2-22-11

I had a day filled with field appointments today. Normally I would consider this a good day since it involves being outside, talking to people, and seeing different lands and parts of Santa Cruz. The first client was even better than usual while the second was just plain frustrating.

The first stop of the day was a horse ranch. I had been waiting for a ranch trip ever since I began this job. I had grown up going to horse camps and always love being around them so I couldn't wait for the day that I could go to work and spend time with horses. Today we met with a client and a compost specialist that helped them with composting their manure. The main reason we were called out was for erosion help. There was a sandy arena at the bottom of a hill with a driveway that had runoff flowing into the arena and then all the sediment was flowing out of one of the corners into the creek every time it rained. Not only was this damaging the waterway, but they were having to spend a lot of money on buying new sand for the arena. There were two options: either attempt to divert water off the driveway before it reaches the arena, or section off the corner of the arena and put in a sediment basin with a drain. Rich said it was probably best to do both and use the sediment basin as an insurance. The other thing we discussed was the composting of manure. I know almost nothing about composting and had managed to avoid horse manure in the many years of riding. Despite all that, I listened intently about how they could better compost and then use the composted manure as bedding for the horses while standing around their manure dump watching the dog eat horse poo. Not what I would have imagined, and yet, I was completely ok with it. They had also been red flagged for having too steep of a paddock which is when I got to pet Grant, an overly hungry, nudgy, quarter horse. Then it was time to head to the next meeting.

The next meeting was not one of my favorites. We met up with the guy farming the land, who made myself and the older lady from the county climb a hillside of mud just to get on the property. This was a smaller farm next to a ginormous house. Unfortunately, the farm was on a steep slope and all the runoff was being directed to a sediment pond at the bottom of the hill. This farm had been red flagged by the county because the wall of the pond had blownout during the recent storm and flooded into the nearby street and then into the stream next to the roadway. The temporary fix? Pipes leading to the stream and sandbags to fill the hole. And the farmers just kept talking about solutions for right now, except that during the winter and rain, you cant do any large land moving permanent projects. They should have done cross slope planting to help reduce erosion and they should have had a cover crop in before the rainy season. Because they had attempted to plant radish in Sept, they cover crop wasnt put in until November and was not a fast growing grass. While I stood in the sun and listened to how they wanted to just pipe the water to one location, I thought about when Rich told me it was better to spread the water so it could sink in and not erode. I also was thinking of ways to reduce runoff that I had learned from my restoration ecology class. I had originally thought that either rip rap could be an option, but Rich told me that rip rap needs to have fairly clean water. Another thought I had was a vegetation buffer at the bottom of the farm so that it could take up any of the water instead of pushing it all into a pond. Rich told me this was a pretty good idea and something they should consider as a long term plan. I was pretty pleased that I had noticed a problem and thought of an appropriate solution.