PLANNING
Establish contour lines on sloping ground
I
f your land is on a slope
you may (in fact should)
take care that any groundbreaking cultivation you do is
done using contour lines, and
incorporating swales, in your
cultivation. In this way you
will avoid losing your topsoil
to your lower-lying neighbours and will, additionally,
retain moisture in your soil.
On a smallholding establishing
contour lines ~ that is level
lines that follow the undulations of the ground ~ is easy
to do using no more than a
hosepipe, a jug of water and a
couple of stakes.
Attach each end of the
hosepipe to a stake ~ a fence
dropper is ideal, using two
cable ties or bits of baling wire
or string, so that at least 30cm
of hose is attached to the
stake in each case, and in
such a way that the ends of
the hose are exactly the same
distance from the bottom of
From page 14
and with the added advantage that the program will
instantly calculate lengths and
areas for you. This is particularly useful if your fields are
not square or rectangular.
Knowing the lengths of
boundaries or the area of
individual portions of your
property is helpful, for
example, when buying
fencing materials, or when
calculating how much
fertilizer you will need for a
particular field, or how much
seed to buy. And how much
produce you can expect the
field to yield at harvest time.
Note that your GPS co-
ordinates are not accurate
enough for land surveying
use and because of the
movement of the satellites
that plot them they tend to
“wander” a metre or two
with time.
Thus, if after a year or so you
try to add some new coordinates of, say, a new field,
to your original map you may
find that it seems way out of
the original boundaries. To
correct this you will need to
walk the boundary again and
re-collect and re-enter all the
co-ordinates afresh.
MAPMAKING
your Google Earth picture,
but with greater accuracy,
16
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Continued on page 17