Winter Blowout

County inspectors are out on the road checking to see that straw waddles are put out and silt screening staked in to prevent erosion. If heavy equipment like dozers were still deployed, they’d be stuck in a muddy mess. Downstream from our property is the Russian River which is still an active salmon spawning ground. All care is taken to see that open construction sites don’t muddy up the water unnaturally downstream. Seed and straw are sprinkled over the property. What is hoped for is a series of light rains that get the cover crop sprouted and building a root system to hold the ground together. That first winter we received over a foot of rainfall in a weekend in early October. One neighbor’s rain gauge showed 20 inches in a week. As many of the subdrains had not been yet installed and the cover crop had not yet had a chance to sprout, the early rain overwhelmed the property. The waddles and silt screen were no match from the big early rains. I walked the property after with our engineer Paul Bartelt and with Jim Barbour. We made many in-field modifications to the sub-drain plan.