Well some of you might remember last year we enlarged and deepened part of our
pond and we had piles and piles of clay, sand, muck, cattail
roots, topsoil, etc piled about 6 to 8' deep and higher North of the
pond addition and south of the woods.
this is a picture right after it was dug and i raked a path along the side a little to be able to see the fish and put in the
water lilies.
Well yesterday Joel decided to come over and see how much he could "flatten" it out..i had raked some paths so it was easier for him to get the
tractor up on top..and this is a little photo montage of what he got done yesterday..
as he was getting started, pushing the soil off to the west toward the field and to the north towards the woods.
also the pond was seeping through on the north where there was soft swampy
land, so he pushed some of the clay soil over the seepage area and made a sort of dam to stop the seepage, which gives it another foot to foot and a half that the water level can come up to..which makes me happy as the new dig had dropped my pond level by that far..so thenow shallower areas will fill back up..the pond is 8 years old but the North half new dig is just since last summer.
he only got it about half done, but a lot better than the previous piles..eventually we will work out toward the woods into more forest gardening..what was a swamp now will be more usable soil..he pushed over a bunch of the dying alder and wild cherry and buried it under the dirt..which is good soil..a few aspen
trees are damaged from the work and will have to come out but there are a lot of healthy ones as well as the wild cherry and alder,
ash, maple, and i have planted black walknut, butter nut, carpathian walnut and 2 hardy pecans ..i have a lot of fruit trees coming, may put a few of them in this area if it is finished
enough to plant when they come..ifnot..i'll just order more..i did plant a willow and a few small evergreens and some ground cover and flowers along the pond edge, but most of them aren't seen in the photos