Marking Swales

We harvested our pine trees back in February.  We had been keeping our American Guinea Hogs in the trees, which they liked, but I wanted pasture for our Blackbelly sheep, and eventually a family cow.
  

Pigs in the pines

We moved the hogs to the back of the property, and razed the monoculture "forest."  As the now pasture area sat fallow over the spring and summer, many grass and weed species took off.  Honestly, it was quite horrid looking.  I noticed my next door neighbors planted a line of shrubs along our fence line.  When I commented that they looked nice, the wife said that her husband didn't like the new view.  Lol.  Strike two with the neighbors.  (Let me just say that strike one involved the hogs and the neighbor's flower garden)

By the end of summer, I was ready to mark out the contour lines for the swales.  I used an A-frame level that I made out of scrap lumber I had around the house.  

I knew roughly how the contour lines would run from using Google Earth, but of course they were not exact.  I ended up marking out only three swales.  They look something like this (the red lines):

   

I figured I can divide each inter-swale area into two grazing cells, for a total of six.  I will add a seventh area east of the house, so that I can put the animals on a five-day rotation.  That will allow each cell to rest for 30 days.  This also gives me a few days of wiggle room, since the cells are not equal in size and I may need to adjust how long I can keep the animals on each cell.  Ideally I will need to let each cell rest for at least 28 days so they do not become overgrazed.  I don't see this being a problem since we only have six sheep and eventually they will have plenty of fodder to browse in addition to the grass they are grazing.