I recently had the good fortune to do a little guest blogging for Best Self Magazine about my experience at the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival this past weekend.
Here’s a little snippet:
One of my favorite things about the 2012 Atlanta Food & Wine Festival is that local and world-renowned chefs give presentations in which you get to learn a little bit about the true art of cooking. Sure, there are recipes that you can recreate at home. There are even techniques to be learned. But there is nothing quite like those “Ah-ha!” moments that you get when you are listening to a true master of his craft.
I had one such moment when attending a session given by Chef Noman Van Aken.
As a Primal Prepper, and a lazy one at that, I want to create things that require work one time and pay me back in health and preparedness over and over again. So here’s another small project that will pay me back for my one hour of effort: Digging a Swale
Watering my garden definitely falls into the category of things I don’t want to have to do. By building a swale, I help to ensure that my land is hydrated as much as possible by preventing water from running off my land. Simply put, a swale is a ditch that is level.
From the Wikipedia entry on swales:
Swales as used in permaculture are designed to slow and capture runoff by spreading it horizontally across the landscape (along an elevation contour line), facilitating runoff infiltration into the soil. This type of swale is created by digging a ditch on contour and piling the dirt on the downhill side of the ditch to create aberm. In arid climates, vegetation (existing or planted) along the swale can benefit from the concentration of runoff.
So over time, as water is captured and sunk into the ground, the land becomes rich with moisture. This moisture is the basis for life in the soil. Once that moisture is there, it becomes easier and easier for plants to grow.
In other words, less and less work for me!
Without further ado, here is my 5 part YouTube series on how I dug a swale.
