Shall We Try This Again? (Saving the Pond)

If readers will recall, back in the spring of 2015, we had torrential rains that washed part of our pond dam away.  We made a valiant effort to stop the damage (and here, too), but to no avail.

Thinking, "There's no way we'll have that much rain again in our lifetime," Tom and neighborly neighbor repaired the spillway.  And we were so happy and proud.  However, we were wrong.  Oh, so wrong.  We got even more rain in the fall of 2015, which totally washed the spillway away.

And, it's been too wet up until now to repair it.  So, now we are killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

A few years ago, we were having drainage problems in front of the barn, so Tom dug sort of a trench in front of the door so the water would drain away.  Unfortunately, that's one of the few spots on our property that has red clay instead of sand.  The grass didn't grow back to cover it and it turned into a huge mud puddle every time it rained...which, obviously, was a lot.  So, he is taking this opportunity to fix that problem.

My brother had given Tom these huge pavers out of his Oklahoma back yard (thank you brother).  Fortunately for Tom, I was not able to lift them, otherwise I would have nicked them for my own project.  (I didn't actually have a project to do, but I'm sure I could have thought of something to do with such a cool freebie).  So, once again we called upon neighborly neighbor and his handy big machines.  He and Tom dug out and leveled the trench and put these pavers in.

The next thing to do was to scrape the area down so that the water flows away from the barn.

Neighbor used his Bobcat and this disc thing that I'm pretty sure he just whipped up in his shop the day before.  It tilled up the grassy area so the topsoil could be scraped off and saved, to be reapplied later.

The topsoil was put in one pile.

And the clay underneath was put into the dump truck.  By the way, neighbor is pretty accomplished with his big machines.  He changes attachments on his Bobcat as quickly and easily as I change attachments on my vacuum cleaner.  Click, click...one attachment off...click, click...another attachment on.   I'm kinda diggin' the Bobcat.  Maybe that can go on my wishlist. :)

So, here's the pond.  It's a mess.  It's lower than we'd like because every time it rains, the water just flows right out of the broken spillway.  We haven't been able to get over to the other side of the pond to mow for months, so it's a big weed patch.

The remains of our previous fix were dug out.

Ready for new drainage pipes.   The clay that was dug out from in front of the barn and put into the dump truck was trucked to the spillway site to use in place of the sand that was previously there.  You know that Bible class song that we teach our children..."the foolish man built his house upon the sand" and "the wise man built his house upon a rock"?  Well, that's more than figurative.  There's a reason that you don't build things on sand.  "and the rains came tumbling down"

Three culverts this time instead of two.

Now, we can finally drive across the dam.

And, here's the other side.  There's a big scoop out for the water to flow into before it starts flowing downstream.

Bring on the rain.  We need to test this bad boy out.

Well, we are hoping for only moderate rain so we can get some grass growing in the sandy topsoil first.

And...in front of the barn, all nice and smooth.

All in one day.  Awesome.