Pond

        Introducing... our new pond! Or rather, the huge crater in our land that will one day be a pond should the rain gods look favorably upon our small homestead. It is hard to give a sense of its size and position in relation to the land around it, but I have endeavored in the above composite photo. All in all, it turned out to be much larger than we were expecting it to be, but its position on the land is really ideal for our orchard and garden site (downhill on the left most photo of the composite). It is probably hard to see this detail in the above image, but there is a pipe emerging from the dam wall in the pond bowl that feeds out 100 ft. on the other side of the dam to a hydrant where we can connect hoses and run water downhill. As a neighbor of ours put it, "you can keep your tap turned on all year and still not drain that thing!" Not that we have plans to try, but it is nice to know that we will have a decent water supply for our land and a backup for our house, should we need it. It is also nice to know there will be future habitat for frogs, turtles, fish, migrating fowl, cattails, ducks and many other creatures. After the rather destructive process of bulldozing it into existence, it is the least we owe the land and other inhabitants on it. The first day the excavator came and started digging involved the removal of several really old and lovely oaks that stood in the direct path of the proposed dam wall. We made the difficult decision to remove them and then use every part of them  for our own building and wood supply. Even knowing how many other large oaks we have on our land, it was still hard to see them get uprooted and pushed away. Another hard part was watching the top soil get stripped off of the site, along with all of the other prairie grasses and life inhabiting them. Again, a huge compromise for the life that will be able to flourish in its place. But after that, the bulldozer began stripping away beautiful layers of clay, full of interesting swirls of color, and it was rather interesting watching how he reshaped them layer by layer into a bowl. Sort of like a giant ceramics project minus the wheel to throw it on. The excavator, Ralph, was able to push top soil back onto the outside sides of the dam wall so that we can plant stabilizing grasses and turn it back into prairie again. In the meantime, we have been busily dissecting the huge trees that were pushed over, making piles of dry twigs for cook stove fuel, green branches to be turned into wood chips for our swale project, medium branches for firewood (we already have 1 cord! Now for the house to heat...), the main trunk to be milled for our building beams, and the root balls which we will roll back into the bottom of the pond for fish hatchery habitat. All of this, you can imagine, is more work than we bargained for, and is definitely delaying our main project (ahem... the house?) But still, we feel we should finish what we started and thus you can imagine us out on our prairie slopes, sawing and stacking away and enjoying the sun for once! Below are some photos from the process...