This looks like it might be a good description of what we have on this property in general. Our place is right in the middle of the band of Tifton soil. It seems to fit with my hope that the sand is covering decent pond building material.
From the above link: "A typical Tifton soil profile consists of an 11 inch topsoil of dark grayish brown loamy sand. The subsoil extends to about 65 inches, strong brown fine sandy loam to 22 inches; yellowish brown sandy clay loam to 40 inches; yellowish brown mottled, sandy clay loam to 60 inches, and strong brown, mottled sandy clay to 65 inches. Two distinctive features of the Tifton soil profile are the presence of more than 5 percent ironstone nodules in the upper part of the soil and more than 5 percent plinthite in the lower part of the soil."
This is (was) the creek which the pond site drains into. It's not considered seasonal. My 84 year old neighbor says it only stopped flowing once in the previous 50 years. Last year when it first stopped it stayed mostly wet. Today I saw it for the first time in about 3 weeks and it's almost totally dried up. The pond site is about 400 - 500 feet away from the creek.
(click on thumbnails)
Almost the entire creek bed and surrounding soils are like "all purpose" sand.
But... in one of the few wet holes I found this large lump of nearly pure clay sitting on the bottom. You can where I scraped my fingers across it to grab a piece.
I found more clay downstream. This clay had some sand mixed in but was still extremely plastic. I only found these few small spots of clay near the few remaining pools, but I'm hoping that there's a lot more of it below the sand. I'm assuming there is because something has to be holding that water...
Here is the soil that was dug with a post hole digger down to about 3 feet. This is from one end of the dam.
The draws for the pond are dry except for this one hole just upstream of the proposed dam. After 3 months of almost no rain this pool is still almost 2 feet deep and about 5 X 15 feet of area. The soils around this draw are very similar to the creek and the sample above.
I guess the big question is do we clear the trees. It would be a shame to have to stop after that.
