Make 4.5 Acre Swamp suitable for livestock pastures

[Jkolhagen]

Hey All,

Im new to the site, moving from a suburban area and building a Farmette (10 Acre or so property).

About half of the acreage is nice and dry however the other half is pretty swampy several feet deep in areas that I’ve been so far.

I will attach a couple pictures but basically there’s a creek that runs through the back of my property. I’m wanting to be able to get this land dried out to be able to utilize it, so I know I’ll need to clear trees and what not.
I’ve been thinking about running a trench on the side of my property all the way to the creek (couple hundred feet), French drain, or bring in fill dirt to compact and grade it to naturally drain towards the creek.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to try this and would appreciate any insight or recommendations.

The land will be used for livestock pastures.

 

[Norm W]

Two things for you to check out. How much land is RR owned. They may object to your messing with their right of way. The second thing to check is federally protected wet lands. There are rules about what you can and can't do with the land.

 

[sea2summit]

Utilize it for what? To make that pasture is probably a 4-5 year process...if you're legally able to do it. And then it's still going to flood every time there's a major storm likely washing away most of your work.

 

[Jkolhagen]

Two things for you to check out. How much land is RR owned. They may object to your messing with their right of way. The second thing to check is federally protected wet lands. There are rules about what you can and can't do with the land.

Hey Norm, thanks for the reply.
I did check to confirm it wasn’t federally protected but did not think about the Railroad company. With that said, I don’t plan to remove the entire tree line near the train tracks as I like the barrier from the train (it’s a small track that is used to take lumber back and forth from North Carolina to south eastern Virginia (runs only a couple times a week) at low speeds and only has 5 or 6 cars attached.

Any recommendations on things to think about before I try to tackle the project?

 

[yanmars]

I was surprised you were given a sign off on this and for that I would try to get it in writing to be safe. Often if it is wet, they often call it a wetland, and if it is over 1 acre they get touchy if it is drained in some manner. The neighbors called in on my father when he worked on a wet area but when it was only about a 1/4 acre they had no control over that.

 

[deezler]

Umm... the land is wet because it is low and directly adjacent or even part of the creek. right? You cant just chop the trees down, turn the soil over and expect it to be a nice dry pasture. You would have to physically raise the land, with many tons/yards of fill. Except that you will be messing with what appears to be an obvious piece of wetland (check the freely available county, state and federal maps), which is critical habitat for many species and thus very well protected under state and federal law. Not to mention the huge potential for sedimentation of the creek during your activity, which appears large enough to also be protected as a known waterway (again, more critical species habitat).

Sorry to be a total buzzkill, but your idea is probably A) illegal, or B) requiring official permits and rather huge expense. You should leave it wetland and get a different property if you need more pasture land.

 

[RickB]

deezler is right.

 

[Sonny580]

X-3 on what Deezler said!