape, everytime you get a big rain. The water quickly soaks into the downhill side of the swale, making the downhill side of the swale a *great* place to grow trees. And your dams fill up. And your trees grow. And the whole landscape has heaps more water in it, not just on it - you want to store water IN not ON the landscape if you possibly can. Which makes the creeks flow for longer. Which nudges everything towards a more stable ecosystem. Which is not just good, but great. It benefits us, our food production, the wallabies and the water table. Hurrah.

 Milkwood - Permaculture Design with Aerial photo underlay...

So that's it. Three dams (plus the one at bottom left, which is on next-door's land, but will feed our system), three long swales. Some access, and a studio-site. Which just happens to be right next to the middle dam. Which will provide thermal mass and temperature stabilization (not to mention reflected light in winter). And which will also mean that we can jump off the front deck of the studio into the water. To swim with the fishes. And the ducks, and the yabbies, and the frogs, and the turtles.... 

Now all we have to do is... do it.