The Mud Season

This time of year we don't have a lot of snow.  I don't mind that so much since snow causes a lot of issues in the south!  What we do get is rain.  Rain means mud at my barn.  The drainage is still an issue with the barn area and this year is the year I will finally tackle it.  I will take one step at a time. 

I'd had one person come out to assess the drainage and they were not hired obviously since they were thinking that we should drain one direction (aka into our leach field) while I was saying we needed it to drain the other direction....though it would mean more work of course.  For those not familiar with leach fields they are an underground system that the effluent from a septic tank (on-site wastewater system) drips.  The septic tank fills with all the waste water from the house.  Solids fall out of the water and have to be pumped out of the tank once every couple years.  The liquid then trickles under ground in a series of pipes (or other devices) to percolate over the dirt where good bacteria will break down the waste and thereby clean the water so when it enters the ground further down there are no bad bacteria.  Having extra water from your house or some other area drain into this leach field is a bad idea.  It needs to stay as dry as possible to only deal with the water from the house and of course rain etc.  I tried to explain it to the excavator guy but he didn't get it.

I worked in public health for 8 years and one of the things I did was inspect leach fields, so I know what I'm talking about and know that I don't want to make a really expensive system fail if I can prevent it!  So I'm working out the detail myself.  My first task will be an area where I normally like to hang the horses hay bags.  It's a muddy mess.  That will just need some scraping and sloping using our front loader and then the addition of good draining substrate.  That will hopefully be done in the next couple of months.  The next step will be at the end of the barn where the horses enter the aisleway.  It just sits muddy most of the year from November until May.  Again that will be scraping and moving in better substrate.  

Look at this old pic from before painting the barn! 
Shows the "pond" in the low area

Later I will try to make the aisle more even and dig a trench where the water naturally goes and pools and back-fill with good draining substrate as well.  The final step will be in between the barn and the storage shed, I'll need to construct a type of French drain to move the pond that forms there.  I literally have standing water there for weeks until it finally dries up. If I can get all of this done this year that will be great.  I will be happy with getting a couple parts of it done.

One section of our fencing has poly rope fence...something we want to move to for the rest of the electric fencing.  I was noticing a weird bump on one part of the rope and upon closer inspection I saw lichen.  Oh my goodness, you can't stop anything from growing in North Carolina it seems!  I wonder if that will degrade the fence in time if I should treat with vinegar or something?  How funny!