Saturday 25 April 2009

Today was the day to build our spilling wall ( Willow wattle) at the base of the slide on Nanoose Creek. We had a visitor from Edmonton who pitched right in to help. First we retreived the bundles of Willow from the upstream pool and selected the biggest size for stakeing. As I drove in the iron bar to make a hole Rolph pushed in the sharpened Willow stakes left full length (10+Ft) untill they bottomed out in the hole, then they were cut off at the required height of the wattle. Leaving them full length allows for the stake to be pushed into the substrate as far as possible without ending up with ones too short as some of the holes when we got away from the clay bank ( like concrete) went in up to 4 ft, this will allow for the stake to remain in contact with the water table as the creek levals drop and allow for better rooting. Once we moved further downstream our weaver Terry began to weave the smaller diameter lentghs into the stakes , then as more rooom was available everyone took a turn at weaveing untill we had a spilling wall about 18inches high by 20+ feet long along the base of the slide. As this is rather late to be doing this we will only be doing the base untill next winter when the Willow goes dormant giving the stakes a better chance of rooting as they do not have to start to put all thier energy into leaf production as will be the case with this time of year. We will go back and remove up to 80% of leaf to reduce the desication caused by leaf evapouration. Next we will get some established Cedar trees and plant behind the fence, this will do untill next fall then we will plan to build some more wattles further up the slope creating terraces to stabiloize the slope. While we did this Bryan took the younger members up to the fish box to check for fish, no fish.