The pilot swale is a month old, and this was my first check on how it is doing. The deer love it! If I had achieved nothing else, at least I have entertained the deer. There is not a square foot of berm that does not have a deer footprint in it. There has also been a baby moose on the berm, judging from the tracks. The curlex blanket is worse for wear but surprisingly intact given the traffic it has taken. About 60% of the bamboo stakes had been knocked over or ended up off the berm altogether. I had put out the stakes for the purpose of keeping track of where I planted different varieties of seeds, but then ran out of time and didn't get the seeds in. I also thought it would stop the wind from lifting the curlex. It's just as well that I didn't get around to labelling the stakes and making careful records based on that labelling as it would have been time wasted! So another lesson learned, pegging down the curlex is worth doing as that is probably what kept the deer traffic from dragging it off the berm altogether. I had envisaged having problems with the deer eating the bark and new growth from fruit trees and shrubs, but I hadn't anticipated wholesale vandalism from them using the new berm to play 'king of the hill'. I hope that once all 5 full length swales are in, ground works won't be such a novelty and the traffic will calm down a bit. Eventually, I will fence off the berms to keep the livestock off them. But I will have to think a bit more about how that fencing will be created. We have a herd of elk - about 30 strong - roaming this area too, and they are very hard on the barbed wire fences. Putting a lot of money into hog-wire fencing, as I had originally thought, might just be expensive and not very effective. I might add fencing to this pilot just to see how effectively I can protect the berm from the wild browsers and what type of fencing is most effective. On my last visit to the pilot site, I seeded the berm with hairy vetch, the uphill side of the swale with field pea and the bottom of the swale ( where I relaid the grass turves) was over seeded with crimson clover. A few of the hairy vetch seedlings are coming up through the curlex (sorry no picture). The field pea seeds are just sprouting on the uphill bank of the swale (first picture). One surprise is that the pilot swale holds water too well. The soil in this location has a lot higher clay content than I expected. When I finished digging the swale, I turfed it using grass turves saved with the top soil, because leaving ground open here is an invitation for noxious weeds. But that grass may not survive the amount of standing water this pilot seems to be holding. So far this pilot swale seems to be halfway toward being a pond. There is a pool of standing water that has persisted from the outset. During the digging it was dry, so this is definitely runoff not a seep. (Second picture). The grass that is submerged is decaying and you can smell that this is a reducing environment in that puddle. It is interesting that in just a month, the pilot swale has developed a fauna different from the field around it. It seems to be a haven for hoverflies, for some reason. They are loud and look and sound like bees. The surrounding field currently has flowering clover and a few types of wild flowers, but the swale itself is pretty barren of flowers, so I don't know what is attracting them here. When walking up to the swale, it genuinely sounds like walking up to a pond. Lots of crickets and other peepers that weren't here before the pilot was dug, and are not heard anywhere else in this field. This tiny puddle (4' x 8' x 4" deep) in the pilot swale seems to be making a totally disproportionate effect on the area! The other oddity is that the puddle already has a resident frog! Before I spotted the frog, I was thinking I should fill the depression with mulch to prevent it from breeding mosquitos, but having a frog living there makes it far too interesting to fill in. The frog can be seen in this photo, but it is very well camouflaged. (Third photo) August and September are the dry months here. It will be interesting to see if this puddle persists. So the improvements to the pilot this week were to: 1) reposition the bamboo stakes that the deer knocked over. I am curious as to whether they will get knocked over again, or if the initial damage was the result of a first flush of curiosity. 2) overseed the berm with a mixture of vetch, 3 types of pea and 4 types of beans. Last time I inoculated the vetch before seeding, but didn't soak the seed first. It's promising that some of that vetch is coming up. This time, all the seeds have been soaked for 24 hours and inoculated. We will see what survives the clay soil and the attentions of the deer. Some of the seed has been dug in, some has just been scattered on the surface. 3) In addition to cover crop, I have planted and marked a few seeds each from a variety of fruits - sand pear, paw-paw, saskatoon, blueberry, mulberry, elderberry, beach plum. 4) Again, I have transported out here the grass clippings from the lawn to mulch the berm (fourth picture) 5) I bought a 40 gallons sprayer to use as a water bowser. The last thing I did on this visit was to spray the berm with 25 gallons of water. This little bowser is run from a 12 volt battery. It comes with clips like a light weight jumper cable, but I've had it fitted with a cigarette lighter plug because my ATV is fitted with a 12 volt outlet socket. The pump is quite powerful. It will spray maybe 50 feet. I thought it worked well. It would be nicer if it were rated for more than 2 gallons per minute, but sure beats bringing water out by the bucket.