I am finding every excuse under the sun to avoid building the brick wall in the house and pedestal for the wood stove...... I hate masonry work and loves the dirt werk So while the pond is 4' below the full mark and the South arm is dry on one end and sticky mud closer to the water line. I decided to keep scraping and digging. I am leaving the stumps, they are good fish structure. The big pond unlike the lake and little pond only has one spring feeding it and the flow only keeps up with about 30% of the evaporation. The fact that I am pulling clay powder out of a low spot and am 3 feet down in to the low spot and still pulling bone dry powder..... tells you how dry this Spring, Summer and Fall have been. I cored where I am digging and hit moist 6 feet lower than I am at now. The bottom of my sitting log is the full water mark. I am pulling a box full of powdered clay and bucket full every round to the back of the log. After I finish burning the stump to the left of the log out and cut those last two hickory trees in front of it down cut the stumps level with the ground I am going to roll the log to the edge of where I have been digging and scraping. Then grade it with little slop up to the house slab. I am thinking a nice little paver patio behind the log after it is all raised and the area behind the log leveled off. I am torn between building dam across from the point to the South Bank. Or building a post oak foot bridge across. The bridge would look cool, the dam would flood to the top of the log. Overall a dam across there would add 2 feet more depth to the woods area make a roughly 1.5 acre 4th pond. Plenty of sopping wet clay I could still pull from the water and I won't have to build a key. I have virgin gold clay 15 feet deep across there and it would be next to impossible to dig and pack a key anyway. The sopping wet clay would make a great core and as it dries out would pretty much compact itself. I am digging around the stumps with the BX Backhoe to get down to clay and to get as much top soil out of the low spot as I can. And ripping out as many of the small annoying tree roots as I can. The little BX Backhoe does pretty good with them up to about 6" diameter bigger than that they are just going to be part of the bed, unless the box blade rips them up. Started today out with a pretty sunrise. Ended today with a pretty sunset that made the water look like it is on fire with the reflection. The setting sun moves a little farther to the South every day. Only a few weeks ago it was setting just to the right of the tallest tree behind the Red Maples. When it is setting at the South end of the woods spring will be just around the corner and the sunset will start it trek North behind the woods again not long after. Almost like a natural clock or something LOL.
So I have a 4th pond out of the big pond flooded woods. Not my prettiest dirt work ever but speed and solid was the goal for today. It shall be known as the Stump Pond LOL. I am out of 20' long 15" pipe to use as a overflow so I stopped 60' short of the South high point and cut a temp side spillway. Dam is 6' tall so not a big damn. Finished the rest of the daylight dragging more clay and compacting to make the Stump Side slope. I pulled a lot of clay out of that big hole at the end. Raised the slope to the house slab with a slight grade for rain run off. I intentionally left the big stumps. They make great fish habitat. Same pic as above but Red lines are the high water line when it fills. Doing the math it will work out to .87 of an acre. The end hole will be roughly 11 feet deep, below the dam around 6 feet deep, the stump flats range from 2-4 feet deep I stole a lot of clay for the dam from the East Side of Mount Krap I scraped a lot more clay from the South Bank of the big pond. I pulled a good amount of wet soppy clay from the water to Cap the dams dead end. In a week that will dry and harden to about like concrete. LOL if it ever rains again the water level will be about where the clay pile to the right of the tractor bucket is. The single spring in the big pond just can't keep up with the evaporation. No Leaks or Seeps on the dam and the bed is hard packed virgin clay and the spring is flowing. You know when you are above it! It is just a slow flowing one and we have not had a rain that made run off since late April. On the bright side the extreme dry gave me the opportunity to finish this year what I ran out of time to finish last year. I was able to add 2 more feet of depth and make it 12' wider in front of the tractor. Now I just need the rain to fill that missing 4' of water back up. Even the Lake is losing depth. It is 18" below full with 6 springs feeding it. 18" is a whole lot less than the big ponds 48"! I took the opportunity to pull a bunch of mud out of the Lake shallows to raise this point up a couple of feet. And make the shallows a little less shallow The Lake while being a small lake is a lot bigger than it looks. All of the points, dips and coves create a bit of a optical illusion. This is just the South Side Arm. I finally actually measured the dam on the opposite side of this pic. It is actually 1312 feet long. I had been eyeball guessing it at 1100 feet long. It gets real squirrely driving a tractor sideways dragging clay and building the slope on the stump pond side of the dam. About the time it was getting dark I had it all compacted and slicked out. Big and Stump sides. Top is still as rough as a artillery detonated mine field. I swore to myself that at the end of the day what I got done with the dirt work was where I was stopping the dirt work for 2023. I simply have to move on to the house and get it finished over the winter. Last thing I will do tomorrow is take the box blade off and put the big broadcast seeder on and fling 200 pounds of grass seed everywhere I have scraped above water lines. Then it is on to the house...... I have to build the brick wall behind the Woodstove and the pedestal for the wood stove. I am NOT going to burn diesel fuel in the Salamander again this winter. The Salamander is LOUD, Stinks and is expensive to heat with! Wood Heat Cost me around $17 per Month for the Gas and Oil to make a Months worth of firewood And the house is feeling neglected and begging to be finished!
Well, at least, at the end of the day, when the Missus asks how your day was, you can honestly tell her it was a DAM LONG DAY!!
