Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Drone footage of pond build - Livingston Co., MO

Continuing with the pond build story, we had a very dry winter in 2017-2018. About the only snow we got came as light dustings Easter Sunday and the following two Sundays after. We got a few showers that spring and then.....It. Just. Did. Not. Rain.

I am 35 years old and I am talking the worst drought for filling a pond in my lifetime for this immediate area. My wife was not happy that we had cut down all her "green trees" and dug a giant hole but I had explained to her that most ponds that are built and ready to go for spring rains are filled in a few months. Boy was I wrong.

Attached are a few pictures of the pond that spring and summer. It got to be a pretty depressing sight as the ragweed slowly took over the entire basin. On the bright side, there was almost no silting in! It got pretty desperate for me, as I would stand at the back sliding door every morning for 7 months hoping for rain. If you've ever seen the movie Christmas Vacation, I was like Clark Griswold staring out his kitchen window visualizing his pool in his back yard. In case you were wondering, I never had any red bikini top smack against my window. The pond never got more than 3 or so feet of water in it at one time, and by mid-August was down to less than two feet.

One of the pictures shows the drought areas for the state as of August 28th, 2018. I live in western Livingston county which is a part of the cluster of counties in the exceptional drought. In fact, when the exceptional drought area started as a fraction of a county a few weeks earlier it was directly over my area. I grew up on a farm and my family still farms, so a silly pond sitting dry was one thing, but row crop and especially livestock farmers were really struggling.

We got a few little rains in September and then finally relief came in October. We received several inches of rain in about a 4 day period that put a lot of water in the pond. The water was turbid and nasty looking and a lot of it was due to the dead ragweed covering the entire basin, but hey, it was water. Volume wise, we guessed the pond to be a little less than half at this point. It was finally a good start for a pond that was almost 9 1/2 months old.