Saving the rain 12 hours after the rain - The Free Jewelry Project

I just wanted to share these pictures of our Northwestern Drive property in Cochise College Estates in Douglas, Arizona. I also wanted to document how the sheet flow worked and didn’t work on this 1/5th acre lot.

we got between 1-2 inches of rain but because we were able to capture it in our ditches we were able to put the equivalent of about 14 inches of rainfall back into the ground on our property. If this doesn’t excite you then you haven’t lived without a water source in the desert area.

This is a ring for catching rain water around 3 Moringa Trees. 2 of the transplants are under water and the 3rd is just off center to the top right.

This is the deepest and the western most swell (or ditch) on the lot the trees you see are Velvet Mesquite and are part of an eventual afternoon shade line that will be interspaced with Moringa Oleifera (if we can keep the bugs from killing them all)

These are the next 2 ditches to the west they are 8-12 inches deep

This is the east- center ditch it is 12-14 inches deep.

The center ditch on the east side of this lot. Notice how the sheet flow went under the bus and entered these 2 ditches. When I get off my ass and finish the ditch system it will enter the property at the edge and feed all the ditches evenly before emptying into the roads drainage.

These are the eastern most ditches and are about 12 inches deep. We are trying to train the Mesquite here into trees.

A view of the lot to the east of us. Before our ditches this was a lake after a rain.

12 hours before this picture there was a little stream flowing here next to the road and these are some sand bars left over.

Pictures of the west side taken from the road.

This was an awesome gravel road when it was built in the 1960’s but we don’t have road maintenance so we have about 1 week in labor in clearing the road to access our property on this road.

The tire tracks were made when the road was dry so we don’t drive on it when there has been a hard rain in 24-36 hours.

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