OK, finally, I did it. I know I said I was going to do it last spring but I got to busy doing crosses and never got to it.
This time I drove the D-5 Caterpillar dozer and built the whole pond myself. Quite an experience. After about 30 hours on the dozer I feel fairly well qualified to run one now. Very empowering ! And also I get things exactly the way I want them, which is hard to do when explaining it to someone else.
The main body of the pond is a little bigger than a football field, 1 acre +, and about the same length X width ratio.
I haven't built the dam around the hill that will be the island yet, but when I do the pond will be at least 1.5 acres including the island.
This pond only receives water from rain falling directly into it so it will take more than a year to fill.
The island " moat " is shallower than the main body of the pond and this gives me time to work on it this winter while the deeper parts fill.
The pond runs lengthwise, north to south with the ridge top it is built on. At the north and south ends of the pond are two small hills, the north hill is to steep for a pond-moat and it has my orchard on it. the south hill is flat enough to build a moat at water level with the main body of the pond, about 2-3 ft. deep all the way around the hill, turning it into an island. The moat will be filled with water lilies.
The pond is primarily composed of two dams, one on each side of the ridge top running parallel with the ridge, a straight east dam and a sinuous west dam. The two hills function as the north and south dams. It is a saddle shaped ridge.
The ridge top the pond is built on has two small heads of two small hollows that drained the ridge top to the east and west. These two dips in the earth were slightly offset from each other on a north to south axis. The dams run across, perpendicular to the axis of these downward sloping dips in the original ridge top. The WHOLE footprint of the pond was dug down to solid bedrock and piled in the center. The contour of the rock followed the contour of the surface, approximately 3 ft deep of clay until hitting rock. Every bit of the clay that was piled in the center was used up in building the dams. This means no soil for lilies ! ! ! Also the rock layer at the high spots by the north orchard hill and the south island hill were very shallow, to shallow to grow lilies, after adding soil, in a dry year when you can have a two ft drop in water level due to evaporation in a bad drought. The two offset 8 ft deep areas that are the heads of those hollows make a pond bottom topography that resembles a squashed Yin-Yang shape of high ground, at this point, rock. Not really a Yin-Yang shape but a narrow waist shape, but in the shape of an S, a squished S shaped hourglass kind of.
For soil I have the top soil from the pond site piled up at the north and south ends of the pond but there is still the high rock = shallow water problem. Lucky I have the most amazing small tractor and dozer blade that I built myself that will cut through and pulverize the soft clay rock this ridge is made out of into the nicest soil you can imagine.
I dug out the rock on the island end and made soil out of it and filled low spots with it until the low spots were raised to ideal depth for lilies. that lowered the height of the high rock enough to make it ideal also before it got to hard to dig. On the north end the rock was much harder and I could not dig as much out, enough to fill in low spots but not much more. so on this end I used my big topsoil pile for the north lily bed.
So there are two giant lily beds on the north and south ends with an offset isthmus's of lilies connecting them. The rest is rock bottom except for the dams which will also be covered with lilies. Two rock bottom deep areas for swimming along each dam. Looking at it from the air it should look something like a lily Yin-Yang with an island surrounded by lilies. The rock is waterproof and tested. And my island still has a big pile of topsoil on it for gardening.
First pic shows the pond from the north looking south to the island hill.
Next is the north lily bed with the orchard hill and east dam in the background, showing the two deep areas and hourglass waist of high ground connecting the two beds.
Next is standing on the east dam looking west. On the left is the completed south lily bed made out of ground up rock and the tractor is on the north lily bed siting on rock waiting to grind it up and apply topsoil for the north lily bed. Lily beds are about three ft deep.
Next is looking from the island to the orchard hill, bottom of the pond completed. Some dam work still to do.
