Category: pond

My Ponds with Photos

I’m currently in the process of adding newer photos to update progressAt the top of the kitchen garden, this new pond is a salvage that I had to repair using plastic welding techniques.  I tried to create a clay based pond  in this place, but all last year it filled many times and never held water very long, even with lots of clay added to try and seal it. In general, I would never spend money on a Plastic prefabs, but when the price is low and I can repair it, the energy audit becomes much better! I’m also finding that for smaller ponds a liner of some sort is probably going to be the only way to go.

Low Gully Pond

Due to bad weather at the time of creation I was unable to finish  building this dam with the rented backhoe,The water actually started to fill the pond from the bottom, and that water came in as a blue green color, but run off filled it most of the way, and that water was heavy with sediment  then it took weeks of hand labor to get it the rest of the way to this height.

It  overflowed during excessive Spring rain events. but drastically receded during the summer last year because of irrigation water use and being emptied to keep the goldfish pond  filled. The dam  holds water very well and I’m waiting to see if the summer gets dry enough to bring down the water level so I can move in the backhoe and complete the construction.

I’ve already started to build up the first part of the dam wall, but it’s tough to compact clay right at the water line

In another month, if the water is not down, I will drain it and then finish building the dam. (it’s great  to swim in at this level) Once completed I plan to stock it with Koi.

 

PlanThis is an overview of the  half of the property(red boundary). Difference in elevation is about 100′ from lower right to upper left and the two ponds  at the bottom of the picture are all in the same gully that runs downhill from right to left. The small pond pictured just above those two

has never really held water yet, but it does show signs of improving it’s water retention.   This may change over time with organic matter and better integration of the swale, but that requires completion of   the Low Gully Dam.

At the very top of the plan drawing the pond touches a neighbors property and there needs to be some sort of written agreement to establish clear rights and responsibilities regarding it’s construction, use, and maintenance before beginning construction. At present the long connecting swale ends just before the pond location, and if no arrangement is reached that swale will be extended  up along the property line to collect more water that would otherwise flow off the property.

This picture was taken  at a very low water level, and believe it or not there are

catfish that survived the winter at this water level (only a couple feet deep). This year they are  over a foot long!

 

This “high gully dam” is in it’s second year. It overflowed once,

filled two or three times, but is still filling the “back country”. Dams are meant to hydrate the landscape, and the process generally takes about seven years. Currently this dam is the focus of most backhoe energy, while it may not be obvious in the picture, the dam has been holding back the flood with a wall thickness of only 2 feet or less at the top but as this picture  shows, the added mass will more than double the width of the dam wall, and the actual compaction will also be much better.

and a great deal of mass has been added to the dam wall, as well as clearing much more of the area to the left  and top of the picture  to prepare for further excavation.

Goldfish pond (not shown on plan), a bit murky after a rainA close in snapshot of the gold fish pond. This was created when the driveway was put in about 15 years ago, and has boasted hundreds of fish, all descended from a few 38 cent babies from Walmart. There have also been crayfish, herons, and one huge snapping turtle that have all visited the pond at different points. Needless to say I try to discourage the heron(s) and snapping turtles with varying degrees of success.

Last year the fish in this pond suffered with dry weather throught the fall and winter, and the fish population was cut in half. Some of my favorite older fish disappeared and many smaller ones as well. But this year they are making a comeback and water levels are doing pretty good, so with luck they will continue to increase populations again.

 

Seasons Change

No, I’m not talking about Spring to Summer, but wet to dry, or in this case wet to moist. It’s June, and there’s still some water falling occasionally, but evaporation has caught up with precipitation and left many of the plants getting thirsty.

I’ve started to water plants, and plan to start pumping water from the middle pond up to the lower greenhouse. This will leave the thousand gallon cistern (almost full) to be a backup for when the pond gets too low to pump.  I do expect to have plenty of water for the garden and new plantings right through till fall, but keeping the lower goldfish pond full may become a challenge.

Water is no longer overflowing naturally from the middle pond, so the fish pond is already 8 inches low. Last year was a fiasco of loose connections and haphazard attempts to fill the fish pond so this year one of the goals will be to make sure water goes directly to the fish pond from the middle pond when/if it becomes necessary to fill it a bit.

Water here is always a crap shoot, too much/ too little and no way to know in advance what the next season will bring. It is always possible we could get a good strong soaking rain that refills everything, but likely for the next couple months we will be lucky if it waters the plants occasionally.

I also have 4 new trees to plant, dwarf Granny Smith apple, Kiefer Pear, and two different pecans. I know where the pear can go, and have plans for the apple, but the pecans will need considerable space on the north side,  of zone 1 and accessibility there is difficult. Cleaning out a path for the backhoe I discovered one of the locations already has hickory tees growing which I intend to leave there, so the next step is thought and observation locating an alternate space that will accommodate these massive trees.

Oh well, it keeps me busy.

Remember, if you’re not having fun, you’ve got the design wrong.

More Rain

20th May, 2018

 

I hear about deserts that get all their rain in a few short (but often powerful) episodes, and three days later it’s impossible to believe there was ever  water in dried river beds and barren landscapes.

Here in VA we had another 24 hour period with around 4 inches of rain, but fortunately everything held, even the very flimsy repair at the site of the last dam breach. We certainly have more rain overall than a desert, and it can be very lush and green most of the time, but occasionally we do get into droughts where rain is scarce over a period of several months. This means that just like in the deserts, careful water management can go a long way to insuring continued growth of crops.

Both new dams are very full, and the 6″ overflow pipe protected the lower gully dam from further washing out. Installing that pipe was a hasty repair after the first 4 inch episode washed out about 1/2 yard of material in the dam wall.

These dams are not the final stage of the water design, in fact, they are not even completed themselves. The full dam construction and the connected swales will really put the ground hydration into full speed. there will still be water flowing from the land into the creek, but it will have to travel a lot more slowly and service many more features before it moves on.

More contour ponds, more irrigation, and generally larger volumes of water being held back to use at later times when the air stream decides to dry up for long periods.

June 3, 2018

 

Well, we just had about another three inches of rain over the last week, and some of the extra repairs done to the lower gully dam have been paying off. With the new backhoe purchase I have been able to start building up the lower gully dam some more, including a better repair on the washed out section that has raised the water level another few inches, and at one point after the rain stopped this morning, the level rose all the way to the overflow pipe which I had raised up another 5 or 6 inches, along with more clay filled and compacted in on top of the initial repair.

These repairs are still being done in part by hand, but the backhoe is able to at least move the replacement material closer and fill the wheelbarrow so I only have to move the wheelbarrow a short distance and spread the clay and compact it.  The real repairs and finish of the dam will come when the water levels start to recede.

Even though I can start to work on adding enough clay to drive the backhoe on top of the dam, there still needs to be more compacted clay added below the current water level to really create the dam as a stable feature in the landscape.

Justifying the use of heavy equipment in a sustainable system requires the creation of productive systems that will last a thousand years or more. Over the lifespan of a dam like these, a week or so of machine labor can translate into thousands of years of increased fertility and decreased erosion,  These dams and swales will do what a climax forest would ordinarily do with the large volume of water held both in the bodies of the trees and the soil that carpets the forest floor.

With careful management over time these systems can help create stable ecosystems that are productive for our needs and stabilize the climate of the Earth.

I’ll Be Back

Yes, the heron has returned.

I surprised the heron last night–or it surprised me, or neither surprised either, depending on how one perceives it. But the heron  was at the fish pond and the fish went into hiding again.

I’m hoping the problem was that i had moved both scarecrows back a bit further from the pond. last night i moved one of the scarecrows right to the spot I saw the heron flying up from, and it had not returned this morning, although I did see it at the upper gully pond.

I have decided to let the upper gully pond be a fishing ground for the bird as much as possible. The bird will need to have someplace to hunt, and if the pressure is too extreme it may start to directly challenge the scarecrows rather than avoid  them. It is unreasonable to expect the heron to leave forever, and guiding it away from a more valuable area to another place is always going to be more effective in the long term than simply trying to deny access altogether.

It is possible to set  up complete exclusion zones,  but one of the goals should also be to balance energy with payoff.

I know that my goldfish pond is out of balance, and I have been willing to sacrifice some energy through the summer to creating and moving scarecrows around. But I’m not willing to extend that energy to the other ponds, and with luck the heron may decide that looking for catfish is easier than taking a chance looking for goldfish.

The Fall

September 6, 2017

Walking back from the fish pond in the rain, I had this new sense of well being, and not just because of the relief from drought and hot temperatures.  Of course this time of year there is always the possibility of monsoons, or hurricanes dropping large amounts of water all at once, but today I documented the rise of about two feet in the level of the fish pond.

This was not due to rain, but because of a decision to start the waterfall by draining the remainder of water behind the Low Gully Dam. I could have done this sooner, but decided to hold onto the water there until I felt fairly sure we had turned the corner on water supply to the garden. Because of the steady rain, I felt safe enough in the garden requirements and the filling cistern to go ahead and release the impounded water.

Although they don’t say much, I’m sure the goldfish are quite grateful for the extra oxygenated water being continuously fed into their pond  down below, which, because of the other dams recently constructed, has been receiving less water than before during the rains. But even with the rains, in years past, this time of year still sees that pond 3-4 feet below the high water mark.  So my feeling of well being was really due to the ability to release on demand water for the fish pond.  In future, the simple turning of a valve can save a pond full of fish if there is an extended dry spell.

P.A. Yeoman would say that ponds on a farm should be empty at the start of the rainy season, and it was tantamount to greed to try and hold onto that water when it could/should be sent to fields or places that might be able to use some extra. Also of course, that way the ponds can be cleaned, dams inspected and repaired, and generally made ready to hold their full capacity when the rains start all over again. In this case the water went to the fish, not gardens, but in future the High Gully Dam will likely have some excess water for gardens during the dry season.

Harvey, the hurricane, just dropped several feet of water down in Huston, and even the best prepared water design systems might be overwhelmed by that sort of exceptional stress, although a really good design still allows a way out when everything else is full to overflowing.  In this case, there was the fear that aqueducts might break under the flood, causing even more damage to those in the valley below.

This can be a reminder that there is always the possibility of extremes even the best planners can’t foresee. While larger dams may be without secondary outlets, swales can take water away from the valley/gully where one would expect the worst accumulations of water, and as it spills over the swale at an intentional low spot on the swale, the water must find a new path back to the gully and more and more of it’s destructive erosive force can be lessened. At each dam the water is stopped and taken again and again out of the valley to the areas that normally would get less water and need it most.

While large well engineered dams can be magnificent, more,smaller dams can do a better job at the task of stop, spread, and soak. With fresh water becoming scarce, anything that can keep more of that fresh water from running out to sea is a welcome detour.

As trees disappear and the normal water cycle becomes interrupted, small dams and swales are recognized as the answer to these sudden events, and properly implemented, the swales (which are a tree growing system) can even help lead the landscape into a more naturally balanced water cycle with bands of trees on contour controlling the flood.

So while my swales are not yet fully developed, and my dams are still somewhat at the mercy of the rain, at least they are stopping most of the water that used to run directly to the creek and off the property. And this year enough of that water remained to substantially raise the water level in the fish pond when it otherwise might be stagnant.

As the ground becomes better hydrated each year I would expect to have more and more water, until there is a natural subterranean flow that automatically keeps all the ponds full, and all the swales growing trees.

It is easy to speculate how far hydration may take a basically dry landscape, but it is enough for me to feel good by being able to turn a valve and fill a pond with water that might have been long gone many months ago.