Logo primary
Logo secondary
Milkwood
Milkwood
Details
Commenced:
01/01/2007
Submitted:
26/01/2011
Last updated:
19/09/2016
Location:
107 Redfern St , Sydney + Surrounds, NSW, AU
Phone:
+61 2 5300 4437
Website:
http://www.Milkwood.net
Climate zone:
Mediterranean





My Projects

(projects i'm involved in)

Milkwood

Milkwood

Sydney + Surrounds, AU


Followers
Aaron Jerad Abdur-Rahman McCausland Adam McShane Adam Shand Adrienne Wimbush Alan Stuart alex jackson Alexandra Berendt allie godfrey Alper Can Kılıç Amanda Eurich Amanda McLennan Ana Garcia Andrew Sutton Anthony Andrist Bar Shermeister Ben Hamley Benjamin Humphrey Benson Anthony Borja Diaz Brendon Farlow Bron(wyn) Elliott Campbell Burns Carlo Makhoul Chowgene Koay Chris Wallis Christian Douglas Coralie Tate Daniel Gair Daniel Halsey Daniele Longo Darren Roberts Darren J.  Doherty David  n Abigail David Perry David Williamson Deborah Willis Denise Grant Deniz Ucok Desmond Ford Dilek Sezgin Dilek Yalcin Demiralp Duygu Baslican EBRU VURAL Edmond Chow Edwin Clarke Elena Parmiggiani Eliza Brazel Eliza Corona Eva Mader Fabian  Torres filipa leal Fiona Campbell Fiona Hasselman Fiona Plsek Flordeliza Harris Floyd C. Constable Fraser Bayley Fred Tanner Gemma Hurst Geoff Capper Gordon Williams Grant Wilson Grifen Hope H. Mine Benligirayoğlu Harry Wykman Helder Valente Holly James Hubert de Kalbermatten Hui-i Chiang Hunter Lydon Ian Trew Ida Chittenden Imogen Semmler Ingrid Pullen James McCann James Reid Jan Zijlstra Janice Little Jarod Santana Jean-Luc Henry Jeremy Yau Jessica Stirling Jo Darvill Jo McLeay Jodie Lane Jonathan Oehm Jose Dib Josef Blümel Julie Pagliaro Kalinya  Farm Kate  McQuiggin Kelly Pagliaro Kent Fordham Kenton Zerbin Kerri Paine Kerry Given Kerry Ann Ennett Kim Pagliaro Kirsten Bradley Klaus Himmel Klifford J Fyshwick Kyle Tengler Landcraft Permaculture ...... Paul Boundy Laura Mathias Leisa Cox Leita Lord Leon van Wyk Liam Dolan Lilly Zeitler Linda  Chan Linden Gerstel Line Marie Elkjær Johansen Loren Taylor Luyendyk Lucia Gibson Lucie de Framond Marcello Bianchi Marcelo Bueno Maree Beveridge Mari Korhonen maria baltazzi María Luz Cardozo Mark Brown Mark Brown Markus Hahn Marty Miller-Crispe Matias Pajulahti Matt Luthi MAUD LAMBERT Megan Bridge Megan Gonzalez Michael Vyse Michel Thill Michelle Dallas Michelle Stephenson Morag Embleton Mustafa Fatih Bakir Mystee Unwin Natasha Giddings Neil Silverhair Nick Huggins Nick Ritar Owen Hablutzel Paloma Correa paul barker Paul Ciaramitaro Paul Murray Paul Tan Paul Young Paula Mendes Pedro Franco Pedro Serpa Pete Blake Peter Hipe Peter Koll Rachel Nagle Rafaela Tavares Régis Grosset Rene Michalak Rhonda Ayliffe Ricardo Vieira Richard Telford rob durham Robert Grau Rubén Navarro Russell Mudge Ryan Rutley Saenz lma Salah Hammad Samantha Lau SELAHATTİN GOKHAN ERYILMAZ Seneca Haynes Seval Ebru Yıldız Şevval Nur Kütük Shelley McClure Sheree Ogden Silvia Floresta Stephanie Ladwig-Cooper Stephanie (Vetiver) Blennerhassett Steve Hanson Tanya Mendija tia liem Todd Ross Tom Kendall Toni Wells Turgut  S. Yildirim Valentin Grasso Valeria Andrews Vanessa Witt Vanessa Monge Augusto Fernandes Vic Gaffney Victor Barahona Virgínia Walton Warren Clendenning Wen Rolland Wendy Howard Will Borowski Willi Paul Woody Meyer Xavier  San Giorgi yagmur kutlar

Back to Milkwood

The saga of the middle dam

Project: Milkwood

Posted by Kirsten Bradley over 13 years ago

First off, i would like to make an important point: we are yet to meet a challenge at Milkwood Farm that we could not fix with careful thought, good advice, relentless research, a strong dose of creativity and a stronger dose of humor. That said, the saga

First off, i would like to make an important point: we are yet to meet a challenge at Milkwood Farm that we could not fix with careful thought, good advice, relentless research, a strong dose of creativity and a stronger dose of humor. That said, the saga of the middle dam nearly had us stumped. But we got there in the end, with a strong brew of the above.

Secondly, I would like to point out that sharing our challenges so nakedly on this blog is not something I really enjoy doing. Sometimes I would rather paint a rosy picture of first-generation farmers awash in successfully implemented permaculture solutions and photogenic fields of nitrogen-fixing perennials. But hey – where’s the fun in that?

The middle dam being built, in December 2007

Our first dam on Milkwood was built in December 2007, as part of the very first course we ever ran at Milkwood Farm. 1.8 megalitres in capacity, it was built partly to form part of our immediate living environment – our cottage (still in progress at writing) is emerging from the earth on the dam’s edge.

I’ve talked to a lot of earthworks operators and permaculture designers about the moment when a hydrological earthworks system fills with water for the first time – and they all say the same thing – it’s a big relief when you finally see the system working as it should.

In our case, we waited nearly 3 years to see if the system really worked – it took that long to get decent rain!

The middle dam in August last year - fuller than full.

When our grand moment of watching the system do its thing came in August, we made some necessary adjustments in response to seeing the system at capacity – mostly re-setting the spillways.

Nick is no stranger to solving dam problems. Aside from his consultancy work, we’ve had a couple of on-farm challenges with dams at Milkwood already. As outlined in The saga of the top dam, we’d spent the year before this struggling to make our top dam hold water, due to multiple factors, one of them being dispersive clays.

Nick cracked that problem in the end, but it took a lot of thought, hand wringing and hard work to get it right.

In the months that followed with all this new water about, things started to happen for our middle dam. One day in December we noticed that the whole wall was slumping. We were about to loose the dam! First off, Nick leaped into action and drained the dam as much as he could, as fast as he could, with our trusty small diesel pump.

After some discussion with various earthworks expert friends, Nick did some thinking and some research, counted our pennies, made a plan, and called the earthworks company. One excavator to Milkwood, please – stat.

Dam repair method diagram: before and after

What it turned out had happened is this: when the wall was built, some topsoil was left behind on the ground at the base of the wall. With heavy rain, this topsoil liquefied and moved downhill, causing part of the wall above it to slump (marked in red on the diagram above).

When a dam ‘goes’, it’s a really big deal, because it means the end of that dam – that’s it, show’s over. The amount of material washed away by the force of the water when a dam wall fails is, in almost all cases, just too costly to replace. We really didn’t want to loose the dam right next to our house. So Nick began coordinating the emergency repair immediately.

Our house dam with its water all pumped out, awaiting repair

After waiting 3 years to see this dam full, it was hard to pump it out again and let the water go! But go it did, down into the creek. Now everyone could work properly, without so much fear of the dam bursting.

The dam wall with the topsoil all scraped off, and the gunk layer removed

We removed all the topsoil from the outside of the wall with an excavator, and dug into the wall to the source of the slippage – the liquefied topsoil at the wall’s outer base. Nick had the excavator remove that quicksmart.

He then needed to re-build the dam wall at a more shallow angle. Part of the reason for this dam having problems was that the wall was, in retrospect, too steep for the non-ideal materials used. The wall also needed to be ultra-compacted to ensure it stayed put from here on in.

To build more wall, we needed more material. To get more material, we needed to make a hole somewhere else to obtain that material from. Hmm. I thought we had enough holes on this farm.

Digging out a pond to create material for reparing the dam wall with

Turning another problem into a solution, Nick elected to dig a pond below the dam wall, where the slow leak comes out. Ah yes – did I tell you about the slow leak? This dam has a leak out it’s base, due to a fissure in the bedrock at the bottom of the dam when it was first built (did i also mention that we surprisingly hit bedrock when we built this dam? We did). Not much we can do about this leak. It is a slow one, and it pops out as a wet spot a little further down the hill.

So a new pond seemed like a good solution to two problems – we would get more material for the wall, and create an aquatic environment which was a good use of our wet spot, rather than letting that precious water create a mushy patch at the bottom of our system.

We then mixed the material from the new pond and the material from the slippage together and applied it in layers to the dam wall, compacting each layer as we laid it. Enter the sheep’s-foot roller, a nifty little device fitted to the end of the excavator’s arm.

sheeps foot roller in action

A sheep’s-foot roller exerts great force over the small area it rolls, and is great for compacting hard-to-compact material, like ours. Micah the excavator driver rolled and rolled and he rolled again, until that entire wall was well compacted. No more slipping happening to this damn wall on our watch!

The new pond and dam wall, all re-dressed in topsoil, and ready to grow stuff

Following this step we replaced the topsoil all over the dam wall and around and inside our new pond. Taking no chances, Nick and Ryan (our fabulous intern) also applied a generous amount of gypsum to the inner side of the dam wall, to help bond our dispersive clays and improve water retention.

using the sheeps-foot roller on the inside wall of the dam, squishing in the gypsum

Last of all, Nick and Ryan seeded and feather-mulched the new dam wall with cow pea as a cover crop, toasted the efforts all around, and then went and had a little lie down.

The dam wall a couple of weeks later, with it's cow pea cover crop coming up

Designing and implementing earthworks for water catchment and storage on your farm is a big deal. But there a plenty of books and DVD’s and people that can tell you how to do it, and who make it seem very easy and fool-proof if done well. Hurrah for that.

What we struggled to find in our hour of need, however, was resources on how to fix a failing dam, what to do when the wall slumps and other worst-case scenarios. Where are all these resources? Earthworks are not always a case of ‘set and forget’ – our landscape, especially those bits with non-ideal aspects, just don’t work that way.

So that’s why we wrote this post – to share a near-miss. Maybe it can be of use to someone else who has difficult terrain, a big rain, a slumped wall, and a lot of determination. It was great to work through this problem and find a solution that we’re confident will work well.

The total cost of repairing this dam wall was $3,000 which mostly went in excavator hire and excavator operator fees.

the new pond at the bottom of the wall, filling up nicely (with log for added underwater ecosystem)

Considering our future home’s immediate surroundings will be so positively influenced by having a large body of water right next to our front door, we consider the investment of re-building this dam wall very much worth it. We learned a lot, and we got an extra pond, which the geese have taken as their own. All’s well that ends well!

Thanks to: Darren Doherty + Cam Wilson for their solidarity and suggestions, and to Ryan Rutley our fabulous intern for the pictures and his efforts throughout this project. The excavator we used was a Komatsu pc120 from A1 Earthworks in Mudgee and the driver, Micah, was awesome.

Comments (5)

You must be logged in to comment.

Gordon Williams
Gordon Williams : Thanks for sharing your experiences. I find this kind of article with pictures so incredibly valuable in a realm where trial and error is an expensive way to learn.

Gordon Williams
Posted over 13 years ago

Report Gordon Williams on The saga of the middle dam

Reason:

or cancel

Wen Rolland
Wen Rolland : Thanks for sharing this. I have not yet done large earthworks, only small ponds, swales and dams. I am also lucky enough to work with very good clay.
Posted over 13 years ago

Report Wen Rolland on The saga of the middle dam

Reason:

or cancel

jordan lowery
jordan lowery : nice read and photos, i like that sheep's foot roller.
Posted over 13 years ago

Report jordan lowery on The saga of the middle dam

Reason:

or cancel

Vanessa Monge Augusto Fernandes
Vanessa Monge Augusto Fernandes : It is a really wonderful story,and made me remember the course!My first time in the "outback"everyone had big accents! What a shame the dam was leaking but with friends like Darren and Cam it's ok I think. In Brazil we build dams walls with the sheepsfoot roller as well and I think it is a good machine,maybe more reliable than the excavator!You and Nick are very inspirational thanks. Van
Posted over 13 years ago

Report Vanessa Monge Augusto Fernandes on The saga of the middle dam

Reason:

or cancel

Kirsten Bradley
Kirsten Bradley : Hi Van! And yr welcome, all :) - thanks for your comments
Posted over 13 years ago

Report Kirsten Bradley on The saga of the middle dam

Reason:

or cancel

Courses Taught Here!
Project Badges
Urban Rural Residential Balcony Commercial Community School Demonstration Educational
Administrators
Kirsten Bradley - Director, Education, Marketing Nick Ritar - Director, Education, Teacher
Team Members
Floyd C. Constable - Garden Manager 2015 season Michael Hewins - Garden Manager 2015 season

Report Milkwood

Reason:

or cancel

Hide Milkwood

Reason:

or cancel

Hide The saga of the middle dam

Reason:

or cancel

Legend of Badges

Note: The various badges displayed in people profiles are largely honesty-based self-proclamations by the individuals themselves. There are reporting functions users can use if they know of blatant misrepresentation (for both people and projects). Legitimacy, competency and reputation for all people and projects can be evidenced and/or developed through their providing regular updates on permaculture work they’re involved in, before/after photographs, etc. A spirit of objective nurturing of both people and projects through knowledge/encouragement/inspiration/resource sharing is the aim of the Worldwide Permaculture Network.

Member

Member

A member is a permaculturist who has never taken a PDC course. These cannot become PDC teachers. Members may be novice or highly experienced permaculturists or anywhere in between. Watch their updates for evaluation.

Male memberFemale member

Permaculture Matchmaker

One of these badges will show if you select your gender and the "I'm single, looking for a permaculture partner" option in your profile.

unverified

PDC

People who claim to have taken a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course somewhere in the world.

verified

PDC Verified

People who have entered an email address for the teacher of their PDC course, and have had their PDC status verified by that teacher. Watch their updates for evaluation.

pri_verified

PRI PDC

People who’ve taken a Permaculture Research Institute PDC somewhere in the world.

pdc_teacher

PDC Teacher

People who claim to teach some version of PDC somewhere in the world.

pri_teacher

PRI Teacher

With the exception of the ‘Member’ who has never taken a PDC, all of the above can apply to become a PRI PDC Teacher. PRI PDC Teachers are those who the PRI recognise, through a vetting board, as determined and competent to teach the full 72-hour course as developed by Permaculture founder Bill Mollison – covering all the topics of The Designers’ Manual as well as possible (i.e. not cherry picking only aspects the teacher feels most interested or competent in). Such teachers also commit to focussing on the design science, and not including subjective spiritual/metaphysical elements. The reason these items are not included in the PDC curriculum is because they are “belief” based. Permaculture Design education concerns itself with teaching good design based on strategies and techniques which are scientifically provable.

PRI PDC Teachers may be given teaching and/or consultancy offerings as they become available as the network grows.

pri_teacher

Aid Worker

The individual with this badge is indicating they are, have, or would like to be involved in permaculture aid work. As such, the individual may or may not have permaculture aid worker experience. Watch their updates for evaluation.

pri_teacher

Consultant

The individual with this badge is indicating they are, have, or would like to do paid permaculture design consultancy work. As such, the individual may or may not have permaculture consultancy experience. Watch their updates for evaluation.

community

Community Project

Community projects are projects that help develop sustainable community interaction and increase localised resiliency.

Report The saga of the middle dam

Reason:

or cancel