News from our farmstead #48

Notes on a natural pool

Summer is finally here on our little finca, after a long Spring which seemed to never quite want to leave. But just in the last few days the temperatures have really risen and the heat is starting to hit you in the middle of the day. Just ask Mauro, who spent the last couple of days loading and unloading 12 pallets of building materials by hand from the top of our track down to the bottom! The grass and wildflowers are starting to get a little crispy and we are trying to finish one final strim of all the fields before the strimmer blades are banned, due to fire risk. After that, it’s donkey mowers only.

I also did my slightly-less-than-fair share of pallet unloading

This month we finished our pergola project, and we’re really happy with the results. We’re still getting used to having the extra space and sometimes forget it’s there, but it’s becoming more natural now to take a cup of coffee and a book up there and appreciate the view over the treetops and the donkey fields.

The finished terrace project

We rounded up the project by rendering the back of the new wall Mauro built, which really inspired us to get the back of the house fully rendered and looking more attractive, instead of the hodge-podge of different bricks and materials which you see currently as soon as you pull in to the drive. However, that dream can’t be fully realised until we finish on the bathroom, whose back wall is not even fully constructed yet - but we have some news on that front, too!

Yesterday the builders began on the restoration of our deposit. Well, I say “began” - actually it was just a case of moving materials and getting everything set ready to fully begin tomorrow. We’ve been waiting a long time for this and are very excited about the promise of a plunge pool in time for the hottest months. We have some major changes planned in this rebuild, which took us some time to arrive at, having already witnessed how v.1 of this deposit worked for us. I hope our decisions end up making sense. I thought I’d use this newsletter to talk a little about natural pools and to share an overview of the main changes we plan to make.

Firstly though, I just want to add the disclaimer that we’re not really building a pool. I’m pretty sure we’d need some sort of permission and project plan to build a “pool”. What we’re actually doing is just restoring the walls of an existing water deposit, which will be used to store agricultural water - and if we occasionally bathe in it - well, we’d be mad, wouldn’t we, because it’s not a pool!

Anyway, here’s a quick recap of how we had the deposit set up in the past:

• The capacity was about 45,000l and the surface area was 40m2.

• Water flowed in at a rate of between 6-20,000l a day (depending on the drought situation, these are rough estimates)

• We probably used a maximum of 1000l on the garden in the middle of summer, and we lost a lot to evaporation. Overflow flowed out into the damaged little stone channels which was problematic as it would seep out into the ground where we couldn’t control it and would make lots of areas really boggy and overgrown.

• There were about 8 columns which had aquatic plants perched on them, providing some level of water filtration.

• We had fish, at one point about 14 big ones and hundreds of little ones, in theory to eat any mosquito larvae

The deposit on a winter’s day, 2022

This was a low-effort setup, because when we originally started using the deposit we didn’t even know if it would hold water and when it did, we were pleasantly surprised, and decided to continue and see how things went. As it happened, the water was clear and free of mosquitoes, probably more due to the daily inflow and outflow than our efforts with the plants and the fish. It was a haven for wildlife. Toads, frogs, bats, bees, damselflies and dragonflies were our favourite guests; less appreciated were the snakes which kept eating our fish. The water was cool, even in the height of summer, kept the area around it feeling lovely and fresh, and we never had to worry about watering the garden. Life was great, but then the drought hit…

Removing the plants, columns and fish, and attempting to drain the deposit during the drought

The inflow started waning, until eventually it was no longer enough to even replace evaporation. The fountain was producing less than it had produced in living memory. Every drop counted, but we were losing maybe 1000 litres a day or more to evaporation and to make matters worse, dribbles were starting to appear between some of the stones on the outside of the walls. Roots from trees and plants embedded in the walls were working their way through the cracks, loosening the 50 year old mortar, and helping themselves to the water, too. The fish were all being eaten, the aquatic plants were getting out of control, the roots threatening to invade the entire tank, a thick layer of mud was accumulating on the bottom which to be honest made the process of getting in and out to bathe slightly gross, and as the inflow waned things started to look and smell a bit stagnant.

the constant struggle to direct and deal with the overflow water

After months poring over books and videos about natural swimming pools, our new design hopes to address these problems, and be more suited for our unique situation. Here are some of the things we have planned:

• The deposit will be separated into 4 sections: a planter section (about 25%), a very shallow section, a medium shallow section and a deep section.

• The dedicated, shallow planter section will keep the plants better contained, and we will be able to provide a more suitable substrate of rocks and gravel for them.

• Inflow water will enter into the shallow planter section. This section will have a lip, about 10cm lower than the level of the water when full, so if we experience another drought year we can keep water flowing into just the plant section and drain other sections.

• The shallow sections will also have lips so we can keep water in them, but drain the deep section if needed. This allows us to better preserve the water we do get, by reducing the surface area, and thus reducing evaporation. We can expand/reduce the storage capacity as needed.

• We will use a solar powered bubbler to move water from the main area of the deposit through the planter section, to ensure better filtration

• The whole area will be smaller, as we are rebuilding the walls inside the old deposit. This is because we don’t actually need that much storage, and also because it’s a safer bet than attempting to repair the original walls which are totally riddled with roots and leaks. But we maintain the external look of the original stonework.

• We will gain more of a walkway around the deposit, which will be safer, and give us some space to sit and chill on the edge.

• We will erect a yet to be confirmed number of posts to hold a yet to be decided sort of shade solution, to help against evaporative loss.

• There will be no fish, because we don’t think they were useful. It was the circulation and the overflow water skimming off the top which actually prevented mozzies being able to breed.

• The floor will be re-laid, smooth and flat this time, so we can have a little robot who cleans up the gunk from the bottom.

Those are the general plans. We’re working some details out on the go with the builders, such as the overflow, so unfortunately there’s no grand masterplan I can show you that doesn’t currently look like a dog’s dinner (I’m bad at technical drawing, ok?). Although we decided we couldn’t manage all the actual physical building ourselves, with everything else we’ve got going on, we’re going to be very hands on and involved as much as possible while this work is happening. Oh, and when the builders are finished with the deposit, they will stay on to help us with a few other bits and pieces which we just want to get done quickly and efficiently at this point, such as laying a couple of concrete pads for future projects, and finishing the rebuilding of the bathroom walls, as I alluded to earlier.

Alright, I think I’ll leave it here, as this issue is looking pretty long already. You’ll have to wait for next month to hear about the garden, the utilities area, and how our first volunteering experience went!

If you have any questions or suggestions about the deposit, we’d love to hear them!

Harriet and Mauro

(and we do still have some dates free for volunteering, notably late June, if you’re interested! Feel free to get in touch - harriethryder@gmail.com )