Rainwater Harvesting Restores Grassland In The Desert 

My two takeaways - the healthy grasses growing just downstream of the pockets you have created by picking a rock. That surprises me. There are grasses that survive in the area. Those grasses will spread out and form natural barriers to erosion as their roots dive deep. They just need a little more water to grow into the erosion proof mats of green. The organic matter that collects in the basins. That's your future topsoil - almost as good as gold. Prior to your structures - that black gold slid right off your land. The magic is happening. Stick to your priorities and keep at it. Get your house dried in so you have a place to live this winter. The process of picking rocks, building structures and fine tuning them is a lifelong commitment. I suspect it will take 30 years to be mostly satisfied with the placement and workings of enough structures to cover your entire property. You're making great progress! 😊👍

As the moisture content of the ground increases, so too will your rainfall. Moisture attracts moisture. Water is wonderfully hydrophilic!

Those bigger bassins seem to make a difference, it's awsome looking at the progress! Keep it up! You guys are amazing.

Water is life. Great ending as usual. Looking forward to next installment. 🐺

It’s great to be able to combine purposes like digging up rocks where you want catchment.

A consideration for your future monsoon-ish activities, get your raincoat on, and the rake out while it's raining. A little landscaping while the water is flowing gives one an amazing perspective on how to help it flow better or worse, as your needs be. Love what you're doing, best with all. Hello, from southern Colorado. It's raining here as I type this. 😊❤🌧

Wow , what you have now is what Shaun Overton (sp?) is trying to achieve in his extremely dry acreage in Texas . I love what you guardians of nature are doing ! Great job , props !😊

That rock house is going to be epic….

Im jonesing so bad to dig my swale, im 600 miles from my land. thanks for the temporary fix man. Its all looking great.

You are making a lot of progress; I think you will be surprised at the positive effects in a few years. I think you found the type of property that can really be effective to improve the land by slowing the water down and soaking a large territory. It will also benefit others living on the perimeters, in the long run. I also hope you can move your buildings forward and make them more livable than a tent-that must roar during downpours. Of course, it takes a long period of sacrifice on your part. Most people would not be able to do it. Congratulations.

Awesome to see this! You are living the life there!

Man Ive learned so much about desert rainwater harvesting from watching your channel. I live Long Beach CA but my family used to go out camping in Mojave on the regular and theres something about the desert I love. Im planning to do something similar and make an off grid cabin with a lot of rainwater collection using something like a 20x20 metal car cover and expand from there. But aside from drinking water which would be potable water ive learned so much from your channel about natural features to direct the water. I was even thinking like a small moat around the property that directs the water to some type of lined sump and you could pump the water to wherever your storage is. I think one of the best ideas for water storage ive seen is on Frugal Off Grids channel where you use heavy duty tarps like 40x40 or even 40x60 20 mil thick to create underground cisterns. Those tarps are cheap, like 350 bucks and you could even double up if you were concerned about tears. Then you make framing and a manhole to cover it all. Its way cheaper to store thousands of gallons than the traditional buck a gallon for above ground storage. It requires a lot of digging, but thats nothing if you have access to machinery like that tractor or a mini excavator. Also being that the tarps are underground and not exposed to UV radiation, they should last damn near forever in that state, but thats also why you put a tarp over the cistern like an umbrella to protect that lower lining. Subbed and like your content is great man!👍

So many rocks and no boulders what a relief! Like the deeper areas with the bulldozer...

I’m Im excited to see the results for all these waterworks that you do!!

i'm just a humble geologist, your techniques shown here have a lot of merit. if i was on this job, i would do a perk test to more focus attention on water retention

The map is very helpful.

Waiting ✌️😁

Thanks for showing the maps.

HIGH FIVE!!! Well done!!

Amazing how much work gets done with equipment…back in the Zoony video time I was possibly near as progressed in catchments but especially in the last month this is flown way past Franch Venus.

😮Been watching for a while. I'm amazed how it all comes together, can't wait to see what's to come... I like your pine tree😅

I always thought the monsoon season there was in the winter. Have to re-think that all now. 😊

This idea will take work, but consider: I'm betting your area of the state has a good thick area layer of caliche under the soil. It might be worth while to map out the different gradient depths on your land since water sinking down will hit this layer and flow along the layer. This could direct the subsurface water to flow in ways you wouldn't expect.

Ever since I began doing the great work, gods work, I have been blessed with rain when the forecasters said there would be none. Blessings and miracles are part of Life, doing the great work attracts what it needs because the universe is here for us. Keep up the great work, Mother Earth will thank you for it.

I guess this is to answer people insisting they know better than Brandon does what plants to allow to grow. Me, I am thinking about biochar. In the Amazon, for _terra preta,_ they also mix in fragments of broken pottery. They say the biochar and pottery mustn't be chopped too fine, I imagine so it won't be rinsed down and out of reach of roots. My wife just told me about "hügelkultur" mounds, a substitute for raised garden beds that I had not heard of: you dig a wide, shallow trench, lay logs at the bottom, smaller branches on those, then twigs and scrub, with compost throughout, and the soil you excavated on top, and grow your garden there. They retain water better than the native soil, and can be long and straight, or weave around drunkenly.

You know what just struck me. I've been watching these videos and it all sounds systematic and well thought out, but at the end of the day it's just videos filming a bunch of puddles. That realization was hilarious to me, in the moment. But it's because it takes a long time (multiple seasons) to turn a few puddles into a big payoff.

I found this channel a few weeks ago, really nice to see all the water works. You are getting quite reasonable amounts of rain to harvest. My question: I've see a lot of earth works, but not a lot of content about what kind of plants you are trying to grow. the ecology of things. Do you have videos about your plans, do you plant pioneer species, or (fast) growing mulch plants that are suited for your area? What kind of produce do you intend to grow? Love to see more about that, keep it up!

Was going to comment another tool you might consider (a small woodchipper to make some mulch as a long term alternative to buying straw) but I think you might be better served by taking the dead brush and making charcoal & ash out of it to amend the soil with it. As an aside you might want to consider getting some mulberry in the ground around the house in the spring for a fast, endless supply of organic material to compost or make firewood out of. They can tolerate some really ugly soil, cold hardy, extended drought & pests. The berries are good too. They can grow more than 6 feet in a year after being established so they can handle continual pollarding or coppicing

How much average rainfall does the area get normally a year? Do your trees look healthier? Good job on the water collection.

Surely it would be worth buying a used cheap digger and dumper❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

A catapiller D8 with a single leg ripper pulling through on contour would create mini swales & berms across the whole 10 acres in a couple of days...Seed or plant them before the rains, any grass growth would create cover & cool the land down, any rocks lifted would also make for good shelter... Writing from the very wet UK today...

I'd be figuring out a way to long-term store the water that makes it to the larger basins so that I could build an irrigation pipeline with sprinkler systems attached to keep the land watered during droughts

impressive work

Have you considered trimming some of your trees? Branches from the lower part can be used for compost for example, leaving canopy on top to provide shade. That way you will not lose too much water from the soil, it can be available for grass.

I like to order the Zuni bowl a a local restaurant. It's delicious.

All that water is looking great and it will sure have an effect. But nature is a bit slow in that aspect. I guess that the logs are going to be used for a log cabin. Thanks for the update🙂👍

Well the retention of water will depend on the permeability of the soil. Some places need pond liners to retain the water.

Nice to see you out while it’s raining. Are you planning to do some harvesting at the top of your property?

Bentonite clay spread in your holding positions help hold the water. It expands to fill in cracks and makes a better seal in you earthen works.

Hello and greetings from Germany😀 Great work! Start regenerate the earth, perhaps by planting elefantgras or sedum or sudangras. It will stabilize the ground and build up mulch. CU🖖🖖

Hey Brandon I love your channel. Getting ready to start a similar project in Zambia. May I ask how you created that water flow plan that you flashed in the beginning of the video?

Weird idea, but could you drive porous woods into the ground to act as water batteries or wood ollas?

Very impactful episo🎉de so much to look forward to😅

do you plan to put wood logs near your capture points? shadow could help plants and as it decomposes it will give it nutrients. might speed up top soil creation

Absolutely love your project. Keep up the great work. But I do have a question. Why are you not planting anything that will create ground cover that is suitable for your soil type? You have spread straw in places which is good. Whatever plants you use now for ground cover may not be the ground cover that you want to end up with, but with the volume of rain you have been getting many plants/shrubs will be able to grow and start to protect and improve the soil. Even if you are planning earth works for many sections of your property, Im sure not all areas are going to require extensive digging. The process will take many years, but the sooner you start to improve the soil, the sooner you will start to see real change. I come back to a point I made before is that all farmers know that ground cover is vital to prevent erosion. And with the recent research showing that light by itself (even without heat) causes evaporation, ground cover has become even more important especially in areas where there are extended periods of time with little rainfall. The ground under vegetation has been shown to retain more moisture than ground without vegetation even in extreme drought conditions.

You actually have quite a bit of plant material on your property, so I would suggest that you begin trimming trees, bushes, and grasses, and adding the trimmings to the soil to provide a food source for soil bacteria. Everything begins with healthy soil.

Woohoo..big steps this week mate..just tilling might help on the south side? I don't know the typography

Can you look at bigger catchments at the top edge of your property to capture water flowing from neighbors property? That depends on their property management as well as general topography, but it would increase the ground water across your property before water even starts engaging your own catchment and distribution systems.

Hey Man love the project and vids, at 13:57 the area looks very wet spread over a big area, could you U shape dame that area so a large area soaks evenly? Have to say I was suspicious about the zuni bowls, I mean all that work, but you can see the effect with the water, and the use to control erosion, very good man, this will be un recognisable in 4 years!

I would be tempted to use a dozer to scrape the surface stones into a long barrier at the lower edge of your land. Create ponds later.

👍👍😎☮

Working Earth’s ass off bro

you should look into planting lupines as a green fertiliser.

You need to add more biomass on top of your ground. I have seen where you have done that some.

Crazy. Southern Arizona is getting more water right now than Oklahoma. Cool project. I'd advise starting on a small section of your property and then expand out, refining your process with what you see working best as plants start to grow.

The logs presented at the end of the video are for that property. Do I win a prize?

I'm curious to see if the strata below you eventually fills to a level that it finds somewhere to surface, and form an intermittent stream.

I have mixed feelings about the larger ponds at the end of the property. On the one hand, you don't get to enjoy the water that infiltrated as much, unless the soil has such a high clay content that the water stays at the surface and can be pumped around. But at the very least, you get a nice sediment trap effect that'll allow redistributing the sediment to areas that are much more sandy.

Please be mindful of valley fever. Suggest wearing dust masks anytime you are excavating in AZ. Great work!

99 people play Harvest moon on screen, 1 person play on real life

all the trees on your property, are those junipers? i saw on some other channel they use alot of water and he removed loads.

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Have you checked out the USGS lidar maps? Super cool

I wonder what your soil composition looks like. If there’s a vid you have done on it just point me in the right direction and I’ll watch it. This is fascinating to me because I’ve always held the thought of the desert is near lifeless but you are showing me otherwise.

Dig down the cardboard and see how long its moist after rain.

do you have a plan to build large body water like lake or reservoir ? by having large body water would help stabilize the rain frequencies and prevent the ecosystem to stagnant at some point. Also simulating the waterfall by buildiing an uphill reservoir which connected to the lake would allowed the overall ecosystem to become more stabilized and abundance. This also solved the problem about where would you put dirt from digging a lake, just make a hill out of them is the answer.

Are there any desert critters that help with this water retention strategies? Beavers are amazing at this in wetter areas, but is there a critter you could input (locally) to help out?

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If those are Juniper trees all over your property they're probably sucking up all your ground moisture. I saw a youtube video somewhere of an American Rancher cutting down these trees to restore the grasslands and native habitat because these trees sapped the life out of the soil and prevented native trees from establishing.

I'm curious why you are incorporating water catchment into your main driveway? Generally people try to keep their driveways dry, so I am pretty sure you have a reason that I'm missing?

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Hey Brendon, Which area are you in exactly? How many milliliters of rain per year do you have in your region? I am currently planning a huge project in Namibia with at least 250 acres. Depending on government support and donations, I would like to expand the project to 2500 acres. Frank

I understand these thick walls will keep you cool during the heat of the day, but will they not cook you at night? I am sure there must be something I am missing, you seem like a super smart dude.

Earthworks

You may know the sand is the worse soil for water retention, the best one beeing the clay soil, and you have maybe 10% only. I told you various time that you need organic matter, added to your sand, you could retain more water, and for sure, fertility creating soil.

I say bury a bucket

Needs forestry mulched, much some of those bushes down to 3ft, get some organics in on that soil. Then get some chooks to scratch around in it and poop everywhere.and some nitrifying plants.

Say earthworks again....

It's kind of weird how when there is no grass, people want it. But when there is, people fight it, and it can be quite hard to be honest. If what you want is perennials, why not use the advantage of not having to fight against grasses? Isn't that a landscaper dream?

13:45 Im preparing for at least 2x of my calculations to minimize maintenance & nature challenging me & Franch Venus.