If you look at the farm on google earth, you can discern what looks like a pretty accurate topography of the place. The road that runs the length of the property is on the east side, and it is below a ridge to the west. Over the ridge is a deeper hollow that curves along. The larger fields to the south are higher than the rest.

A few things have gotten me thinking a lot more about water. In class we spent much of a day talking about graywater. We get much more rain than Oakland's 24 inches, and it is frequent, but its probably just as important in a place that doesn't have a 7-month annual drought. Joel Salatin was all about ponds. Ive been thinking about where they could go. Maybe between the horse field and the L-field. Anyway we hardly need terracing at Patuxent farm but that doesn't mean we can't experiment. Alternatively we could plant clumping bamboo and others at high-flow areas - either on falls between fields or at greywater systems. I get the feeling that the means of achieving water conservation will serve equally well to deal with large volumes of water. From the Chesapeake Ecology Center , "Slow it down, spread it out, soak it in," and water people around the SF bay say "Slow, spread, and infiltrate." I remembered something about needing to cool off the water too, and though it was in the slogan, but no. All but some natives are dormant here in CA when it rains so I doubt anyone cares about the temperature of the water. Actually, spring gardeners would love to warm it up. The growing season in beds would be two months longer.

Whether too little water or too much, soaking it in is the only way to manage it without externalizing it. It seems the only way to do this that is biologically relevant without heavy leaching is to have great soil structure, with or without ponds and terracing. How convenient that that is exactly how it seems that plants will grow best and manage pests on their own. I hope I don't eat my glibness. Not like I'm claiming I have perfect soil or anything.

I read Lodgson's Small Scale Grain Raising, which is referenced in the first post, and his chapter on rice was mostly about one experiment he and a friend did. We could try paddy rice if we put in a paddy on a short fall, and upland, dry, rice other places. A woman did a presentation in class from her masters thesis about terrace agriculture, especially in Peru. She covered technical aspects and revealed their sophistication but also talked about the kind of social contract that such an undertaking and practice necessitated and created, and tracked the peoples' orientation to their land and these public works projects as they went through cycles of empire, foreign and domestic. Super interesting.

Masanobu Fukuoka's manual The Natural Way of Farming and then Joel Salatin and the Permaculture class have renewed and greatly clarified my hots for no till and no dig systems, especially because they suggest it can be useful more often than I thought. Fukuoka says no way to it most of the time, Salatin says that historically tillage was limited to 2 of every 7 years. And it's clear why no-till didn't work for me in the spring - I wasn't giving it what it needed. It needs a lot of food, especially to start. I needed lots of straw at every location, and real compost instead of the Disaster Mix. Ready to try again. And have to remember that it can take a while for the life to come back (though there were lots of worms at the time). MyFarm should do like Christopher Shein and get 55 gal of kitchen scraps a week at the gardens. Then we would be talking compost. Similarly, we should figure out neighbors of Patuxent who can supply us with mulch materials for fertility - organic isn't critical, but no toxics.