2-stage System Option For Failing Ditches

By: Nicole Heslip

A group of farmers in Lenawee County who have implemented conservation practices for more than 20 years partnered with the local conservation district to host the Center for Excellence Field Day. The Bakerlad and Raymond and Stutzman Farms near Clayton have seen a lot of on-farm research in the past two decades, and thousands of farmers have walked their fields to learn about the latest environmental practices at work to reduce soil erosion and nutrient loading.

Blaine Baker of Bakerlad Farms said the foot traffic from the annual field day and their proximity to Lake Erie made the farm an ideal candidate to construct a two-stage ditch demonstration site with The Nature Conservancy. Western Lake Erie Basin Conservation Director Lauren Lindemann with The Nature Conservancy said building a two-stage ditch starts with partnerships and collaborative funding.

“We go through a whole design process, surveying and engineering, making sure that we know what the drainage watershed is and if it can handle the water that we want it to handle and not have a ditch that’s going to fail,” she said.

Reasons for 2-stage ditch

Two-stage ditches aren’t meant for every field, she said, but work well when traditional ditches are failing, and “the ditch banks are slumping, there’s erosion off the field, and they’re flooding multiple times into the field throughout the year.”