One goal was to be able to drive down the slope, along the inside of the Swale and back up the slope at the other end with both the tractor and the ATV pulling a trailer. This is to be able to stand in the tractor's front end loader to pick fruit like a cherry picker and to haul harvested fruit, nuts and veg back from the berms without actually driving machinery on the pasture above or below the structure. By confining traffic to the bottom of the Swale and to the lane ways, compaction is limited to those areas except when/if I use a subsoiler to further break up the clay in the pastures, but that is an experiment for another day. Having completed the Swale this far, I think I will have to widen it, as it looks very tight at the moment to drive in the bottom of the Swale. That is partly due to digging the Swale solely with my tractor's backhoe. It has a maximum downward reach of 6 foot, but it's sideward reach is not nearly that wide and the logistics of moving dirt from a trench that is 3 foot deep, without driving on the new berm and compacting it, is not so easy as it might seem in theory. To do this excavation process across the whole property efficiently is going to need an excavator and/or a skid steer. To buy even an elderly pair the size for the purpose would set me back $75,000. That implies I would need to continue working my office job another few years and/or make the equipment pay for itself by contacting myself and machines out to other people. Even assuming I can speed things up through experience from this first structure, to stick to my current mantra of being self sufficient in all ways is not going to work. I have approx 8,000 feet of Hugel-Swale to dig, and spending a whole summer digging one pilot (110') is just not going to cut it. The next best option will be to rent. I have priced an appropriate sized excavator at $1500 per week, delivered, plus the diesel. I would separately need to buy the tilting bucket as no one within 100 miles of me rents an excavator with a tilt bucket (at least not that I have found so far), and all the suppliers I spoke to assume me that none of their competitors do so either. I still have to exhaust all leads on a excavator driver plus machine, but so far haven't found someone with a tilt bucket. More research needed.