Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction Plans and Projects for 2013

LL, it sure is hard to catch up with forage once you get behind. Been there, done that. Sounds like you have a plan.

That is a quality package, Spinner. Very nice.
Of course, I need to ask you to add it our Human Habitat thread , along with construction details, those same pics + more. Seriously; I (we) all want to see and know more about it.
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Also, as a reminder to rest of our project-meisters, please give us something to drool over by adding your dreams and/or accomplishments to the Human Habitat thread.

Spinnerbait, Great place. I sent you a PM regarding your cabin.

Plans for the upcoming year: Build pole barn with living quarters,Plant 13,000 Trees,Plant Food Plots and start a Brettski type thread on the whole thing.

Picked up the barrels to do the walkways today..

That is fantastic, Spinnerbait! Absolutely beautiful!

My wife and I are going to meet with a log home manufacturer tomorrow as we are leaning heavily towards that sort of structure for our eventual home at our farm. I will definitely ask them about this option compared to full logs.

Again, just beautiful what you've got there!

Thank you.

I def. want to see pics of your cabin when you build it! The pavillion looks great too.

Thanks. I'm excited the pavilion is finally starting to shape up. The log house is going to be another story! Probably still a year or two out on that if we play our cards right, but definitely time to start the process of figuring out exactly what we want to do.

Planting and stocking our recently filled pond.

http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac341/raherman/IMG_0254_zps684172dd.jpg

http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac341/raherman/IMG_0255_zps9abcc718.jpg

http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac341/raherman/IMG_0256_zps257e0c24.jpg

RAH, that looks very good. How big is that bow?

I was hoping for an acre which I am guessing is about the size that it turned out to be, but I am not very good at judging such things. Once it appears in the satellite photos, I'll get an accurate area. It seems a little smaller than our 1.25 acre pond that I know the size of, but I do not trust my estimates. I will stock it based on it being 1 acre. First with forage and RES, and then with SMB. I love these types of projects!. The dam turned out way too steep, so our first project in early Sping is to transplant some reeds in the water, horsetail above that, and a tall perennial sod-forming grass above that.

1) Finish my cabin!
2) Plant about 40,000 trees on my steep slopes and down by the river
3) Plant and stock my new lakes

That should be plenty!

How are you going to plant 40,000 trees on steep slopes in 2013? How many kids do you have?

I've hired a guy who is an expert in that kind of work. He'll use a tractor and a pull-behind tree planter. I wouldn't want to do it but he is confident that he can get it done. Any that we can't plant by machine his crew will plant by hand.

My wife and I planted up to 3,000 per year when we were a bit younger. Lots of work, but we have great wildlife habitat now.

It won't be cheap, but the NRCS is helping to cover the cost under an EQIP contract.

I hope my grandkids enjoy those trees someday!

I is amazing how much wildlife a young woods can hold. Most of our older trees are evergreens, and the deer love to bed down in them when the leaves fall.

I was gonna recommend the tree planter.. I was gonna do a DNR wildlife program on my land and they have a planter I have no idea what it looks like or how it works, so take plenty of pics if you would.. Sounds like a great project..

The ones that I have seen have a blade that opens a slit in the ground and roller wheels that close the slit after the tree is placed, like a tomato planter, except bigger and heavier. They can be pulled by a crawler if needed. Much faster than a planting bar, but the terrain must allow it.

More grass seed, playset for the Grandkids, fire ring, fish feeder( to fatten them up!) misc tree pantings, pea gravel on the ice this week for BG beds, gutters on the pavillion, and what ever my wife says...........

In the Common Pond Archives, Eric had posted some pictures of him tying Christmas trees on a post, and sinking them. That got me thinking about my structure goals for this year, and tried to adapt it to our big water level swings.

What I did was drill a hole through the trucks of the Christmas trees, and loop a rope through it. I then sunk t posts, and just dropped the trees over them. As they sink, I'll just add more, and hopefully just layer up structure for my CNBG. I added drilling pipe over the t posts, because it was cheap, and I could get it cut 6" above full pool.







I'll add a lot more of these, but at least this is a start for my structure goals.

First pond project of the year will be cleaning up the asbestos tiles someone felt I needed

That doesn't sound good. Finding a place to dispose of the asbestos could be tough. Have you considered call the County, EPA or somebody that can legally do disposal? I don't think you can just take that stuff to the dump.

Get some eel grass and water lilies esablished this summer. I planted some in cages, a couple cages took with eel grass a couple did not and the lillies did not. I have some planted in planters now to get a root system that I can transplant. I was simply ripping them out of where I got them from and sticking them into the bottom of the pond. I think having a nice root system will help.