Hand Digging Ponds - In-Depth Discussion
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- Опубликовано: 9 мар 2017
- www.edibleacres.org
I take a more thorough look at the pond systems developing on our site. After 8 years of working on how water moves through the 6 acres of Edible Acres, we have over 20 small ponds and interconnecting water ways. They have been dug and developed entirely with hand tools and without pre-design / measurements / maps, etc. This style of water working is more in line with how the vast majority of humanity has and still works with water in productive landscapes. I'm hoping this video gets people feeling empowered to try to manage how water moves and relaxes in their land without machines and complexity.
Edible Acres is a full service permaculture nursery located in the Finger Lakes area of NY state. We grow all layers of perennial food forest systems and provide super hardy, edible, useful, medicinal, easy to propagate, perennial plants for sale locally or for shipping around the country...
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Happy growing!
Mosquitoes... Thought I'd address it in one comment here. It's always coming up on videos I do about waterways and ponds, etc. When you have a pond, you invite frogs, and other water loving beings. They eat mosquito larvae. Ponds help reduce mosquito populations, I've found, rather than increase them. Just my personal experience, but after 8 years of working with these systems I find very little mosquito pressure happening...
EdibleAcres i was just about to ask that
Note this comment is left as expansion not as trying to educate you. Information for readers to consider when asking the mosquito questions. Bats, migratory birds, native birds, dragonfly are my biggest helpers. Plus I put up houses for purple martins , they consume their weight in mosquitoes every day, bats eat thousands of mosquitoes, "mosquito hawks" eat nothing but mosquitoes during their entire life cycle. We also have mosquitofish in all my rain barrels Also Damselflies help. If you have a complete ecosystem they balance themselves out. Not my video, but it shows how dragonfly larvae make lunch of mosquitoes. ruclips.net/video/miFN2o3woSw/видео.html
Same here actually. We have a very wet property. And after the first year frogs moved in and the mosquito population went down.
We will ve digging more in the next couple of years.
EdibleAcres dragonflies too.
Just want to set the record straight... while I agree that all of these predators do a lot of good, it is worth mentioning that there is no "mosquito hawk" that eats nothing but mosquitoes. Crane flies, sometimes called mosquito hawks, don't eat mosquitoes at all, and damsel/dragon flies, which are sometimes called mosquito hawks, eat all sorts of smaller bugs, not just mosquitoes. And Purple martins consume their weight in flying insects of all sorts - not just mosquitoes. If you think about it, anything that eats NOTHING but mosquitoes would be a poor choice for control because they need a healthy mosquito population in order to thrive themselves. (note - response to the MischievousKittie comment)
You won me over completely when you said you didn't want to use a liner 💖
I love that you sharpen your shovel not a lot of people do that but it makes all the difference in the world
VERY useful!! 99% of the pond videos are about digging a hole. This shows how to work with the land, using the soil removed, integrating water into a great agricultural system. JUST what I needed!
Very glad you found it useful. I made the video in part because I looked for so long on youtube for a video where someone talked about actually digging a pond with hand tools and how to be thoughtful with all the parts and couldn't really find i!
@@edibleacres I know this is old and you can only tell your story, but what are your thoughts to do on a very flat area?
I agree! I was delighted when I found this channel, for the same reason.
Love the appreciation for a slow build and taking time to understand the water flow and levels. So many people want something done and 'finished' in a short time frame, there can be so much value in slowing things down.
I admire your ambition. Over a period of 35 years I have turned an old worn out 1880 farm into a nature paradise with forest and three ponds. I save my shoveling mostly for tree planting. Some many years ago I acquired an old D4 bulldozer that I patched back together. Yes a wheel barrel and a shovel and an ambitious man can do a lot but I highly recommend mechanical help if you can. I am in Michigan. If you were closer I would push some holes for you on an exchange basis. My biggest pond is about one and a half acres and is over twenty feet deep in part but I had professional help to root that out. I hope I can construct a few more ponds before I get to old to care about it and I'm already 73 yrs.
I hear you on the machines. The land in this video is where my folks live, and they are wonderful in letting us work with it and develop it, but have serious limitations on what we can do as far as scale...
I can only imagine what you've been able to help happen over 35 years! Wow!
Wow, how did I miss this? I've been hand digging a pond as my therapy for healing my hip replacement. It keeps getting bigger and bigger and I love it. Excited to watch the video.
People nowadays often think you are crazy for digging structures by hand in a garden.
While it is cheap, gives a nice activity and is much better for working in harmony with the environment
I'm so glad I found your channel!! I discovered a lake uphill on my land, next to an old well of my 1755 farmhouse. I'm so excited to make good compost and create a sustainable systems on the farm.
Nice shovel it looks like a ground breaking invention
Probably the best video I've found on creating hand dug ponds. I've been observing the water on our property for a while and now I'm ready to start digging - small and slow like you suggest.
I love the videos you create - keep on doing it, you are sharing some very important information.
So glad this video resonates with you. All the best in your water workin!
You are an artist and your use of language is rare. New sub here.
That's a ton more work than using equipment like I have, but I think your method is much better. Far less damage to the area around your digging and all that goes with it. Excellent!
Thanks for sharing. Good to know that there are others out there alone with but shovels to lean upon and observe.
Fascinating.. I'm reclaiming a duck pond, hand dug outta my marsh on my property for also, a reflection pond area to sit & enjoy the shimmer of the pond
One of the things I look forward to most in the week is watching your videos. You channel is currently my favorite RUclips channel.
Wow, thats a lovely sentiment. Thanks!
I am so glad you did this video to explain the reasons behind not moving water from point A to point B as if it were a nuisance. It is a banked (pardon the pun) resource, maintaining what you receive with future needs in a balanced account. I can only assume your spring and summer watering is reduced dramatically by the use of this retention of resources. I can only imagine how happy and prolific your elderberries will be. Cheers to you!
Thanks, yeah, in a lot of ways I consider permaculture a system of working with currency. Current of energy, current of water flow, human energy, time, even money. It facilitates taking the current or currency and slowing it, spreading it, and sinking it deeper into the medium through which it flows. Water is the main example shown and worked with, but the concept can be applied in way wider ways, so it is a good description to consider it more of a savings account or investment account for water!
Yes I very much enjoy playing around with these concepts! I love your respect for the land, and your approach to moving the water around - it is what I want to do with my own land.
Wishing you great luck in that pursuit!
This is fantastic! Congratulations on slowly developing such a fantastic landscape and skill level at reading and modifying landscapes and waterflows. My chickens just uncovered a spring I couldn't locate, so I think it's time for me to get out there and start playing with that waterflow.
Love this long term planning!!💝
I also love how the ponds help to keep the land cool
Loved it....you have great articulation! And I thought I was crazy! I bought this property with three ditches turning into rivers every rain event....one ditch up front I hand dug and dammed to make a big curving pond which is ever fascinating....I'm going to enlarge it....enormous labor but I enjoy it...sometimes after major storm the entire d breast becomes a waterfall....and with grass it usually holds....I'll probably dam the other dutches for more ponds! Digging deeper and bigger scenic holes which fill with rainwater is great fun....and good exercise!
Sounds like a super rad project, wow!
I am doing this on my flood plain. My high ground doesn't hold water so it percolates down to the flood plain clay. Previous residents on the farm tried to dig north south ditches to drain low spots which did not work. As I have been doing my permaculture observations and raking the muck to the edges of the ponds I discovered there was a natural zigzag to the south west and back to the southeast corner. So now I have only a few sections of ditches to connect culverts for my field paths where I can drive in the summer. The soil only freezes down about 3 inches here about three times a year but it is cool to see a mole hill setting on top of a 6 inch high column of ice. Instead of beavers I have moles for irrigation engineers, They work their way to the pond as the water level drops during our 3 month dry period theu the water flows back and deeply hydrates the field during the winter.
Awesome information here. Really great to see what you've done by hand. I will hopefully be making a small pond for our own garden next year so I'll be watching all your related videos when I can. Thanks!
New subscriber. My wife and I love your channel. This video is really great. Thank you for the information and inspiration.
thanks, nice to see it all, cant wait to have some property to develop for those decades you talk about
I love your gentle approach to everything you are doing...such understanding and respect...I love your channel...thank you...greetings from Australia
Yeah, talk about living sustainability!
Not sure if your aware but most kitty litter is bentonite clay and I've found it to be a cheap way to seal small pond bottoms or dams, it works really well if you mix it with some clay soil and spread it after you take the loamy stuff out. Great channel.
Thanks for the kind words, and nice idea there. I guess you'd want to find a kitty litter that doesn't have fragrance or other nasty crap in it. Do you have a brand that you use that you feel is safe / non-toxic / etc? Thanks!
I'd look for anything unscented, the box usually has the ingredients written on the side. Just as long as that tiger of yours didn't use it first. haha
How do you take the loamy stuff out? I live in Oklahoma, where clay soil is plentiful. I want more than anything to have ducks on my homestead, and cringe when I hear people say, "You can keep ducks without a pond." As hot and dry as our summers are, moreso every year, I know I'll likely end up with swales and I'd love to put a pond on the end of at least one of them.
A swale is a pond dug into a slope of a hill by digging out the high soil and placing it lower on the hill to format the swale pond. There are often trenches dug around the slope to dirrect water into the swale. Just some stuff I learnded in the skuells
Except ponds normally are sealed in some way, whereas a swale trench is often made to be more absorbent with ripping the soil, forming or mulching.
Love your videos, thank you for doing them! Will be cool to see you jump into your hand dug pond. 😎👍
thanks for all the info. we have a kind of boggy property and have started to dig a pond at the higher end just like you did, planning to connect it to small waterways further down. we just moved here a year ago, so we are only at the beginning of our adventure. i find your videos to be very inspirational!
I'm glad. It's my pleasure to share. Best of luck with your project, I'm sure it'll evolve in great ways.
Cool results. I'm glad that worked for you back yard. I'd have a hard time in my back yard. Super rocky.
Just what i was looking for! The way you read the land is so inspiring. Just started hand digging today! Glad for this perspective
So happy to share, happy digging to you!
your property is truly a model on which we can all benefit. Have a marvellous day
this is very helpful, thank you! I appreciate the low-tech, high-attention approach.
low-tech, high-attention... I really like that way of describing it.
Right???
Applause
I have been researching ponds for a long time. I had an acre pond at my last house and since I have moved, I long for another but I don't like the look of the way pond builders make theirs. (Rocks everywhere.) I grew up in Syracuse, NY, went to college in Rochester and lived, played and worked in the finger lakes for over a decade! Horseheads, Corning, Elmira, Ithaca, Watkins Glen! So cool that I can find hope from this video and it's from a kindred NY soul.
@Jon In SLO I have just now! Thanks for the info.
I love this. I've done a fair bit of hand- digging swales and ponds myself. I'm on steep rocky slope, so it's hard digging and doesn't seal very well but nevertheless I'm keeping the water table happy. Hoping the winter creek will flow longer each year as I slow water down
Beautiful knowledge indeed thanks for sharing your journey . We got a over flow lot in Florida and we want to work with it to make it a place where we can develop a permaculture sistem to help nature be nature and man be man ! Thanks so much . I will continuing watching your other videos to enrich my self , I’m here taking notes . Appreciate it very much keep sharing valuable knowledge and love .
I have been in the process of draining a unused wet area for 8 years now using a tool called a mattock.
A mattock is like a hoe shaped instrument on the front used for pulling towards you or for digging directly below to the depth of the 4 foot handle.
On top of the hoe part in the opposite direction is a axe like bit of steel sharpened in such away that can be used to cut unwanted roots or wood found in your trench that you are digging or to help break or pull rocks, the total weight of the mattock depending on the user can be 8kg for the ladies version up to 15 kgs with a added metal handle as mine has.
My trenches first started out like yours using gravity to help drain the area and to help shrink the soils the more water that was extracted.
Today I now have a trench from the source running right along the highest point of the high ground angling down to the lowest point and exit out into the main creek.
Leading away at right angles or which ever the lowest point runs but not attached to the main creek I have what I call intermediet trenches, these take care of the wet areas draining from the centre outwards.
Some parts of the detch is deeper than others this allows me to dam that part of the drain up in summer which after 24 hours fresh water flows out onto my dryer areas where my melons or other produce are growing to self water the beds before releasing all back down that same drain, this is done every other week it saves time and let's me do other things while nature looks after my food crops.
I like your ideas with the self dug ponds, but will still carry on using my detches which in a way still works about the same.
According to Geoff Lawton duck poop is a great pond sealer although someone else said that not all duck poop is created equal.
Do you know where he said that? I love these quotes. It's similar to when he said when your armpit smells you can just put good compost soil in it and it wont smell anymore
He said if you bathe in compost tea, not rub compost :) Animals are an old-timey pond sealing method, not a permaculture innovation, the manure and the compaction...
For a small pond, the obvious thing to do is find some sticky clay and line it with that. You do that at the end of the dry season.
@@tim1tim2tim3tim4 It was several years ago on his farm and I did look for it but no luck. Sorry.
I've been doing this same thing except with one pond that I've hand dug over the past number of years (which continues to evolve). You describe my experience perfectly: the water has a dialogue with the digger and reveals its nature through the iterative digging. Observation and patience are as important as the labor. Thanks for your video.
Thanks for the great video.
He knows and explains well.
First time viewing your videos, I loved it, thanks. Subscribed.
Fantastic! I will utilise these ideas. This is of great value to learn from. Shared :) Blessings :)
Interesting strategy. Things seem to be working well.
Thank you.
I have been devising my own clay bed matting. It’s made of sheep fleece it is woven into 1 inch matting and Inc with clay. The idea would be you dig your pond out lay the matting over the pond Ever water or wait for it to rain it will then set. Completely organic but the pricing at the moment is very expensive. It would work out cheaper for me to make it if I was to use synthetic nylon but I do not want to do that because that is too much of a compromise. It’s going to be difficult to market due to the cost it’s around £140 a square metre To manufacture at the moment Plus I would have to make at least 40% profit so would not be accessible at the moment to the average user. Thanks nice video.
Glad you are thinking through these ideas. I hope the evolve into something magnificent!
Lovely ideas!
Very interesting video. Thank you.
Very smart approach.
Thanks!
I'm inspired to try this.
Thank you
This video is great thank you for explaining how you do it. I am glad to hear you just used a shovel. When I watch the people with A-Frames and Levels and drawing contour maps it starts to get confusing. I can handle a shovel sharpened with a file and digging high on the landscape.
You can always start there and refine later
@EdibleAcres agreed. Digging some small swale ponds this summer/fall.
THATS GREAT.i like to have a shovel blade ,very sharp on both ends of the handle…that way if i stumble or fall .the grand kids get to work for a change.it would do them good…god bless them!
Really enjoyed this prog.
Your channel is very interesting. Keep up the good work.
I realize this is a 2yo video but it is currently very relevant (and super helpful) to us! Thanks for taking the time to share your property and wisdom.
We are currently figuring how to best manage the very wet/soggy ground in our new property and digging small ponds and new water pathways seems to be a very sensible way to go.
In your experience, how deep did you need to dig the pathways before you saw meaningful results on the surrounding surface? And do you have any general sense of quickly you saw the impacts of those new pathways?
I’ve dug a bit already where I felt the land really needed it but I’m hesitant to do too much before I see the results of my current test. I’m just trying to figure out if it needs a week, a season or a year (or longer) to show how the new pathway will change the saturation of the surrounding area.
Loved this thanks
Looks fantastic 😊😊😊
Thank you for this video. What you refer to as Hugel mounds i think need to be called Holzer mounds as Holzer was the one who advocated the method. Hugelkultur is about digging pits and loading them while the Holder method is about creating mounds. Please do check.
I'm so happy to know you're not using plastic. I've resisted it myself. Thanks again and all the best to you!
Thanks and thanks for sharing your input here.
this man is so wholesome
Good stuff.
Hey there, Cardwell farm here. I very much enjoyed this video. Thank you for sharing it with the world. This could help all kinds of people including people in desserts. They could use this method to improve their lands and possibly recreate their ecosystem. I in Texas would love to use this to improve our property for future generations.
I have this amazing bubbling spring, something about working a shovel instead of hiring a backhoe js
This has been a favorite channel of mine for years, I love going back through old videos. What books did you read for working with water?
So glad the old videos still feel valuable.. I didnt find any books that were particularly helpful for me, so I just explore as I go.
Elegant!
Thanks for this vid. Very interesting.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I've some success with stopping leaks in my ponds by laying cardboard in the bottom and eadges of the ponds...
Denis
Very cool
You people are amzing
This is a very interesting video about pond building. Could you address a flat acreage and how you might approach a flatish property?
If I do another video on these I'd be happy to
You can also throw some clay in the water and throw in a few bubblers to mix it and keep it suspended for a while. Then remove the bubblers and let the clay settle out.
That is an interesting idea. Have you tried this and found it to be of use or is this a concept you have?
Before we build a larger pond, we started with a small pond (which we later extended and extended again to create the larger pond). When we made the first pond it lost water so I added some clay that we dug from a high quality clay lens that we had on another part of the property. I “extrude” it through a grate then pelletize it and use it for seeds. Anyway, I thought that the pelletized clay would be ideal for sealing the leaks in our pond but since we didn’t know exactly where they were, we needed to first dissolve and then suspend the clay before we let it settle out in order to obtain 100% coverage of the pond. As luck would have it our neighbor was draining his fish pond and I asked him if we could use his bubbler to suspend the clay. He agreed. Bottom line is that it worked. No more leaks! When we dug the extensions to the pond I made sure that we didn’t breach the clay lens. So no additional leaks. Our initial pond was pretty small and roughly circular, only a few 1000 gallons, Also our soil is silty loam with clay lenses not sand. so I can’t guarantee that this strategy would work on a larger, more elongated pond or sand bottomed pond. Hope that helps.
Liked and subscribed! One question for discussion pertains to my property. My one acre lot is in a creek bottom. A creek runs a couple of hundred feet from the lot but not through it. The soil is very good and drains surprisingly well unless heavily compacted. The property just north of mine has a pond on it (1/4 to1/3 acre) which is almost always dry. Enough background. My question is: What techniques can I use to slow the absorption of my soil? I would like to have ponds and "swales" but worry that with such good percolation to the soil the effort might be wasted.
I think slowing it down is always helpful, regardless of percolation. There will always be some heavy heavy rainstorms that woudl run off the property unless you provide some switch backs and swales. If they absorb it quickly thats still fine, its getting down into the water table where you want it.
I love you so much!
Great video! - I suggest you put some thought into the quality of the audio. They make wind screens for microphones.
I hear you. I invested in a wireless mic that has the fuzz on it. I plan to use that more as it seems to really help. I recorded a video with a sock over the end of the phone recently and that help, too! :)
This is great! I found clay at the bottom of a hole our dog dug and the customers at the local small-town market want bread... so I'm building a cob oven and I was beginning to wonder if I could combine that project with creating a pond on a low corner of our property. Looks like I can! You also challenged me to try again to think outside of my straight, tidy beds (4'x100+') and to think in terms of increasing the topographical diversity instead of decreasing it (i.e. making mounds and holes instead of leveling)... Although I need to keep some level-ish land bc. I'm not ready to give up my salatin-style broiler pens. I was thinking about moving the top soil and sand from the pond excavation 350' away, uphill to fill some depressions, but I should probably leave it close by, eh? and use the raised beds/huggels to plant stuff that would be good food for ducks and chickens? I'd like to hear more about how you envision the sunlight reflecting off of the water onto neighboring beds... Are these beds on the north side of the water, or does it work anywhere around the pond? Would this allow me to grow more in partial shade? what about tree roots when digging? I grew up in Ohio and now live in East Texas, so I feel like the sun is hunting me down to roast me alive on the unshaded parts of our property. I want to plant more shade trees on the east side of the house (west side is very nicely shaded), but I don't want to cut down on the space where I can grow useful stuff. Also... I'm a little concerned about the increased frog/toad population from a pond attracting snakes. I know they have a legitimate function in the eco system and all, but there are many poisonous ones here, and I have a daughter to protect...
Wshew! Too many questions!
I try to be helpful and answer and respond to anyone who asks questions, but maybe there are too many here!
Ponds are amazing, I've really enjoyed developing them and thinking about how both sun and air move over them, and how to design gardens that relate directly to the ponds, etc., and would be happy to help you think it all through, but probably not in a comment on youtube! I do offer consultation if that feels helpful, you can reach out through edibleacres.org and let me know and I would be happy to spend an hour with you on the phone to talk through some of your ideas and support you in moving it all forward...
I wish you the best with your project, sounds like lots of exciting things going on!
Haha! Fair enough. I got overly excited about this.
Thank you for the video...how do you deal with the accumulating water while you're digging?
Normally we do the deeper digging projects during the seasons when there is less/no water.
Are ponds only successful in clay soil? I’d love a pond but I’m not sure my soil structure would hold onto water this way??
If your pond is silted up, you can clean it with help. motor pumps for dirty water and the suction nozzle Bagermaster. You can remove bottom sediments and excess vegetation without chemicals
A LOT of labor. I’ve been digging and messing around with a spring in my yard for a few years and it’s fun but hard. The only problem I have is tons of silt accumulation on the bottom. I have a stream running into the pond, is there any way to prevent lots of silt? I also love the idea of growing a garden around it but there are so many animals around mine that would just eat it. Cool vid bro
If silt is running in, you may want to watch our two part series...
One is: ruclips.net/video/cRyrZ-FPzDk/видео.html
Follow up is: ruclips.net/video/1pASPuHOKCw/видео.html
Nice video I love this
So glad you found it enjoyable.
i practice in the wilderness and spread local perennial grasses and pioneer trees
If you could hold a tiny bit more water you can setup some aquaponics (pondponics)
you should try japanese millet or wild rice, or water chestnuts; especially in anything that gets stagnant. Lotus are cool too. I like that you have realistic time frames on hugels. People don't get that they take lots of time to develop properly.
We need to evolve the water systems for sure. Many more layers to go!
We don't have any kind of creek or springs on our property, do you reckon that if we dig a pond here it will fill up from the rain?
So many variables, it's impossible to say.
Found your video by searching hand dug. And yes, I wasn't searching for machine dug..lol
I can’t remember where I heard this, but just by having ducks. it will seal your pond. I think their manure will form a film that waterproofs your pond.
A good number of folks have mentioned this. Something for us to consider some day.
My soil is on a slope and it all seems to just drain right through. I have 4 neighbors, all who have their own wells within 500 feet of my property, and i don't think they understand what it's doing to our water table. I don't think they understand that we need to be putting in ponds and such to recharge our groundwater. At this rate, my aquifier may never have a chance to recover. My well is dry, and the only stream nearby dries up in the late summer. IDK what to do. Not having water sucks, lol. Any tips?
can we get an update on these ponds? Also, do you ever plant celery around them? Thanks
Right now they are dry, that's the short answer! Pretty darn dry and hot start to summer, but it'll resolve over time I'm sure
Me and you do thing's exactly the same. WOW.
i have a small field that retains a lot of water and makes mowing hard throughout the year, any suggestions on how to go about it?
Too vague a question for me here, but the video may offer ideas. focus the water in specific spots and that will help the overall picture.
Are you still planning to release fish into some of these ponds? Not sure how they will make it through the winter when the ponds freeze over
Luckily we didn't since we still need to get them more sealed.
How much Betonite Clay is needed to seal a pond? Let's say a 10 x 10 pond. Is it like 20 lbs or 100 lbs or a 1000 lbs. I am wondering if it is a thin or thick layer. Or do you mix it and spread like a thin layer of cement? Thanks! LOVE every video you and your wife put out. So wise and peaceful.
I haven't had great success with it, not sure I understand why. That said, you could start with 1 or 2 bags of 50# sacks and see if it improves things...
Have you thought about adding ducks? They trample their own poop at the waters edge, gleying it. The water comes up and they gley the edge some more. The water comes up even more... and so on. In that way, ducks actually seal and thereby create their own ponds!
I've heard this idea before, as well as pigs on larger scale pond systems. I think that if/when we live on this property in a full time way I'd very much like to work with this idea. I love it!
Here’s G. Lawton’s vid on the use of ducks to seal ponds. Sounds reasonable. Like I said, our pond only leaked at the beginning and we fixed it with the clay before we had many ducks on the pond. Can’t say if the ducks manure prevented the extensions to our pond from leaking as they have never leaked. ruclips.net/video/NNv1bFEzIyQ/видео.html
Any updates with this ponds?
Fab !
You truly have a gift my friend. Thank you for sharing it with the world. How did you acquired
all of this knowledge if you dont mind me asking?
And relayed so eloquently!
Trying and working with things. Nothing fancy. Just lots of work and enjoying the process. To some extent, youtube has been helpful in seeing examples of things I want to learn which is in part why I make the videos I do, to share back from where I learned ideas. But no formal training or things like that, I'm just a regular guy figuring it out as I go along.
EdibleAcres That is an extremely inspiring statement for me and I'm sure a lot of others who see that what you have got going on and have created is a beautiful thing. Thank you for making these videos and paying it forward. I'll make sure to do the same one day. In the meanwhile, I'm excited to see more! thank you
Inspiring for me too! I'd like to farm (i.e. have lots of excess to sell) and not just "homestead" but I don't have the opportunity to go train somewhere or the resources to get a second education... so I'm going to the school of trial and error and sometimes it's discouraging.
Contemplating digging a pond by hand.... I'm in NC now, but born in Ithaca, NY. Where are you located?
East Side of Ithaca is our smaller spot, this video takes place at our place of 6 acres jjust north of Trumansburg
You mention potentially using pigs for sealing your ponds, have you considered ducks, instead? I've heard Geoff Lawton talk about that and I'm actually considering it myself. Great videos. Thanks.
Ducks could be a great fit. I haven't used either, but both seem possible and promising. I'd love to hear how they work for you if you go that route.
I'll be in touch as I get to work on this within the next couple of months or so. Currently focusing on a perennial garden and a large production garden we are running a CSA out of. The ducks are ready to go, though. Blessings
If you ever want to follow up on the idea of pigs I hope you'll check out American Guinea Hogs. They are a small good tempered breed.
there is a Geoff Lawton video of using ducks to fix leaky ponds on youtube. ruclips.net/video/NNv1bFEzIyQ/видео.html
I am physically unable to hand dig the ponds we need, but I am having one or two mechanically dug in the next few weeks. We are still working on locations for the ponds right now. At this late season, should I still plan to sow brassicas after the work is done?
Depending on where you live it may be too late, although if you can get seed for $1 a pound or so for things like daikon, it may not hurt to have them in place.
@@edibleacres Northeast Oklahoma. I’ll look around. I already have bulk mustard greens seed and kale for sure.
I've seen sodium bentonite clay used on larger ponds. Do you think it would make a nice natural seal for smaller ponds?
I actually tried it on a few ponds and it didn't seem to help. Maybe I did it wrong but it seemed like the instructions were super simple.
@@edibleacres Awh! Huge bummer. I totally admire your candid respect of the natural world.