
Homemade creek crossing, eleven years later

How is our low-cost,
homemade creek crossing holding up eleven years
later? I've actually been really impressed by the ability of the ford
to withstand dozens of floods, tree trunks washing across its width,
and the usual wear and tear of wheeled vehicles crossing over time
after time.
The only big thing we would
have done differently is to decrease the slope on the side shown in the
image above. The other approach is much shallower, created with the
help of a rented bobcat. But when we tried to go up the far bank, the
equipment got stuck in the creek and scared us to death, so we opted to
dig it out by hand. The result, predictably, was a steeper incline that
tends to rub bumpers and create a slip hazard for human traffic.
Other than that, though,
the ford has done its job very well. For the sake of comparison, the
second photo shows what it looked like when newly created. Not so
different from today!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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