We got to see some payoff for all our work on our Watershed Restoration Project!

An unlikely May storm changed our whole summer, teaching us about how a flood works in this new habitat, and giving us a rare deep Spring watering of our soils. Over the span of a few days it rained off and on and even hailed hard for several minutes while I hid out in the yurt, wishing I hadn’t left the garden protective shade panels open. It hailed enough to clog up our gutters preventing much of the subsequent rain from finding it’s way through the ice into our cisterns.

The storm dropped a half inch or so of rain very quickly, giving us our first flood experience of the year. I went out with my raincoat and watched the first flood stream through our new rock work in the watershed restoration project. It held up quite well, helped water soak into the ground without causing any erosion, and showed us the fine tuning that is needed next.

We took advantage of this now rare spring moisture in the ground. We raked in seeds of native grasses and wildflowers in the floodplain areas, and even planted corn in some sweet spots in spots adjacent to the arroyo with our new AWESOME INTERNS.

In the following photos I share the beauty of the first flood through the natural habitat we are creating by hand in an area that has been starved of it’s natural floodwater cycles for more than a century by a historic railroad bed.

Flooding Through the Project Planting Corn

Written by Amanda Bramble