Ditches and Drainage

Farm News

It’s been over 20 years that we have been farming on Griffin Creek in Carnation and finally we are getting a very long-awaited input from King County – drainage! As many of you know half of our property is annually flooded November through April. The area over the years has been steadily increasing as we lose more and more precious farmland to flooding. The nature of rivers and the large volumes of mountain run-off and average annual precipitation make this a constant battle.

We have endless amounts of black hose that has just been delivered and a willing crew that will help dig and lay the hose across the effected area so that we can finally have better drainage throughout the year. We are going reclaim some of our agricultural land and hopefully see faster recovery times for water destined for the Snoqualmie River.

This black hose will traverse back and forth at least 40 different times so that the low area (roughly 30 acres) can endure much less water. Our excitement on the first week of the project was quickly thwarted when our existing water line that supplies most of our water reels was hit by the excavator and broken open. Whoops, not the best way to start. It turns out that our line, while extremely strong pipe, is buried unfortunately only three to four inches deep and in hindsight, a disappointment.

We will persevere and come up with a plan to perhaps not hit this perpendicularly, but try and lay the hose in a different way. Luckily, we are starting early, and we are hoping the heavy rains do not show up until late October. Aside from our massive harvests and the drainage project, we are looking around the farm and feeling like things have gotten a bit weedy, so we will be digging in deep for this last third of our season to clean out and weed our beds. This will ensure that next spring we are not completely overwhelmed and also make it easier for the incoming school groups to harvest.

Don’t forget to find us on Instagram @fullcirclefarms.
– Wendy