HEAVY RAIN, CHECK DAMS ARE WORKING! Recharging Groundwater At My Off-Grid Oasis in Northern Arizona 

Important note: BEFORE the pioneers came to the area, trappers would have already been there and wiped out all the beaver that created and maintained year-round wetlands and meadows. Yes! Beavers ARE NATIVE to all of Arizona except the Yuma dunes. They would have maintained not just grasses but also riparian trees and habitat for an unbelievable diversity of wildlife. Glad to see you are planning on swales to spread out that water. Mounds built on the downhill side with the spoil would be a great for cover crops that you could chop and drop for mulch as well as trees that could out-compete the juniper.

My Grandma was born on the Rez in near Page AZ. She told me her great grandpa used to tell here stories of how beavers used to build damns in the canyons and they used to have way more water and marshy areas.

I live in northern New Mexico and we have also been getting the monsoon rains. I have been working my property for the last 3 years and tit is exciting to bring the natural grasses and flowers back to the land by simply slowing the water down. We're kindred spirits! I am getting ready to sell this property and relocate to Northern Arizona. I am excited to start again....helping another piece return to what it should be..

You might want to plant a flag/marker next to the dams that need fixing so that you can easily identify it when it dries up. I love seeing your efforts to rehydrate the land!

Hey Brian. As a city girl I'll tell you that I learn so much from you and I love your content. I have always dared to be different. My kids are like, what in the world are you watching?

Consider using sticks and branches upstream side of the rocks to help seal your dams. Beaver have good results. Great property!

There is a huge benefit of having so many treees, and it's abundance of potential mulch. Shaun Overton from Dustups project has way less vegetation on his main restoration site.

Good to see! People don't understand how the local ecosystem and weather patterns can be changed quite dramatically just by something as simple as removing the beavers who were managing the hydrology... which in turn affected the weather patterns at the local level. More water means more grass growth, but it also means more to evaporate at the local level and more rainfall at that point. It means cooler temperatures and less flooding. And when you remove that keystone species, the ramifications can be long in coming. Sometimes, so long that generations pass and people accept that what they see before them is how it's always been. They get used to the "new normal", never knowing how grand it once was. So kudos for trying to fix the problem. Those check dams will go a long way to helping make the land a little healthier, so don't get discouraged if things don't seem to be changing fast enough. It took a century to get like it is, so maybe it'll take a lifetime to rebuild.

My dream to have a property I could build dams just like that not even playing dude. I'm so happy to see that there's other people that are into this too

Grew up in Northern Arizona, and my ancestors were some of the first European-American settlers in the White Mountains region. I agree with how beautiful it is during monsoon season. You’re also correct about how much grassland there used to be. It used to support huge herds of elk, deer, pronghorn, and bighorn sheep. We’ve changed the grasslands and the forests so much in the last 150 years. I love what you’re doing with your land so far.

Rocky mountain juniper are benefiting you in that they are producing biomass for you to use in placing the cut branches to slow down the water and making brushpiles for critters.. It's such a good thing you are doing with swales and rock dams. It's such a pleasure to see your project working. Best wishes from New Mexico.

Looking great, try and leave the middle of the rock check lower than the edges so water runs over rather than eroding around the outside. The top of the lower rock check should line up with the bottom of the next one up if you want to hold back the silt which will encourage the grass to grow and hold it all together. Looking forward to future updates.

It's so cool to see people recognizing the need to slow water flow and let it spread out and soak in.

Some landscaping fabric, hemp , burlap or straw on the high side of those dams will help accumulate silt and seal it up. You don’t want to remove the branches but maybe just break them up and set them in the right direction to slow the flow and accumulate debris. I had a creek that started forming through my property and some branches laid horizontal with a little landscaping fabric made a huge difference and gave me a good feeling about recharging my well. I don’t have all the rocks you have so used what I do.

Upgrading the quality of the land is what makes me feel better. Greetings from Austria

All that water being held back, soaking into and rejuvenating the land, is a sight to behold. Well done.

Tohonos used to do rock and check dams all up and down temporary creeks making them last as long as possible sometimes making annual creeks perennial. Keep doing what ur doing plant many native plants and flowers of all sorts too get rid of them junipers! They suck up all the water that the native grasses could be using.

Learning from you from Florida, originally from Colombia. I’m motivated by your love for nature and your land.

Playing with landscaping is fun!

Great update - fascinated by what your doing here - keep the water harvesting updates coming!

The satisfaction from all your hard work must feel amazing. Leaving it better than you found it😊

What a nice piece of land you own. Love what you have done with it.

Monsoon season is the most exciting time of year for people that are restoring these lands!!!

Amazing job and inspiring to everyone who watches the channel. Thanks!

happy friday Brian it looks like the check dams are doing their job certainly going to regenerate the land its funny when we think of Arizona we think of desert. how fantastic it must be for you to see nature taking its coarse good luck and have a great weekend still waiting for summer to begin in the Uk nothing but rain

Well done chief,keep the good work going.

Great work, we need people like you to help re-greening the earth. People forget, that we only have one earth, and we have nowhere to go, so if we don't take care of Mother Earth, it would be just like living inside a fouled-up fish tank,

Your mini dams are working well! Great watching the water slowing and recharging your land. 😮

cool, it sounds like the main goal is raising the groundwater so that it can in the future support more life than it otherwise would

I find this kind of project/work really interesting, looks like you're making great progress.

Really pretty land❗️summer rains are awesome and always welcomed. In S. Cal it is a rarity for summer rains- miss it❗️

Awesome effort and I can definitely see your Results.

Its not just the water you want to trap, its the soil. If you let it all run off you will by left with a rocky surface and grass wont grow to hold moister in the ground. Keep up the great work

So many check dams! Amazing job! So you win, but also everybody else wins because this benefits all the surrounding land as well as the wild life, not to mention recharging the aquifer.

I love this video! You and Meadow look so happy and healthy. Those dams are amazing!!

Great job Brian with the dams and water storage and you have wonderful views. Yes, the sound of the running water is nice and the pine removal has made a huge difference. Everything is looking so nice and Meadow is coming along.

Amazing through your knowledge and labor the beauty and positive accomplisments of your land. To listen to the brook's flow creates a happy and relaxedl time. The view from your new home will be surrounded by incredible beauty..🎉

Amazing work, thanks for sharing!

Love all the dams you created, I could sit there for ours to the relaxing sound of the trickle💧

Hello Brian and sweet Meadow 🐕❤ Love the title of your video.. " OFF GRID OASIS " 🌈🐕

I love your work with the dams!

Great job my friend, I love this stuff, I've built few rock structures my self , keep it up brother!!

Very exciting to see your property grow & restore. Thanks for sharing. ✌️

I cannot express how cool this project is. I am old now, far past my prime, so I will never be able to take on such a project. That makes me sad, and a bit envious too.

Great water management..

Well, that’s interesting. I wonder… if maybe I do something like this on a smaller scale in my front and backyard. I live in Tucson and we do have monsoon rain and even last winter we had quite a bit of rain. Right now I did channels and catchment basins but this video shows me something more natural, especially the small waterfall off of basins. This natural landscape inspired me. Thank you sir, I enjoyed watching this video very much and will look for others about this topic in your playlist.❤️🙏🐾

Great job. I am sure you will have a wonderful and expensive piece of land in the near future. And millions of followers doing the same for the environment

Juniper has been known to kill year round springs. Once they were eradicated form the area the springs started flowing again.

You could use the trunks and larger branches and drive them into the ground. Then weave in the small branches like a basket. Then fortify with your boulders. That should slow down the water enough for the sediments to settle. You don‘t have to fill up you dams manually that way. Also, any sand you throw onto the boulders will just wash away.

Cows will go right through that natural barrier

Wow.... that pasture rejuvenation was amazing....... God's country!!

Great video. Lots of good work.

The Sound of the Brook water , and looks so much better. Land restoration is Kool. plus designing it with your own preferences👍👍🤙🤙Awesome. Be blessed Bro🙏🙏🇺🇸🇺🇸

Hi Brian, great job on working your land. The dutch farmer has a great video on swales and rehydrating land. Great video, thanks for sharing 👍

Property looks AMAZING!!! Incredible what you’ve done in a year.

I was watching a video on a man that was modifying his wife’s Armada (I have one ❤) and he mentioned that he was an Art major and having 3 major colors makes the “artwork” more appealing. Most of your videos have green, blue sky and red or brown. You live in a natural art picture!! Your land is gorgeous and getting prettier!

Great to see your progress. Half moon ditches on the hillside should help too. I wonder if some boards or even tarp or plastic at the base of the check dams would stop the water and help the sediment accumulate.

That’s cool that you know so much about landscaping. Your place is looking great!

Well done

Nice little corner of the world Mate. From down under here.

Hey Brian and meadow hope you're doing well your place is really improving ... YES CANNOT WAIT FOR THE MONSOONS TO HIT THIS WEEKEND .. SAVING MONEY CATCHING WATER AND WE don't have to water the plants or the animals this year with new rain catch setups 🤘

North of Prescott here, still waiting for some rain. Seems like we get more during the winter when the storms are slamming into California...

Awesome video

Really impressive results by the check dams! Pretty soon you'll have full sheeting in areas that were ravine like ditches. The payoff is amazing. Glad to see the septic test sites going in as well. You'll have a nice system in place very soon. What a convenience that will be for you. Great work Brian! Loving that Meadow, she is really getting big now. You friend in Vegas...

This is great! I can’t wait to hear an update at the end of the monsoons. Have you read Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster? HIGHLY recommended!!

Hello Brian and meadow,,,, very Good job you have dove ❤👍❣️

I have missed you for awhile! Love the rainy season too! Keep it up!!

great job

Awesome work and keep it up. I hope to soon be in the Northern West part of Arizona doing something very similar with 40 or so Acres.

Loving all of the work with the check dams, if it were me I'd be doing the same exact thing obsessively building check dams, leaky weirs, and swales any free minute I get.

Check dams are basically beaver dam analogs. Very cool project.

Reuse the Juniper. If you have a wood chipper, incorporate the chippings into your check dam walls.

Hi Brian, the dams looks good. Of course they will need some improvement, but you wouldn't know if you had not put in the effort. It would be interesting to see how swales would work on your land. There is a good gradient you could use to redirect the water from the dams into some swales to allow more water to infiltrate the ground.

hey. good results so far man!

Adding lots organic matter like branches under the Rock will help and more lower down were the camp site will help 👏

So cool to see the progress!

Grass and grass mulch hold the moisture better than any wood mulch.

Sweet content!

I 've seen small reservoirs used to retain water during the rainy season for cattle to use but it's hard for the water to last because of evapotranspiration in the dry semi arid land. Which never changes even when a good rainy year.

Hi Brian! If you could sift some of your soil with some wire screen you could use the smaller rocks to place upstream of the check dams with. What you are doing is awesome. Love it!

Your place is looking good 👍

It's a good start. Now that you know the lay of the land you can make more thoughtful efforts. I suggest digging Tanakos. Imagine a cistern for runoff.

Brian have you noticed the monsoon season in AZ is wetter than last year. Last year our first year in New Mexico probably didn’t even get half the normal rainfall. This year might even be wetter than normal so far.

If you could get some beavers started. Plant food sources for them. They would do a lot of the work for you.

Southern Utah and still waiting for those monsoon rains.

That is sooo awesome!

Looking good! The rain looks so refreshing on the landscape. I would have wiped the atv seat off with a towel. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Looks great!

Yup, in addition you can trench at say every 50 foot perpendicular to the streams, think terrace, this way you hold the water at each elevation letting the water seep, this will keep the water on the land.

What a beautiful place you have! I wish you'd send some of that rain down here to the valley. I think it's been about 3+ months since we had rain.

Hi Bryan, just got back after a 11 day stint out the property. Glad to see that your check dams are progressing well. That was one of tasks while we were there. Started on one with the brush and rocks we gathered. Much like yours, it has 3 feeders and will require more effort to get it set up. We also discovered many beautiful pines as we walked the property, these be cleaned up and opened up from the junipers. Question: how do tell the difference between the native juniper and the Rocky Mountain juniper. Monsoons were awesome, Saturdays dropped almost 2" of rain and a healthy amount of hail, not to mention a great thunder and lightning display. Keep up the great work and your video updates. Best to you, neighbor.

Morning, as long time subscriber I want to suggest hugelculture raised beds . Use all that waste wood as your base and you will grow more food than you can eat

Fun thanks

if you don't want the waters to go around the edges, make top of the dam shallow V-shaped with the middle portion the lowest point

Create some major sinuosity in those creeks along with the check dams... more stream length on your land

The leaking under the check dam is stopped by sticking straw into the underlayer on the up-stream side. A couple of bales of straw or hay is your best friend right now.. The idea is to get the water flowing over the top a bit more.

All the check dams are helping but you need to do one of my cousins up in Northern California is in that area similar to what you are in when it rains it rains and then when it's dry it's dry so all the areas where the water runs during raining season he's put in dams and capture the water he has about over a dozen different little Lakes on his property some like 10 by 20 others couple hundred feet across in a couple hundred feet wide and like 50 ft deep. Where you have the water running the most I if it was my property I get back home in there and I dig up 10 foot minimum to the bottom and 20 feet across and probably 20 ft the other way maybe 40 ft and have a really nice pond

Are you going to plant sedges (indigenous grasses) ?

Using hessian sacks, old if you can get them with the stones could work better. Great Vid, thanks.

Combine grasses with your check dams to create more absorbent and durable terraces.