CONTROLLING EROSION

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Grading the slopes. After you build the check dams, your next step is to break down the steep gully walls to their angle of repose . To my ears, "angle of repose" is one of the most beautiful phrases in the language. Unfortunately, it's far easier to say it than to do it. I know of no easy way of breaking down steep, clifflike slopes. Professionals sometimes use dynamite and bulldozers, so I've been told, but all the bulldozer operators I've ever met are scared to death of working along the rim of a sizable gully. When it comes to grading gully slopes, the machine age has deserted you, my friend, and what you are left with, wonder of wonders, is your hands! So get together a collection of picks, mattocks, shovels, and digging bars, round up everyone you know who owes you a favor, and get on with it. Knock off the sharp edges, and wherever you can, gentle out the steep slopes.

As you are working, you'll be knocking tons of earth down into the gully bottom. The first rains will dissolve this earth, spread it out, and deposit it behind the check dams to raise the bottom. You can help this process along, and also prepare the bottom for planting, by breaking up whatever heavy clods fall into the bottom. If you have any water, you might also wet the dirt down to compact it and further ready it for planting.

Once the slopes have been graded to their angle of repose, you should treat them for sheet erosion, with seed, mulch, or the other devices recommended in the previous section.

Limiting the water flow. You now have to make certain that as little water as possible enters the gully. Where is the water coming from that originally carved it out? You must find that water, even if it means going out in the middle of a rainstorm.

You can usually restrict the flow by treating the area above the gully head for sheet erosion. Contour trenches usually work quite well, and as a last resort brush wattles are nearly infallible. Whatever treatment you use, make sure you extend it far up the slope.

Occasionally an expert will appear in your life and suggest that you divert the flow of water away from the gully. He will urge you to build a "diversion ditch," perhaps with an "entrapment compound." He will probably pull out a pencil and paper and make a few fancy diagrams. When you meet such an expert, the first thing you should do is grimace, pound your chest, jump up and down, and point excitedly to the sky. If this doesn't scare him off, grab your hat and run. As you can guess, my own experience with "diversion" has been disastrous. Diversion does not solve any problem; it just moves the problem somewhere else.

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