#121 Revealing an abandoned water reservoir

Hi guys, that's what we call a "tanque" or "poça", usually there were 3 purposes for it: - washing the clothes - watering the plants - give water to the animals. The hole in the bottom usually was closed using dirt and grass or in some cases there was a large faucet which was called "passador". Usually this kind of structure was built against the wall were the "nascente" water spring is, only the back wall should have ground touching it.

lol, "look there's an animal here", and then thrusts the camera directly into the water salamander was like "oh shit just hold still" o_o

I cannot imagine any of these methods to kill-off stumps are worth the time and effort. You have hundreds and hundreds of these stumps. Either nail in a copper nail (which will be VERY time consuming also), or grind them out. The grinding will destroy the stump and aerate the soil to allow you to plant immediately. I am not understanding why there are always large piles of wood debris after you cut-down mimosas. They should all be chipped and the chips spread on the soil. This will help the soil retain rain water and protect the area from burning down. Those piles are very dry and a great place for critters (including snakes) to make their home.

Great going people, but please get a few pairs of sawpants and sturdy shoes(safetysneakers are available:-)). Chainsaws dont care and make horrible accidents, don't ask how i know

Project Kamp: Removing the new shoots by hand would be too labour intensive for us. Also Project Kamp proceeds to do labour and resource intensive methods in order to rot the stumps I mean by this point just get the goats already

Use an old garden hose to create a siphon to drain the water. Try it in the upper part behind the brick wall to dry out lower areas to reseal the basin. Add sealed water faucets to various heights to raise or lower the water level.

In Poland we use special mycelium which decomposes the trunk, we smear the trunk with mycelium and cover it with leaves. After 1-3 years the trunk miraculously disappears :)

That ending on the basin is clearly something they used to wash their clothes back in the day. It's very common in Portugal to have those lines to make the whole washing clothes process easier on the hands and arms.

Digging stumps can be very aggressive when you’ve cleared an area with saws… We’ve found the most effective way to clear trees, especially trees that spread via roots, such as poplars, is to push them over and pluck them with an excavator, where you can shake them and leave most of your soil behind and removed the whole root ball, then the excavator (if you have a thumb attachment) can stack the trees for later handling. True, the soil is somewhat torn up, but it seems to recover quite quickly when all the biomass is left behind, and it hasn’t been bull-dozed clear. This can be effective even with very large trees. We had to reclaim a farm yard + garden area that had been abandoned for 20 years, where the poplars had overgrown everything and even large spruce near the margins had reached the end of their lifespan. We cleared about 3 acres, with the excavator pushing/pulling the trees up, and a skid steer loader to remove the trees and stack them for later use as firewood. After the trees were removed, we took a small tractor with a landscape rake to remove a lot of the smaller branches that broke off, and smoothed out the soil. The next year native grasses had covered the whole area, and now most of it is pasture for horses and donkeys. No plowing or excessive digging. Later was was some seeding of forage crops for the horses.

17:05 (kind of a continuation from last week) In principal it's a good idea to not wear shorts when working with the chainsaw, but a pair of pants like that will not stop the chain. Like, at all. I would highly advise getting a pair of chainsaw pants or chaps!

Should look in to getting a stump grinder. You can get a walk behind model for like $1800 USD new. They have ones that can connect to a excevator also.

"Watch this half hour video to see us fix a basin and remove roots" That was a half hour well spent

1. Stump grinder! You have to make the land safe and hospitable so that your experiment can continue. 2. Build a brick wall to wall up your water source. Pump out and scrub the water tank lining it with mismatched odds and ends of ceramic tile. Build a screen over the top to keep leaves out of tank…tear down the brick wall after tiles installed. Trace other pipe which obviously was meant to handle overflow.

Protection against the 0 venomous water snakes of portugal but lacking PPE vs chainsaw :-D

08:17 that metal thig it is called "sickle" meant for cutting grass or thin vegetation. Keep it up guys!

my favourite episodes are when you are uncovering something on the land. it's like an archaeological dig! I look forward to seeing what others secrets and treasures the land has in store for you.

yay! thanks for sharing. couple of ideas.. that you probably already know! wool makes EXCELLENT insulation for all your buildings. also the soil from cleaning out ponds like that would be fabulous to put around the base of all the native trees you are trying to encourage to grow.

creating so much extra work with the stumps lol, just get a walk behind stump grinder, it will be worth it especially with how many mimosas are on the property...

Methinks a siphon hose is much easier than using a bucket to bail water out the reservoir. Glad you found the out-pipe at some point though.

FWIW, I cleared a 5 acre, about 2hectares, of natural meadow that was overgrown with an invasive buckthorn. I simply laid my chainsaw flat on the ground, cutting the buckthorn as close to the ground as possible, leaving a stump about 2-3cm from the ground. This allows me to simply mow over the whole meadow now, thus cutting down any buckthorn shoots that pop up. Over the past 5 years the grass slowly takes over and the buckthorn dies off!