It’s a whole year since we made our first Zuni Bowl at Milkwood Farm to combat an erosive gully headcut, and time has proved the benefits of this simple yet powerful handmade technique nicely. One year on, the zuni bowl has 10cm of silt covering its paved floor, the vegetation around it is stable and thriving, and the headcut has halted.
Big thanks to Tamara Gadzia for leading us through this restoration process last year, and also to Craig Sponholtz for furthering our knowledge in it since…
Recently at Milkwood Farm, Craig Sponholtz led a course in Applied Watershed Restoration, and taught us all a bit about how to tackle on-farm erosion control with human-scale solutions.
One of the things we constructed as part of the workshop was a media luna, a simple but effective rockwork structure that can be used to subtly manipulate sheet flow in a number of ways to prevent erosion… Read More
So it’s only 2 weeks until Australia’s first EVER Applied Watershed Restoration course, which is happening at Milkwood Farm (and is FarmReady approved. And will be incredible. Ok, end pitch… but you really would be crazy not to join us).
Like many farms with fragile soils, Milkwood Farm has many examples of small-scale erosion – in our case, a legacy from previous landholders. I went looking for typical examples that we could use as part of the course. I have never been so excited about photographing erosion. Read More
Here’s a great video of Craig Sponholtz explaining his guidelines for watershed restoration. As with much of permaculture design, it’s all about expanding the edges of fertility, and starting with what you have. Which, is the case of re-hydrating a landscape, is the wet spots!
It’s important to have options for fixing erosion and repairing your landscape’s hydrology that can be achieved at human scale, with the available labor that you have. And as you can see from this video, restoring moisture to the landscape is all about small slow solutions… Read More
Six weeks after constructing some zuni bowls as part of our watershed restoration, our structures are full of water for the first time! Exciting to see. Read More
