waterhole/plot expansion

[phil@thesidehill]

i call my property "the sidehill"....because as long as this little lot has been in the family that is what it has been called. Basically 7.5 acres of the 10 is a steep wooded sidehill, with the balance being slightly sloping old pasture. I have been doing improvements on the property for 6 yrs now and it is finally starting to come together. I do the bulk of my work by hand with little to now equipment. I have friends that let me borrow 4 wheelers so that is how i get the majority of the plot prep done. This year my buddy came down to help me out with his quad and we ended up making a waterhole out of a natural depression and spring seep that usually keeps a good portion of one of my plots wet through the spring. A strategically placed rut helped direct the flow of the seep to the waterhole and helped dry up the plot a bit. we installed an over flow pipe as well.









the area where this waterhole ended up had the remnants of one of my grandfathers junk piles....or inventory as he calls it. he grew up in the depression and never threw anything away that he may have been able to reuse/repurpose in the future. He's an inventor/tinkerer of the highest order, but he is 99 now and is slowing down a bit. I have steadily been moving his junk piles all to one centralized area and restoring/creating habitat for wildlife in return. when i first started working on habitat i planted one small "throw and grow" plot of about 3000 sq ft. This year I will be planting just under a half an acre....which is huge for me! I have also been doing some hinge cutting and non-native invasive removal over the last few years. things are falling into place...still a ton of work to do tho!

Here is a view from my stand shortly after completing the water hole and running the spring tooth harrow around the drier portion of the main food plot. i will be planting this in crimson clover as a cover crop ahead of brassicas (LC's mix) in mid-late July. Seed will be delivered today and I am hoping to get in the ground this weekend! I have never planted crimson clover before so i am anxious to see how it will do.



Here is a little mark up i threw together using MS Paint.

 

[gwm]

Nice.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

Nice work. You may want to pickup some used rubber roof liner for the waterhole base Craigs list.

thanks! yeah i was thinking about that. I have a lot of clay in my soils so i kinda want to see what happens "au natruale" if it doesn't hold water sufficiently as is then i will be going with a liner of somesort. We weren't even planning on doing a water hole....it just kinda came up as we were moving junk.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

here was last year's zero till experiment on the sidehill using LC's brassica mix

 

[Da U.P. 'eh]

I have never heard of using an ATV with a snow plow to dig a waterhole. Nice work and rather amazing!

 

[John-W-WI]

I love how guys "get 'er done"... I bet the deer do too.

-John

 

[phil@thesidehill]

I have never heard of using an ATV with a snow plow to dig a waterhole. Nice work and rather amazing!

Me neither! it was an impromptu project that came about because we were using the plow blade to push a big pile of junk out of the planned plot expansion area. once we started pushing the junk pile we realized the junk was piled into a natural depression and that it was very wet in there. there is also a spring seep that comes out of the hill about 60 yds up. this spring seep runs through a section of the already established plot, so we put some stratgically placed ruts in with the 4 wheeler to redirect some of the seep into the water hole.

 

[kabic]

I had another pond liner idea. People sometimes throw away the "quick set" pools because the air tube has holes in it. I threw one out last year. I would think that would make a good liner, maybe a little big in some cases but I bet you could cut it in half.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

I had another pond liner idea. People sometimes throw away the "quick set" pools because the air tube has holes in it. I threw one out last year. I would think that would make a good liner, maybe a little big in some cases but I bet you could cut it in half.

Yeah i think im going to have to go with a liner like Pope suggested. I just checked the waterhole and it has lost quite a bit of water already. i was hoping that our clay soils would have helped hold water longer....but oh well.

 

[BluffCountry]

Yeah i think im going to have to go with a liner like Pope suggested. I just checked the waterhole and it has lost quite a bit of water already. i was hoping that our clay soils would have helped hold water longer....but oh well.

I tried a liner a few years ago and the deer would not go near it(I'm still not sure why?), on year three I pulled it and used Bentonite Clay it doesn't hold water like the liner did, but the deer hammer it now.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

I tried a liner a few years ago and the deer would not go near it(I'm still not sure why?), on year three I pulled it and used Bentonite Clay it doesn't hold water like the liner did, but the deer hammer it now.

I was also thinking of bentonite. Did you bury the liner? or was it just exposed around the berm and in the bottom? I wonder if the sensation of walking on it freaked them out? Also from what i've read they like some muddy water, so if you didn't shovel some dirt in there the water might of been to clear? was the liner used or new? maybe if used there was chlorine etc?

 

[BluffCountry]

I was also thinking of bentonite. Did you bury the liner? or was it just exposed around the berm and in the bottom? I wonder if the sensation of walking on it freaked them out? Also from what i've read they like some muddy water, so if you didn't shovel some dirt in there the water might of been to clear? was the liner used or new? maybe if used there was chlorine etc?

I buried the liner around the berm and shoveled some dirt in the hole and even had a log laying in it. After the first year it was full of leaves and debris and I left it that way and still no use in the second year. I have well water so no chlorine. The biggest thing I can think of is the smell of the liner? I just don't really know why it didn't work. I know others have used them with no issue.

 

[Jordan Selsor]

Love this Phil!

 

[phil@thesidehill]

I buried the liner around the berm and shoveled some dirt in the hole and even had a log laying in it. After the first year it was full of leaves and debris and I left it that way and still no use in the second year. I have well water so no chlorine. The biggest thing I can think of is the smell of the liner? I just don't really know why it didn't work. I know others have used them with no issue.

I bit the bullet and installed the a liner. a buddy of mine had a big section of some heavy duty plastic liner that he wasn't going to use so i he gave it to me.

I did see a drop off in usage for the first 3 weeks that I had the liner in the ground. I didn't have much water in the hole though, and i think the exposed liner around the drop off from the berm to the water was the culprit. The liner itself is pretty slick so the deer couldn't get a footing on the sides to reach the water. the upper end which is dug into the slope of the hill i burried the liner pretty deep and created a "swale" for the spring seep to run into the waterhole when it is actively flowing in the early spring. I figured the deer would use the swale to get down into the waterhole itself without having to step on the liner....they didn't. After a few more rains, and then the 7/10" we had two nights ago the water level has come up enough that the deer can reach it from the low berm sides and now i am seeing tracks all around the waterhole. I shoveled dirt into the bottom and placed some large flat rocks as well. I still need to put more dirt down in the swale area to cover more of the liner.

here is a pic of the waterhole as of yesterday.


I will probably pull the liner up at some point and dig out the high berms toward back end at some point. they are too steep and I cant effectively cover them with dirt.

 

[OkieKubota]

Clay is your friend in situations like this... When the dozer operator was clearing our food plot area for us I had him dig a little half hour waterhole into the end of the plot. As luck has it about 2 ft down is good clay so every rain we have had added to the water level and it is holding great...

 

[OkieKubota]

What it looks like without water...

 

[phil@thesidehill]

thats not a water hole...thats a lake! haha. looks great!

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Phil - How much sun does the waterhole get? In that gentle swale that feeds it, could you possibly get some local moss to plant as a means to hold the soil and act as a filter of sorts? Or maybe some grass seed to anchor the soil in the swale. Does the liner extend up the whole swale or just close to the waterhole? As a neighbor an hour to the west, I like the looks of your project and the terrain. Cool to work on a piece, isn't it? Good luck with all of it!

 

[phil@thesidehill]

Phil - How much sun does the waterhole get? In that gentle swale that feeds it, could you possibly get some local moss to plant as a means to hold the soil and act as a filter of sorts? Or maybe some grass seed to anchor the soil in the swale. Does the liner extend up the whole swale or just close to the waterhole? As a neighbor an hour to the west, I like the looks of your project and the terrain. Cool to work on a piece, isn't it? Good luck with all of it!

It will get full sun from about 1PM on till about 6PM this time of year. It held 4" of water for about 6 days of upper 80 deg weather without noticeable evaporation. Once it gets filled near capacity I think only a severe prolonged drought would dry it up. That swale and the rest of the berm for that matter will grow feral for the most part. Water is only flowing in that swale intermittently for up to 8-10 weeks a year....right after first big snow melt and while the frozen ground melts off from the winter...it will gush after after a rain during that period. But by early to mid May the seep dries up. By the time significant tropical storm rains show up in September it will have grown up from the seed bank. The liner extends back a ways into the swale. I have a pretty high clay content in the soil as well.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

Phil - How much sun does the waterhole get? In that gentle swale that feeds it, could you possibly get some local moss to plant as a means to hold the soil and act as a filter of sorts? Or maybe some grass seed to anchor the soil in the swale. Does the liner extend up the whole swale or just close to the waterhole? As a neighbor an hour to the west, I like the looks of your project and the terrain. Cool to work on a piece, isn't it? Good luck with all of it!

You are in lyco right?