We have a creek that is fed by a spring. The creek is a wonderful meandering creek that weaves among the trees that grow on the south side of our property. It is a beautiful natural thing to look upon, unfortunately the past few summers it has been drying up. The spring itself is still producing water, but because of the intense summers we have been having here in Texas the spring water is being absorbed by the dry ground surrounding the spring that it is not able to produce enough water to flow through the creek bed. Once the summer is over, around September, the creek begins to flow nicely again until summer hits. I need water the most in the heat and dryness of the summer, but that is when I have it the least. I need water to quench the thirst of my farm animals and to irrigate the crops I grow, so I decided it would be to our advantage to dig the creek out to form a pond.
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| This is what the creek looks like in the blazing heat and dryness of summer. |
This is how we did it.
Step 1: We used our existing tractor and begin using the front end loader to remove dirt, and remove dirt, and remove dirt, and remove dirt, and remove dirt, and remove dirt….My husband spent days removing dirt.
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| The Texas Pioneer Husband removed dirt, removed dirt, removed dirt, and removed dirt. |
Step 2: My husband decided that he would be there forever removing dirt, so he went down to our local equipment rental company and rented a bigger tractor. He then removed dirt, and removed dirt, and removed dirt, and removed dirt….
Step 3: My husband decided to ask our neighbors about their pond and how they constructed it. A lot of our neighbors referred us to M.J. Construction, who do dozer work such as digging ponds, clearing land, making house pads and more. They said he did a wonderful job for them and the work was reasonably priced.
Step 4: My husband made the phone call to Michael at M.J. Construction. He came out and gave us a quote for $3,500. The price included tree removal and digging out the pond. We were responsible for the price of the culvert. I begged my husband to let him do it. And finally he agreed!
Step 5: Michael came out in one day and had all the trees knocked down. The next day he piled the trees up for us.
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| The trees are down. |
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| It was about this time I started to panic when I realized that we had to remove so many trees. |
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| Tree roots and tops had to be burned and cleared off the land before the digging could begin. |
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| We did get a quite large amount of usable firewood to heat our farm house in the winter. |
Step 6: My husband and I spent a few days cutting the long tree trunks into usable firewood for our woodstoves and fireplace. Some more wood was also cut for use in our outdoor campfire pit. The tree tops and tree roots were burnt in spectacular bonfires at night. My husband and I spent several nights listening to music, drinking homemade wine, and dancing around the bonfire. It was actually very, very nice!
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| Here I am enjoying a glass of homemade wine and the bonfire! |
Step 7: Michael started digging out mounds and mounds of dirt. He dug it to about 12 feet deep. The width of the pond is about ¾ of an acre. He actually hit the water table. He got to a point that when he was digging that water actually oozed out of the ground. There were mounds of dirt everywhere! We have since used most of the dirt to level off parts of our land. We kinda live in a valley. Our neighbors on both sides of us live up higher than we do.
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| Once the trees and debris was removed we could shape the pond. |
Step 8: Michael buried a culvert on the end where the creek flows from our house to our neighbor’s house. He also made an overflow area in case we get a lot of rain and it is too much for the culvert. The culvert ended up costing $600.
Step 9: Michael then sloped the area around the pond. It really came out quite nice!
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| The water you see in this photo actually seeped from under the ground to the top. |
Step 10: Now we have already planted grass seeds to help in controlling the erosion around the pond and built a side wall around the culvert with rocks to help control the erosion in that area.
Step 11: Wait for the pond to fill up. Once the creek began flowing again it took two weeks to fill up the pond!
During the whole process of building the pond I did had a couple of moments when I said to myself, “What have I done!? The creek was beautiful! I’ve chopped down so many trees that took years to grow!”
I had to remind myself that yes it was beautiful, but it did not have water when I needed it the most. The point in having a creek on your property is to have water available. Now with a pond I would have access to more water and have it available to me when I needed it.
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| I love this pond!! |
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| Once the water goes through the culvert at the end of the pond it continues on down the original creek bed. |
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| This is the culvert surrounded by stack stone to help with erosion control. |
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