Our new pond: current photos

The pond is currently a little less than two feet from being at full pool. Another two or three inches of rain should bring the level up to the overflow. The children and I have enjoyed skipping stones on the water and thinking about swimming next summer.

We added 200 1” – 3” redear sunfish on November 25. Actually, Dad put them in the pond since we were in North Carolina visiting family (we left Mom and Dad here to take care of things). I only found three fish that didn’t make it. The children and I occasionally see some of the them swimming near the surface. We also put 2 pounds of flathead minnows in at the same time. I haven’t seen any of them, but I don’t reckon they went anywhere else.

I took the following photos a few days ago. The pond level hasn’t changed since then. I’ll post some more photos when it’s full.

    

Deep bedding

I had to move the cows to the ban earlier this year than I wanted. That was the fault of a failure to plan ahead sufficiently and the fault of having more than just a couple of cows. We had our two milk cows, Chucky Joe (steer for beef this winter), Buster (a young steer for beef next winter), and Aggie (Buster’s mother who belonged to a friend). Spice was also on the pastures eating grass. So, the grass ran out earlier than I wanted.

I prepared the barn for housing the cows over winter. The hay Dad and I cut is all stored in the barn. So, it made sense to me to move the cows to the hay rather than move the hay to the cows. Besides, I’d rather have the cows warm and dry during the winter.

The last couple of years when we’ve had one or two cows, I’ve kept them in the barn, too. I would put down fresh bedding every day after removing the soiled bedding. This bedding and manure was piled outside to compost and be used in the garden/fields later. It was a lot of work, though, forking out the heavy, wet, soiled bedding twice a day.

This year I’m trying something new for me: deep bedding. The idea is to not clean out the cows’ mess but, rather, to continue adding fresh bedding on top, letting it accumulate and build up inside the barn. Adding fresh carbonaceous materials (bedding, like, old hay and straw) traps the nutrients in the manure, holding them and allowing the composting process to begin. The non-aerobic composting that occurs within the bedding will also provide some heat for the cows. It makes a nice soft floor/bed for them, too. Adding fresh bedding every day keeps their beds clean and dry which helps the cows to stay clean and dry.

They have a small area to lounge outside, too, but they spend most of their time inside the barn where the hay is. This is good. All that good stuff coming out their backsides is being incorporated into the bedding for later use.

I’ve been adding oats to the bedding as I throw down more old hay or straw. These are to feed the pigs. No, I don’t have any pigs, but I plan on getting a couple in the spring so I can put them to work.

The thing about the bedding is that with several thousands pounds of bovines walking around on it and the composting action going on within, it will be packed down and will be dense. I don’t relish the thought of forking and shoveling it loose in the spring (my back hurts just thinking about it). A better idea is to let a couple of pigs loosen it for me, aerating it and helping the aerobic composting process along. But, pigs need a good reason to root it all up. Hence, the grain that I’m adding. It’s pig food for when I get a couple pigs in the spring.

If I ate pig, this would be idea. But, I don’t eat it. It’s a moral choice. So, I’ll sell the pigs after they’ve worked for me by getting the bedding loosened in the spring. I expect that the bedding will be three feet deep or more by then. Think of all the good nutrients to be added to the garden and fields!

Oh, one more thing. With all that carbonaceous material being added, it does not stink. If it smells bad, that means you’re losing nutrients. The carbon materials hold the nitrogen and other nutrients. That’s a great thing about compost – you don’t loose the good stuff!

Spice: Jessica’s horse

What is it about young girls and horses? It must be some kind of a disease. They fall in love with horses and seemingly can think about nothing else. Jessica has been enamored with horses for years and has held dearly to the hope of having her own horse someday. Well, that day finally came in August. Some friends of ours had a horse that they offered to give to her. They didn’t want to have to continue buying hay to feed it. So, Spice came to live on our farm, and Jessica’s dreams of owning a horse became reality.

Our new pond (part 5)

By the end of September, we’d had enough rain to have several feet of water in the pond. I’d also used the time before the pond filled to work on the dock. It’s at the same state now as it was then: all finished except the deck boards. The week before completing the dock framing, I seeded fescue on the dam and in front of the house. It was raining while I broadcast the seed, and it rained lightly during the following days. It sprouted and started growing very quickly.

On September 26, we had 2.5 inches of rain. This, of course, contributed to the water level in the pond, as can be expected. The last inch came in a storm during the afternoon, and it added more than the previous showers because most of it ran off rather than soaking in.

The following photos show the dock, the water level at the end of September, and water flowing into the pond.

Looking out from the land-end of the dock. It is 6 feet wide and 12 feet between posts reaching about 30 feet out into the pond. I intend to deck it with oak boards from a local sawmill in the spring.



The water hadn't reached the shallow end (it has now – photos later), but it's 6 feet or so deep in the right corner from this perspective (I didn't measure it, just guessed).



These two photos show the water flowing out from under the trees at the bottom of the two hillsides it drains off of. It then moved through grass for 40 feet before flowing into the pond. Both of these photos were taken over two hours after the rain stopped -- the water doesn't all flow into the pond at once, thankfully.





I stitched the following two photos together looking from the bank near the woods:

Our new pond (part 4)

I worked the two full days in order to add height to the dam. The most tiring part was associated with the stress of driving my truck, my tractor, and a backhoe on top of the dam. I especially don't like when the backhoe leans to the side and when I got it into some of the soft topsoil on the back slope. I decided I didn't need it up there.

The method that seemed to work well for me was to load clay into my truck from a couple different places in the floor of the pond. Then, I drove this onto the dam and dumped it where I wanted it, spreading it out some as I dumped. After several loads, I switched to the tractor and blade to move the material where I wanted it and to pack it some more (the truck tires were doing a pretty good job of packing).

After getting enough clay built up, I took a few loads of top soil to put on top and spread that around. It went fairly well.

 
This photo shows the outcome of my efforts. I added enough material to put the top of the dam two feet above the primary spillway (the 12" culvert). This also allowed more freeboard above the emergency spillway, which is a good thing.

 
A little closer look. The section I built up looks darker because of the topsoil I added.
Digging clay and soil out of the pond bottom helped to add some more structure for fish. Structure is basically variation in depth, especially differences within a short distance There is a fair bit of variation on the bottom.

 
This is a view looking toward the dock from the dam. I was trying to show how the dock is on a ridge with drop offs on either side. There's also another elevation change going into the shallow end of the pond which is a result of digging out clay and top soil to raise the dam.

 
Looking a little to the left toward the shallow end. One of the things I wanted to do but haven’t done yet is to make a small beach area toward the house where I drove in and out of the pond hauling material.

 
This photo looks past the pond from below the dam toward some of my fields. Shortly after finishing the dam height project, I seeded the dam with fescue. At this point, I needed to finish the dock framework and then wait for rain to fill up the pond.

The kitchen floor: gettin’ rid of ugly

When we bought our farm, the only “livable” space was an old mobile home. It’s UL listed according to the 1972 standards. It was dirty, dark, and smelled of mothballs when we first saw it. It has evidence of roof leaks and leaks around windows. It’s an old mobile home.

We’ve done things to make it more livable over time. We removed the brown shag carpet from the living room. And, the original green carpet that was under that. Then, we patched places where the floor was rotted out near the walls and put down laminate flooring. That made the living room much better.

The next room we tackled was a bedroom. It had the original green carpet. In the corner of the room, the carpet was about the only thing keeping things from falling through to the nether regions under the house. We removed the old, nasty, dirty, disgusting (add your own adjectives here) green carpet, patched holes and rotted places in the subfloor, and then put down laminate. We also added some big windows to the room.

Later, we installed laminate in the hallway and remodeled the bathroom, creating a small half bath off of the bedroom. These too received new flooring.

The one room that still had the original flooring was the kitchen. It needed replaced, but I was reluctant to do so because it meant moving everything out, including the heavy wood cookstove. The old linoleum was a “lovely” gold and green color with a fascinating pattern designed to excite the senses and provide cover for dirt hiding thereon. It was also rapidly deteriorating as pieces of it were wearing off.


The thing that motivated me to replace the floor was a leak under the kitchen sink. One of the housings on our reverse osmosis water filter developed a crack. Before we noticed it, much water had leaked and had saturated the subfloor under the sink. It should be noted that the subfloor in this lovely manufactured house is nothing more than particle board, a material that dissolves into nothingness when it becomes wet.

Rather than have the horror of someday soon watching someone washing dishes disappear through the floor along with the sink, I decided to fix the problem. While I was at it, it seemed appropriate to replace the ugly linoleum with something better – laminate in an oak pattern.

My dad helped me complete the job. It took us two days and involved taking everything out of the kitchen and then tearing out the gold & green linoleum. Once it was removed, we cut out the bad sections of the floor and replaced them with something solid (new boards). Once the floor was repaired, we laid the laminate flooring. What an improvement!

Our new pond (part 3)

I continued the excavation of the pond’s shallow end the next day. It takes time to move dirt. I hauled a few loads of top soil up the hill and dumped it in front of Dad’s house so he could move it onto a hillside he wanted to get some grass growing on. Most of the dirt I continued to dump in front of our new house in order to make the slope in front more gradual. The process involved digging out five or six full shovels of dirt, get out the backhoe and into the truck, drive the truck over and dump the dirt, park the truck near the backhoe, get out of the truck and into the backhoe, and then start again. This process was interrupted occasionally by the need to move the backhoe to another spot for digging. Still, it was a lot of up and down.

I was able to get a fair bit excavated in a couple of days. Then, because of a comment on an online forum where I shared information about our pond construction, I realized I needed to check the height of the dam. I used a level to try to sight the lines, and this worked fairly well. This method indicated that there were some low spots which needed raised.

So, I decided to rent a transit and check everything with a little more accuracy. With it I discovered that the dam was lower than I wanted it to be. In fact, on one section its height was the same as the emergency spillway’s height. I decided that while I had the backhoe to use, it would be a good time to raise the height of the dam. I called and talked with the guy who did the excavation. He assured me that I would be able to do the job.

 

Raising the height of the dam was the next task to tackle. . .