Last fall we finally got the money to get a drainage system put in around the barn. We did some major excavation with a borrowed bobcat, and then the tedious work was done by manual labor.
The ditch digging was used as motivation for getting school work finished in a timely fashion. If the boys didn't want to do school, there was a ditch they could go dig on for a specified number of feet.
Towards the end the ditch wasn't progressing as fast as needed so we allotted more time to the project so we could get the pipe in the ground.
Kit built concrete catch boxes for the south barn door and the man door on the east side of the barn. These will catch the washout water from the barn and direct it to a pipe that drains it down the hill side, so we are no longer creating a swamp beside the barn. CW is tying the rebar for the catch boxes.
We then laid a 4-inch perforated pipe in a ditch along the east side of the barn under the eaves. This is connected to the catch box in front of the man door.
They attached another pipe to the other side of the man door box that went around the corner to the catch box in front of the big barn doors on the south.
They placed a shower drain in the middle of that catch box that was connected to another pipe that heads out across the yard and down the hill to drain.
Each box is fitted with a metal grate letting the water flow into the boxes while still allowing foot and hoof traffic over the top of the boxes.
They poured concrete all around the drain and then the bottom of the box was sloped so water would run to the drain.
They used a level to make sure there was enough slope to the ditch and pipe so the water would run down hill.
Then later in the fall after things froze up a bit, we ordered in several dump truck loads of large and small gravel. We then borrowed the bobcat again and pushed the gravel all around the barn where we excavated it didn't turn into one huge mudhole.
After the gravel was laid down and distributed, I realized I was left with two small patches of grass in front of the barn. I had no desire to mow two little pieces of grass, so I turned them into garden patches and planted squash, beets, sage, fever-few and spirulina. In the second patch I planted cabbage, which all produced exceedingly well.
This winter has been absolutely awesome. No mud, the cows can walk to the barn on gravel instead of slowly digging a trench that gets deeper and deeper the more they walk on it. I can walk to the barn on gravel. And best of all, the rain and snow melt and wash water is moved away from the barn!