Eric Salop
Elite Member
A few years back I started a project to restore a farm pond. Last year I thought I was almost finished and ready to stock with fish. Then, back in September, I realised that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. An initially innocuous looking alien from the other side of the world had stolen my pond and I now want it back. Perhaps it's better if I start at the beginning ...
I first bought this farmland back in 2003. It is rolling pasture with mostly fast draining sandy soil, with the sand having been deposited by a glacier in the last ice age. That glacier also dumped a fair amount of clay. The clay has been extracted on a small scale in the past for making bricks, leaving behind good sized farm ponds for watering the livestock. There is no water running in from elsewhere, all the ponds are filled by the rain.
As we went through the first summer I noticed that a 1/3 acre pond up by the roadside was in poor shape. From a distance it looked ok.
In reality the water was only a few inches deep in some places. After a couple more weeks warming in the summer sun there was almost nothing left but a green and brown scum to the surface.
If this was to remain a pond it was going to need some serious dredging work. At the time I had many other higher priority things to keep me busy, so I added it to the bottom of the mental list of jobs-to-do and didn't think about it again for the rest of 2003.
I first bought this farmland back in 2003. It is rolling pasture with mostly fast draining sandy soil, with the sand having been deposited by a glacier in the last ice age. That glacier also dumped a fair amount of clay. The clay has been extracted on a small scale in the past for making bricks, leaving behind good sized farm ponds for watering the livestock. There is no water running in from elsewhere, all the ponds are filled by the rain.
As we went through the first summer I noticed that a 1/3 acre pond up by the roadside was in poor shape. From a distance it looked ok.
In reality the water was only a few inches deep in some places. After a couple more weeks warming in the summer sun there was almost nothing left but a green and brown scum to the surface.
If this was to remain a pond it was going to need some serious dredging work. At the time I had many other higher priority things to keep me busy, so I added it to the bottom of the mental list of jobs-to-do and didn't think about it again for the rest of 2003.