Today, more than a year after having installed our first major water harvesting earthworks at the Tikologo Permaculture Site, we can finally report that swales do indeed catch water!

Now this may sound strange as obviously swales and other earthworks catch water, that is what they are designed to do isn’t it? That is all very well but installing water harvesting earthworks during a major drought can definitely leave one feeling more than a little dissatisfied. That’s not to mention the serious design questioning that starts to occur when the systems don’t fill after a whole wet season.

The Groot Marico district along with the majority of Southern Africa has experienced 3 years of below average rainfall but finally these last couple of months have brought relief. Since the start of the wet season in October we have had more than 600mm of rain taking us to our regional average with a couple of months of rain still to go. The continuous rain has soaked our soils and yes, finally led to a proof of swale concept for the site.

When we designed and implemented our swales in October 2015 we based our sizing calculations on maximum rainfall events. Through various conversations with local neighbours it was confirmed that in the last 100 years our valley had experienced 2 instances of 200mm flash floods within a 24hr period. Although this was the maximum event it would have led to very large installations based on the size of the catchment area. Due to this we opted to cater for a more common occurrence of 100mm of rain in 24hrs. This still led to what at the time seemed like gigantic scars in our landscape but the project site experiences a semi-arid climate and long periods of drought hence we made the possibility of catching every single drop of rain a necessity.

I will discuss the design of the water harvesting systems for the Tikologo property in more detail in a follow up post but for now I feel that the most exciting thing to share are some photos of how Tikologo’s water harvesting swales have evolved. The latest photos were taken on 20 February 2017 after 60mm of rain.

I hope that these images bring hope to anyone feeling impatient or demotivated. A wonderful byproduct of working with nature is that we are forced to learn patience so hang in there and the results will come.

If you would love to start catching your own rain water using swales or other permaculture techniques join us at one of our training courses so that we can help you on your way. Check out our Facebook events page  our website for more info on upcoming courses.

Please post your comments or questions below.

Installing water-harvesting swales on contour at the Tikologo project in October 2015

A soakage pond in progress before being connected to a swale

Huge scars in the landscape ready for the healing to begin

A brand new swale right on the highest border of the property

First rains to hit the new swales a couple of weeks after installation

Rain water slowly soaking in after the fist rain.

The first water in the soakage pond. Not much but we take whatever we get

This swale runs right up to an existing building and was design to cut through a very poorly designed off contour driveway. Here the effectiveness of the swale intercepting the run-off is clearly demonstrated and as an added bonus roof run-off also accumulates here

After a big fire in November 2015 the site looks like a different planet. A very depressing one at that

Panoramic showing the soakage pond conected to the swale with a passive overflow so that the pond can backflood the swale when full. This is fairly soon after the big fire

Fast forward one year to 20 February 2017 and the swales are nearly full after weeks of good rain and an early morning 60mm shower

A full swale and a happy heart knowing that all this water is slowly going to penetrate the soil and facilitate an abundance of new life

A Fig tree planted between two indigenous support species. A Dombeya rotundifolia on the left for biomas chop and drop and an Acacia karoo on the right for nitrogen fixation

A partial view of the 4ha. catchment area running-off into the top swale

The soakage pond doing a good job of increasing the capacity of the highest level of earthworks. In total the top swale connected with this pond can stop and soak 800 000L of water in a large rainfall event

A boundary swale completely overgrown. Due to this swale’s distance from the inner zones it has been left to evolve naturally without any interference so that we can see how the local eco-system would do the job without us

This is the swale that looked like a huge scar after being dug less than 18 months ago. A massive change and much more change to come

What was a scar is now a bandage. Here a full swale soaking in thousands of litres of water into the earth.

Panoramic of a full swale