Thanks again to everyone. I talked to two other pond diggers today. One said a no go in winter and the other said february and march are not the best times because it's the only chance to access the clay around here that has been saturated by an abundance of rain this season.
I do trust the guy who wants to dig in February. He's shown me his ponds, and has been digging and doing work for 30 plus years. He's done the excavation for my home and driveway, and then a french drain.
I'll have an open talk with him about others' thoughts and see what he says. It does a feel a bit like he's trying to squeeze this in between other work. I turned to this forum because I want to do this right the first time, so really valuing everyone's opinion.
To give an idea of how what and high my water table is, I dug a 2 foot trench by hand this summer to run electric to an outbuilding I built, and after 2 hours the entire trench filled with water. The water table is constantly high in the area I plan to put the pond, and the ground is always wet. In my eyes, a perfect pond site.
