Channeling:

I've spent quite a bit of time since moving to Maine noticing how water moves. We live on clay at the bottom of a hill on the edge of a river. Whatever comes down that hill rolls right past us and off into the river. We also have a lot of roof area which means we could be letting 50,000 gallons of water run off our roof. That's a conservative estimate. I've been studying the way the water moves down the hill, and it's just amazing.



Since we have clay it just digs itself these super highways underground.The gound dries up suddely and then you see a little fountain shooting up somewhere lower down. I've started to do some irrigation and plan how to move all this water we have through areas where have plants that love water. I'm interested in lessening the run-off.
I'm very much aware of how many people in the world die because of bad water. We have this amazing amount of it that pours right past us.
I've been reading about how to move water around and store it. Most amazing are landscaping practices where with a berm or a swale you create and area that holds water (like a camel). It actually could be easily made by accident by someone making a swale to lead water off their land.
We have dug a ditch here to help us out with this river we live downhill from. It works hard and takes alot of water off our property. I'd like to feed plants with it. I've left the ditch open because I can see it working, and also it slowly fills with clay. There are ancient systems of french drains, and irrigation.
I think we will have ours be "living" Willows and other thirsty plants.