My five acres percs like a sieve, and by and large water soaks right into the ground and rarely puddles, except during periods of heavy rain -- which we get plenty of in the NW -- but even then not for long. Therefore I never thought of having a pond, or even a mini-pond, because of the hassle of installing and maintaining a liner.
But because I raised my most recent batch of hogs through the winter, I got to test first-hand
Sepp Holzer's assertion that wherever hogs wallow, they will seal the low spots. My small sample of observation confirms Sepp's hypothesis. Water now puddles and remains in every shallow depression, in areas that I had observed to be quick drainers, because the hogs were there.
Once the hogs were butchered, I reseeded that field to pasture. I'll be interested to see what grows in those depressions, and how it grows. It
should be an interesting exercise in micro-environment.
But now I have a much stronger suspicion that if I was to plan a pond, I might want to dig it, but not fill it, till I let the hogs have their way with it. As with clearing blackberries, I have no desire to "do the pigs' work."
Walter, have you experienced this?
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