Everything Else

When we went looking to get our farm, the number one item was to have "live water" on the farm.....and we got that.

There are 4 kinds of "ponds" in MO. The term pond and lake seem to be often interchangable...I think it is mostly size that determines which it is called but then again sometimes it seems to be just the mood as well.

There are God made ponds....ones that were here without any help...there are spring fed ponds, usually made by damming up a spring. There are run off ponds, made by enclosing part of a holl'er and letting rain water fill it. Finally,there are also dug ponds. These are made out in fields where farmers want water for livestock and a place for the cattle to cool off in the dog days of summer.

Our ponds are mostly spring fed ponds. There is one dug pond in the pasture behind the barns. Dug ponds can go dry and also freeze in the winter. Breaking ice for cattle is a job no humans wants to do daily (sometimes 3 times a day)....so the live water ponds are very popular. Because spring water is warmer, they will not freeze at all or will have spots in them that say fluid....on rare occasions they freeze over, but in those times cattle and livestock need lots of care anyway.

Fish do best in springfed ponds as well. However, our big pond "turned over" a few years ago so it needs to be restocked with fish. I am told that about every 10 years in a ponds life it turns over. The bottom stuff comes up and the oxygen leaves the pond so the fish all die. But cause it is such a good fishin pond, many neighbors have asked to restock it for us if they can fish it. That is great for us....but can anyone tell me,if you have a big bucket of fish, why would you throw them into a pond and then try to recatch them....

So Donovan, my quess is none of our ponds have fish in them right now (or we have really smart fish that hide well). But come spring the men around here will be changing that, so they can fish it again....and they will take Peter-John down to the fishin hole as well.

Feeding the fish makes them easy to catch and is great fun. We plan to feed them, so Peter-John will find fishing to be a more fun sport...the only time he went fishing, no one caught anything...not a great idea of fun for him....put this string in the water and then just sit there....

We have loads of great fishermen at our Church. For our New Year's Eve party, they had a fish fry...went giggin for suckers....the men fried em up too...my kind of sport...the men do all the work YEAH!!!

So on our farm.... we have 4 spring fed ponds, 3 we think are spring fed, and 1 dug pond. The big fishing pond is about an acre m/l...If we remove a few trees, it can be seen from our dinning table. Odd shaped with gentle ripples goin cross it...makes it a place even I would go to sit all day in the pretense of fishing.

The other three holl'er ponds are small but pretty ponds nestled in the wildlife filled "valley" allowing critters and birds of all kinds to enjoy them along with the cattle.

The big pond near the woods (bout 1/2 acre) will be the duck pond. It is close to the bird house where our ducks will live (we plan to get ducks and other birds and critters come spring).

Down in the woods are "the mother and son" ponds. The are hidden amidst the trees and are wonderful for quiet meditation times. They are spring fed. The upper one "Mama pond" has a small stream that connects it to the bottom "Peter-John pond" The small bottom pond is more full of life and runs over down into a holl'er below...fully independent, but joined to the mama pond still....like my Peter-John.

The dug pond has two trees that stand tall above it reflecting in the tranquil waters. At night the stars and moons make the calm waters sparkle. Surrounded by grassy fields...it is like an oasis of beauty and peace.

We also have two "creeks"...that word can mean anything from a rushing river to a brook. We have two brook like creeks. I wanted bigger ones, but these are safer for Peter-John and make wonderful creek sounds.

The little one is spring fed and flows down the hill side into the bigger one.

The bigger creek varies in size and flow by the way the springs are flowing. It goes underground at times but when even the wet weather springs flow, it meanders down the whole holler. There are a few places one could plug it up to make a swimming hole....but with the ponds feeding into it, I prefer it to just run wild.

There is water crest growing along it. I thought Missouri people were odd at how they all loved showing me that they had water crest growing on the farm until Solomon, our realtor, explained that if water crest grows, the spring is YEAR ROUND....and that means year round water for critters....a real plus.

And so I was satisfied but had compromised on the one dream of mine to have....a waterfall...we had seen farms with them but most were not safe for Peter-John, so I gave up on that....

BUT then here when the springs all run and the fishin pond overflows....we have a seasonal waterfall...under a large tree there is a sittin rock, where I can enjoy it....not my year round one, but beautiful enough to delight my soul.

In the future, we could make the spring fed stream into a pond that has a waterfall off it too.....so I thank Jesus for that.

Course with the rains we have been havin' I may find another seasonal pond or two as well LOL.

So wonderful land and live water....enough to make a soul happy for a life time...Now I know why they would stock the pond....just to have more time to enjoy it all....

Racing smiles to all.....

Anne and Peter-John