I would say this year is the turning point. Not any single day or project, but just generally things are starting to pay back.

It's one thing to talk about shading south windows with Grapes and quite another to actually have grape vines on wires reaching for the second floor. (the ripe grapes I nibble on occasionally are quite nice too).

Upstairs- or should I say up the ladder?- I just finished putting up the yoke and main rafters of my Yurt style house. Everything I've done on the second floor to date has been temporary- temporary walls to support a hodgepodge of boards to support a hodgepodge of tarps and light weight panels leaking water with every rain and deteriorating in the sunlight.

Finally I can look to establishing some permanent solutions to my roofing requirements. A surface I can walk on to service solar panels. replacing my solar water heaters that I had to dismantle when I first started building the temporary roofs.

And then there's all the hand work getting ready for the next phase of swale and dam construction. The two new gully ponds have performed quite well even though they are not yet up to full height and water disappears from them daily.

Even the contour pond- which looked to me like it would always be primarily a water soakage system, like a dry well,- has started to hold small amounts of water for extended periods.

The next backhoe rental will hopefully start similar redirection of water to the ridgepoint dam and get it actively accumulating suspended clay which has started to seal the contour pond.

Tying overflow from the high gully dam into all these lower systems (including garden systems) will give an enormous amount of flexibility to  water supply.

I have watched almost all of the rain water stay well above the lowest (fish pond) gully dam. In fact, it takes an active drain opening in the middle gully dam to resupply the fish pond which used to routinely overflow into the creek.

We have been fighting a natural gas pipeline, but the process has been grinding through and it looks like my "front" 15 acres will become an experiment for how to recover disturbed steep slopes and establish a permaculture type solution to the landscape the pipeline leaves behind.

I see acres of blueberries and rock and wood chip contour swales ending at the permanent easement, and then picking up the run off on another similar swale right below the easement. I'm not crazy about having a high pressure 42" gas pipe 4 feet underground,  but with some skill and thoughtful action maybe this problem can become the solution.

 I still think the whole pipeline project should be discarded and these corporate giants should put the same intensity and influence into sustainable energy sources, but as the old saying goes, if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Maybe in this case the saying should be--" If life chips up your pine forest, make blueberries".