Walking in a Winter Myrtleland

We don't have a name yet for the catfish pond.  That's probably a good thing, since it won't be fish-friendly for another 18 months or so. 

This is what it looks like now -- all full of leaves.  We don't really have a distinct winter... more like summer and "less summer".    Nevertheless, we have to wait for summer to dredge and widen the pond.

And we've got to either figure out how to build our own windmill, or else find one really cheaply somewhere.  (More over the break...)

You might notice the ice ring in the middle of the pond.... that's actually from a bucket.  It didn't get cold enough to freeze the pond water, and it's not going to, either.  We're going to have highs in the 70s next week, after last night's low of 25.

But the fact of ice anywhere in the yard does highlight a potential problem for which we are going to have to find a solution.  Catfish are warm-water critters, and we need to make sure the temperature of the pond never drops below 55 degrees or so.  That's going to mean aeration, and maybe even some form of passive heat.

We saw a web site once that recommended building a plastic geodesic dome over the top of an above-ground standalone pool unit.  That just doesn't work for us for a variety of reasons -- it's not pretty, it's too small, and it is pretty unipurpose.  We want the pond not just for fish, but also for rainwater collection.

We're planning on watering the garden plots out of the pond, so it's going to have to be plenty deep and plenty wide.   It's going to have to have some kind of recreational seating area.  And it's going to have to have an access area for pumping water into a portable watering unit for the yard, and someplace to actually, y'know, fish.

We can clear some brush, etc., from the pond area this winter, and we may do that, but mostly, it's going to be a summer project.

We'll show you some other stuff soon, including our digging-under of all the plants that froze last night, in addition to the olive and pomegranate groves we're planting next month.

Happy farming!