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Here's the story, behind the terrace.
When I first moved here, it was a dirt road, and the property rolled gently, down to the ditch....Well, when they paved the road, in the process of creating the concrete drainage, they chopped off the front of my property, and it dropped, abruptly, 6 ft, into the ditch....I basically lost about 450 sq. ft. of usable property....Then, I also had to deal with the erosion problem.
As luck would have it, I had helped demolish an old concrete fence system, shortly before all of this, and the 2x6x10' boards, were just laid up, in my yard.
I've done formwork, for years, so, building 6 pyramidal slipforms, was no problem.
Eventually, by the time I had completed the job, I had moved, probably, 40 c.yd. of dirt, by throwing it up into the garden, so that I could properly install the forms and boards.
The forms are 14" on the bottom, 12" on top....I just staked up the boards, and slipped the forms over them. Then, blocked the bottom of the slot with an insert....The piers go into the ground 3', and this is really not enough.
Due to the weight of the dirt, since '87, they have leaned about 3"...Last summer, I got ambitious, dug out from behind each run, and down to the bottom of each pier. Using several jacks and washing the dirt out, from the back side of the pier, I was able to straighten them out....About 2 days work.
If I were to do it, again, I'd tie the piers together, with a poured beam, under the soil, so that everything would be a unit.
The other thing that I would do, would have been to make two wider terraces, instead of three....As it is, I have to work the terrace by hand...It's too narrow for a tiller.
The big advantage of the terrace is that I have different levels of ground, which hold different amounts of water.
ETA: The Jacksonville Journal actually sent a reporter out, to talk to me, because everyone saw me working on it, for about 6 or 8 months.
