pond – Peacock Orchard

New Additions

We had a problem this year. Mainly that neighbors dogs broke in and killed most of our chickens and peachicks. Suddenly we were down to 2 chickens, when it was decided 6 were needed to supply the family with enough eggs. What to do.

In comes the wonderful community we have around us. We were given 3 chickens. Happiness.

Then 4 egg laying ducks were given to us. Then a little call duck drake was given to my daughter. Suddenly we had geese. Then yet another egg laying duck was given to us.

There we were, completely without poultry and BAM, plenty of birds meandering the farm.

Now this has had an impact. The pond has been completely free of birds for the year. I had grasses and reeds growing. The pond was actually clear most days. The pigs were enjoying it and digging it out like crazy but otherwise, a healthy ecosystem.

The ducks didn’t make that big of an impact. The initial 4 were young and did not create that much of a mess. The geese, now they were a problem. I did not even consider how quickly and completely they could destroy all green matter around the pond. The grass, pretty much non-existent. All of the plants growing up around the pond, destroyed.

I was a little discouraged by all this. I was thinking about how tasty those geese would be. However, I think they can stay. They’ve started venturing out of the fenced pond area and onto the property as a whole. Our acreage can certainly withstand the appetites of two Sevastopol geese. In fact it was a beautiful morning, looking out the windows and watching our chickens, ducks, geese and peafowl wandering the property finding food.

Look at that fat pig!

Indeed I still haven’t fed anyone. I won’t until all the green on our property is gone. I will feed through the winter only. Even without feeding I have fat animals. Happy animals. Healthy animals. It has been a beautiful season with the animals.

10 Duck Pond Ideas for your Homestead

If you have ducks, and you should, then supplying them with enough water is probably a problem you are facing. I am going to share a 10 simple ideas with you for solving your water problems.

1. A plastic kiddie pool. This is an easy, cheap way to supply your ducks with bountiful water. It needs emptied weekly at the very least, and that means wasting a lot of water. So unless you are able to funnel the water to say, an orchard, this idea may not be for you. Works great for pigs too.2. Half a dog kennel. This one seems a bit weird, right. Perhaps, but it works fantastically well. Easy entrance and exit for young ducks, doesn’t use too much water and is easy to clean. I used them until they cracked one winter.

3. Stock tank. Similar to the kiddy pool but sturdier the stock tank is a good solution if you are looking for larger solutions. They make metal and rubbermaid stock tanks. I have a sheep tank that worked just fine for a little while. Cleaning it out is a real problem. You also have to make sure there are blocks for the ducks to get in and out of the tank or they will drown.

4. Automatic Waterer. This is the ideal solution for limited space and water. This is also a great winter solution as some heat tape keeps the entire thing from freezing and you from hauling around a hose. This is a great solution for all animals on the farm but for me, it was all about the ducks and the huge mess they make.

5. Heated water bowl. Another solution for winter water this one is quite laborious for you as it requires hauling water out to it at least twice a day. I’ve done this more than one winter and survived to tell the tale. It’s still not ideal though.

6. Dig a duck pond and seal it with cement or a pond liner. This is an expensive option, but a superior one as far as longevity and enjoyment go. I was able to dig a 10x14x3 foot duck pond with the bucket of our Kubota tractor. The deeper portion I cemented and the smaller bio-filter portion of the pond was lined with pond liner. The cons to this pond are the cement cracking (which mind did the first winter) and the liner cracking (which mind also did that first winter). Cementing and sealing this pond were also really laborious.

7. Dig a duck pond and seal it with bentonite. Bentonite is a clay polymer that when mixed with regular dirt and compressed seals water into ponds and waterways. This is a great solution all around. It’s less expensive than cement and pond liners and their is no risk of cracking.

8. Dig a duck pond and gley it with pigs. This is my favorite option. It’s inexpensive and you get bacon when it is all done. What isn’t to love?

9. Filtering duck pond water. Plants are the best way to filter duck pond water. The problem is protecting those plants from the ducks. They are smarter than they look, or so I’ve found. After some trial and error I’ve found caging each plant individually to be the best way. I am perfectly happy with whatever grows out of the cages being consumed so long as the main plant is protected. So far, so good. Also make sure your pond is properly aerated either with a pump or an under water aerator.

10. Controlling pests in a duck pond. Bugs do love a good body of water to procreate in. Midge flies really really loved ours. The ducks weren’t eating them so the best and safest solution was goldfish. 100 goldfish released into the pond solved the problem in a single day and then fed the ducks.

Water harvesting in mini Kraters

Our mini Kraters are doing well. In fact we haven’t had to water yet. The cover crop seeds are coming up. The bushes are flourishing. The trees are coming out of dormancy. It is an exciting time!

Every single Krater had standing water in the bottom of it. This will dry up fairly quickly but it is an AMAZING water source!

I did water the bushes after planting. They were leafed out on delivery and I didn’t bother to harden them off, thus they needed water.

So much water in the kraters that you can see it from a distance.

This is a plum tree that is doing amazingly well. Very happy with it! I did have a fair amount of death over the winter. I blame myself, I pretty much killed them all.

The good news is the rootstocks are alive. So I’m letting the rootstocks grow to be re-grafted later.

The unintentional pond was pumped dry but it has since refilled a bit.

The Unintentional Pond

This was not supposed to happen. This was supposed to be another Krater. This is awful!

We were supposed to have 8 Kraters. We only have 6. This unintentional pond is the reason why. It was dug just like the rest of the Kraters. The front loader scooped out about 2′ of soil. Then it began raining. It rained, and rained, and rained. The Kraters all had water in them but this one, this was something else. We found things digging that we hadn’t expected. We knew our soil was clay. What we didn’t know is that sand and rock was not that far under the clay. It’s about 2-3′ under, in some places. Not 30′ away from this “pond” is a Krater with a rock bottom.

This Krater has black clay. Lots and lots of it. This black clay has proven to be amazing at holding water. So here we sat, with a 2′ deep pond we didn’t want to have. There was much debate about what to do with it. I bounced from keeping to annihilating this thing. I want ponds. Lots of them. What I don’t want is a pond in this location and I want a 2′ deep pond even less. What on earth would I do with a shallow pond?

So while I was out on the excavator I began scooping the clay from this pond. My hope was that I would breach the clay lining and the pond would drain. It turns out I did remove the lining in some spots. It’s hard to tell what you are doing when you are digging in muddy water. However, the pond has been draining, slowly, very slowly. This brings me relief as so far Son has lost a shoe and a dump truck in it.

We stopped digging Kraters because of the rain and because the last Krater is set to be next to this one. I don’t know what we’ll find. Will it be black clay? Will it be rock? I don’t know and I’m not sure I really want to find out.

I’m struggling with what to do with this giant hole after the water drains from this “pond”. I hesitate to plant into it because of how well it holds water. I just can’t leave it though. We think we’ll harvest all the black clay we can for the pond we DO want. After that it’s anyone’s guess. I suppose it’ll sit around for awhile until we finally get annoyed enough to do something. Part of me thinks we should fill it in. The other part thinks we should just plant water loving species in it. Aspen, cottonwood, willow. That seems like the lazier option so it’s probably what will end up happening.

It gave us some very peaceful and pretty sunsets though.

Son will really miss it!