Hedgerow Water Conversation Project @ Deck
Our farm began a new project in 2025 to develop hedgerows that create green space, cooling shade and native habitat on the farm. Let's look at the scope of this project.
First, what is a hedgerow? It is a planting of trees and shrubs that divides or borders a field, sort of like a living fence. Hedgerows can be narrow strips or wider clusters of uncultivated bushes and trees. They have been used for thousands of years all over the world to mark boundaries, shelter farmland, and confine livestock. Unlike a fence, the hedgerow also provides habitat for birds, insects and other animals native to the area.
Our current project is spread throughout our 320 acres of pasturelands, wetlands and forest. These new strips and small parcels of trees and shrubs will be put on 2% of the farm's total acreage. They are planted with native species including white oak, Douglas fir, grand fir, dogwood, crabapple, giant sequoia, red cedar, and incense cedar where birds and insects can thrive, providing nesting sites, pollination opportunities, shelter for prey animals and even places to hide from us while we work the fields.
They will also conserve soil moisture by increasing the shade in an area. Shade helps the soil stay moist and cool by blocking the sun and encourages grass development in the hot summer sun by keeping the soil cool. Taller plants also create more habitat for grazing animals during inclement weather of all kinds: heat, wind, snow.
We set these goals along with the Soil and Water Conservation District and the Long Tom Watershed Council and hope to set an example of how to integrate pastureland and habitat restoration. This is a main tenet of regenerative farming: practice farming that will enhance the health of our environment rather than detract from it. By committing this small percentage of our acreage to the hedgerow we hope to increase the health of the entire parcel, helping both the land and its native inhabitants as well as serving our own agricultural goals.
In 2025, John Deck had high hopes for this work. "We expect to retain an additional 2 weeks of moisture in planted and adjacent areas," he said. "The project includes 8.95 acres of planted area and if we include adjacent shaded areas includes 10 acres total of affected land. We should save the equivalent of 1” of rain on 10 acres, which is almost 272,000 gallons of water!"
In the collage below you'll see how it looks in September of 2026. You can see our back barn which is surrounded by the fields with hedgerow plantings. Instead of completely empty fields, there are fast growing deciduous trees, slower growing cedars and oaks, and everything in between. We carefully keep the cows and machinery away from the plantings.
John Deck reports that the trees are growing well during this initial establishment stage. He said it will take 7 years for the trees to get fully established and be able to tolerate the livestock living among them. In the meantime, they need careful tending.
"We watered all the trees twice this year by hand. This involved filling up tanker trailer pulled by a tractor and dragging a hose around the field to water each tree. We also mulched each tree using wood chips from our winter-time layer land," he said, referring to the nutrient mulch from the area where we keep chickens during the winter.
The back barn which is surrounded by the fields with hedgerow plantings.
