Neglected Pond Cleanup Finished And Island Removed

boy it is freaking cold this morning so i got a 100 pound of pounds of grass seed to put out on the pond job here i'm gonna get everything wrapped up look at the ice crystals so i'm gonna try to take advantage of the uh mud being frozen and spread my grass seed this morning that way i can walk on it uh looking from up here the pond's full looks like it filled up over the week i was gone here over the holidays it's saturday morning now i can't sit at home too long so i'm gonna come over here and finish everything up go ahead and see i just they just want me to put some seed out on that far side just so maybe it'll sprout look at the ice crystals i think it looks good let me go get my grass seed and get some of that put out while all the mud over there is frozen then we'll do a little walk around to the pond check everything out i'm saying it's full pouring out the overflow i'm not gonna lie i did pretty good for eyeballing [Laughter] it's uh literally about two inches above water right there they wanted a nice soft bank without a lot to maintain in most so uh by golly i got it uh this it's frozen this morning it has dried out a lot i mean don't get me wrong it's sandy i'll probably there's a little look at all the groundwater coming at the ground right there but i'm probably gonna come down here with the the uh excavator maybe skim a little nut off from over there or whatever i can get and put just a little bit more right in here if this does settle it will become a little a little swampy if i can raise it up three or four inches it'll be okay so i'm going to take advantage of everything being frozen and go ahead and go all the way up there to the head section and seed all that work my way down here looking good so i'm gonna go ahead and take advantage of uh everything being frozen doing a little walk around video up here this morning i got everything seated from here to the uh head section everything turned out really nice the pond's about two inches down from where it was uh when i originally started so i got it's back as full as possible i had to raise the spillway up some so it wouldn't flow through there but all this turned out really nice hopefully this stuff thaws it should kind of soak up some moisture and there's not a whole lot going to come up this time of year but the rye grass should i got a nice little bank going down to the pond here you can see that uh ring on the tree where the level was at before i right when i started before i started work so i've lowered it down about three inches but it backs water up in here nice kind of got a nice little cove up here a little peninsula coming out that spring right up there that tree can flow right directly into the pond then we got the creek channel right here and it pretty much starts right here where i hit all that bedrock so you don't have to worry about that eroding and washing out it pretty much makes like a almost like a perfect little walk right walkway bridge across look at the water coming out of that spring right there i don't know if i can make it over there without getting my feet wet or not listen to the water pouring out the off that little hill there i think the pond turned out nice they got a nice view from the house up there new house is going to be over there overlooking it i'm going to go ahead and finish seating this side and start the excavator up let it warm up hopefully it's not frozen to the ground and i'm gonna go ahead and grate the pond dam off and get uh some grass seed put out on that and we're gonna call mr donny he's gonna come get it and take it back to my house i got a few things i want to do around the farm well let's see how this thing does and with a uh 18 degree cold start here door's kind of frozen somebody didn't shovel the tracks oh i hope it's not frozen to the ground they don't even i don't even think anything these things don't even have a pre-heat on them well you can't beat that can you didn't even sputter i'll let this up for a little while moment of truth if this thing's going to move or not okay good it's not it's a little stiff though there we go break all the mud off uh when i had actually parked this machine and looked at the forecast it was supposed to be warm and dry for the five day but it's been seven days now and uh guess what it got cold and it wasn't supposed to rain my my plan was um to leave this let it sit and then come back here a week later today and finish grading the font damn off seed everything but uh we happened to get two inches of rain christmas eve which was two days ago uh dried a little bit then it got down to 18 last night froze everything so i don't know if i'm gonna be able to shovel this thing off i might just have to haul it home muddy i'll find out when i get done spreading this hopefully this stuff isn't frozen that bad where i can kind of break it up smear it out i'll find that i'm gonna cut this water out get a few scoops right there kind of in front of that pine tree it's a little low i just want to raise it up some so it is above water level a little bit it'll stay a little bit drier can always probably just stick down in the pond and get a scoop or two smear that out at least it wouldn't be frozen just let a little of this drain out i'm not making any more mud than i already have i should have done that before i left but it's getting late i was ready to go home pull this a little bit yeah this is just gonna be a wet mess but ain't nothing i can do about it probably should have just smeared it all out and let it been what it was going to be the other day but it's getting about dark let's see how much am i tearing up what i want to do is not tear up easy fall into the bottom i want to reach out here and just kind of get a scoop of mud because it's not going to be frozen that's deeper than i thought it was going to be i need to get back up here on the dam where it's not so soft i want to end up down there in the pond let's go i'll tell you what let's go over here won't turn it's so damn muddy now come on there we go what's up i'm gonna come out here and just get a scoop of mud from right here and put that up here i'm gonna leave enough room where i can spread grass seed on it from each side i think two will be adequate i just want to raise that up about three or four inches let's swing into a tree [Music] so that's it's about four feet deep there that was the old shoreline i dug all that back when i graded the pond out so it's about four feet deep and that's i mean that's really what most ponds are around here they're just for looks little fishing i don't want to get it too wide where i can't keep your ass seat on it because i think sure can't walk over this get this smeared around see how that kind of raised this edge up you'll be surprised even just like four or five inches above the water we'll get hard enough to hold the tractor up you know mowing if you drive over 500 times yeah it's going to turn liquidy but being able to cut the grass yeah that'll be perfect for that hydraulics are cold it's a little jerky it's hard to finish grade these get warmed up a little bit more come on easy there we go these machines you know they run such tight tolerances on everything the flu is real stiff and cold it doesn't flow like it should therefore the machine is not as smooth as it normally is when the fluids form kind of just that little movement right there to bucket a little six inches off the ground [Music] so let's see if this is gonna work where i can just kind of cut that bank in there like that there we go smear this around [Music] so [Music] all right i'm going to start working my way down the pond am getting it graded out as i move backwards the hydraulics warmed up a little bit maybe it'll start smoothing up a little bit better then i'm going to have to track through the mud to see it all this so when i bush hogged a lot of the uh grass went out into the pond and now that the ponds bullet kind of floated up i'm just going to kind of take the clean out bucket and just skim a little bit of a bit of it off the surface just so it doesn't sit here and keep the uh overflow clogged up and we'll take about a minute to skim a little this off and chunk it over here behind the pond dam out of the way kind of cleans it up a little bit if not he's gonna have to go down there and clean it off the trash rack for like the next couple weeks till it sinks into the ground or into the pond [Music] see him a little bit push the rest of it up on the shore and throw the rest of it back here and break some branches off as i swing [Music] a pretty good little scoop here there we go good little pile and fling it down here i get one more and then i'm going to grade some more and then i'll come down here scoop the rest of it out [Music] slide it over here where i can kind of get a little square or i could just build a bucket or not fix the bank back where i tore it up [Music] so i need a little bit of dirt down here at the spillway and since this stuff's so frozen i'm just kind of scooping it up instead of trying to like break it up smash it into the ground i'm just skimming the frozen dirt off and taking it down here and then uh i'll just mash it into the spillway to get the grade that i need down here and not have to worry about trying to break this stuff up so much where uh it's smooth even though when it you know falls out and rains on it at a time too it'll pretty well level itself out but i kind of like it to look good when i leave and it's not going to be perfect as wet as everything is but make it look as nice as possible and then i'll just track this over here to the spillway probably drive out of my track ruts and maybe break it up a little bit kind of drive over the little ridges where i was tracking before i just need a little bit of dirt in there where that water was kind of laying in there [Music] so [Music] yeah right here there's a spot where i had to drive down with the mini flatten that out a little bit there we go and grate some more and put a little more dirt back right here it's kind of right where that overflow pipe is in case it ever settles any we patented in there pretty good but i do not like to leave a low spot over top of the overflow because if the water ever got up decided to go over the pond am it would be a miracle but if it did it doesn't need to wash over the pipe that's where it'll wash it out all right let me keep skimming everything down and then and here is the view from up here at the house as you can tell i left all the bigger trees up here to kind of give them a little shade around the pond but cleaned up all the smaller stuff and far sides where i did all the dredging here's the little peninsula coming out i was able to clean up all that actually the pond wasn't even up here i dug all that out to make the pond a little bit bigger and the island actually used to be about right over here and i got all that removed there used to be like a little foot bridge from the bank right here out through the pond so cleaning all that out just really opened that up and made it a real nice look i think [Music] so he's gonna handle taking care of uh mowing this bank right here no need to come over here and tear it up for a little bit of grass you can do with the weed eater but yeah that really turned out nice got a nice bank coming down uh pretty much no bank over there right up to the water's edge so you can be able to mow and maintain that really easy down here is the uh spillway i actually had to cut a little frozen there i actually had to raise this up a little bit the height that the beavers had it it was dammed up higher than it needed to be and it was actually flowing through the spillway the entire time and i think when this pond was built the cypress tree was not in the pond but they raised the water up probably eight or ten inches higher than it needed to be and it gave the pond a better look so i left it at that and ended up having to raise the spillway up here so that uh it wouldn't flow through here while it was going out the overflow so i think that gives it a nice look right there of the the tree right there at the water's edge those trees can live in water and got the pond dam all brush cut it's a little rough the dirt's kind of frozen but not much i can do about that and all the trees on that side cleared up new overflow good to go so pretty much have it where they can maintain it with the tractor they have as far as mowing everything they'll have to you know maintain the front of this pond damn to keep the stuff from growing back but getting all those trees out where they can actually access all the way around it is a huge benefit let's see if i can get down here without getting wet a little bit of straw falling in that didn't quite go as planned let's see if i can try this again here so you can actually pick these trash racks out you know grass and weeds it doesn't really hurt to go down there and let it wash out of the pipe clean everything off this pulls all the trash off the surface of the water you know that little four inch pipe that would have had it clogged up so the bigger pipe allows that stuff to be able to go out and it discharges out right here no water coming out of the old pipe one good rain will probably wash what's left of this little bridge away i'm not really too worried about moving that but got good flow out of here but there it is pond all done and most most time they don't fill up this quick but it's got a good stream of water flowing into it so it filled up and i was able to get a video of it all done time to get the mud shoveled off that and get it loaded up i'll fly the drone around and kind of give you a little aerial now that it's cleared [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: letsdig18

Views: 240,345

Rating: 4.9648762 out of 5

Keywords: excavator, trackhoe, track, hoe, digger, bagger, neglected, farm, pond, water, hole, spillway, overflow, dam, dredging, clearing, land, tree, removal, grading, homestead, house, lot, heavy, construction, equipment, spring, creek, fed

Id: I7yu5CtIH88

Length: 27min 46sec (1666 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 26 2020