Sunday, July 26, 2009

Second Pond Near Completion

Although I haven't posted in a while, I have been very busy getting things done this summer. In addition to getting ducks and chickens squared away, my goal was to complete the second pond. Earlier I showed where the second pond would be located, right where an old hand-dug well was located:

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Quite a bit of soil was removed and I am pretty much down to hard pan now. I packed the backside of the bank with wet clay, which I will later sculpt to match the contour of the ground:
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Here I excavated down and compacted a clay core trench and then tied a dam into the side hill. The drain pipes which run under the driveway are behind the dam. Water will flow around an overflow area and back behind the dam:
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Here is the topsoil which I laid aside at the beginning. This will be put on the dam of pond #1 and the dam of this pond when I plant fescue seed in the fall:
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Here is a nice shady spot for a bench. I had to take out the tree second from the left, but it was small and there is still plenty of shade:
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This shale pile was the result of excavating a large swath of weikert shale out of a quarter of the basin. I ran into the same material on pond #1:
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Here the JD is straining to pull a full scraper load of clay:
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Dumping, spreading, and compacting. The dozer I rented last year is much faster at excavating, but the tractor does a great job of climbing up and down the dam and compacting:
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A final pic for now. I will post more when I enter the finishing stages. I am strongly considering using this smaller pond to raise and harvest fish for the freezer and for sale:
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was the old hand-dug well eliminated with the digging of this 2nd pond? It looks like the 2nd pond will be abt. as large as the 1st one...yes/no?
Mom-V

Anonymous said...

Additional question:
When you stock Pond 2 with fish will you have to do something to prevent the herons & other fish-eaters from eating them? Mom-V

Anonymous said...

I did have to eliminate the hand-dug well--dug down and around in it and then packed the bottom with clay. The second pond is only about half as big as the first, but it has trees, will have boulders, a path, and a nice bench to sit on in shade. Herons are very territorial, so you can put a simulated one next to the pond and others will not show.

Pond Kits said...

This is my second visit to this blog. I really love your style to explain everything with pictures. Really great blog here!