Holy cow!! Well, you have an amazing array of things going. I wasn't sure how far along you were into your plans, but you've got quite a setup! And you sound like you love all of it! How lucky that you have just the place to install your lifestyle! It is very satisfying to be self-sufficient, and it sounds like you've really done the tough version of it!! That's really admirable what you are doing there, and all you know about caring for those animals!

75 foot bamboo!!!! OMG!!! Are those things heavy when you cut them down? How do you cut them down? Maybe our little skinny 10 foot stuff doesn't sound so bad! And we had a post going a couple weeks ago in here about someone who needed to chop up their bamboo and the residential version of mowers/shredders couldn't do it. The big electric and phone companies here won't chop it up when they brush the lines. So be sure you don't need to spend extra money on a huge mower for it.

I planted so many things that grow vertically in my early days, and I am so very tired of getting up on ladders to keep them under control. I wouldn't do it again. And all of them are no taller now than I can reach standing next to them with a pair of long handled clippers!

My parents got a burro to eat their grass. It's smaller, it's gentle with kids, it's really strong and can pull stuff all over. My dad seemed to think it was easier than a horse.

The wild birds bring in duckweed on their feet, no one that I know of values it, they thing it's a terrible thing to have. If the wild birds fly in at night to sleep there, they bring it in on their feet, and it doesn't matter that you've got your own ducks there.

Yes, my willows are a pain. But they aren't weeping willows. Mine are 30 feet tall, and branches break off in the wind in the winter, float to the other side and start trees there!! We took a chainsaw to one at ground level, and in 9 months it was 10 feet high again! Didn't even phase it!

I am not an expert at pond design, so I'm not sure what your problems might be with it. But it is worth whatever it takes to get it right. One of the most wonderful ways to spend an afternoon is floating on it, reading, feeling the rocking of the boat. And the birdlife in the trees around it is fascinating. I love having water around just to watch, even to use in a pinch, so it's a very worthwhile thing to do.

Although my parents' burro walked into the edge of their pond where the soil had gotten very saturated, and it started to sink in the mud. They had to call all over the place trying to figure out how to get it out. My dad had to hold its head above water for almost an hour until a tow truck that had a motorcycle harness was able to get to it, and they got it out that way. Always have clear access for vehicles to your pond!!

This article was in a Mother Earth News:

http://www.bagelhole.org/drafts/Pond_1.htm

For erosion, what do your Extension guys recommend? You might want to see if alfalfa will work there, because it has such a lovely deep root system. The California Dept. of Transportation here puts a BFM, Bonded Fiber Matrix, onto soil to keep it from eroding, then puts seeds over it.

http://www.mswmanagement.com/ecm_0409_pp_a.html

Also, this site has good cover crop descriptions and will answer questions for you. I notice they also have erosion control things.

http://www.groworganic.com/search.html

It's really interesting to hear all of your plans and projects you've got going there!

Yeah, Jill of all trades, master of none! Too many irons in the fire, and I know I will prolly fail big time at many, but that is life. Crash, burn, (hopefully) live & learn. I don't play golf, I don't shop for recreation, I don't do social scenes - - my land, critters, and my garden are my biggest hobbies and passions.

Still learning about the bamboos. I'd like to ask the guy up in Brookhaven we want to get our bamboo from if we can't come up when he is harvesting, so that we can see how he does it. And we have a brush hog that we pull behind the tractor, so it should handle shorter bamboo around the perimeter. (I hope!)
We have a bamboo living room set that we got in the Philippines that has some 8 and 9 inch diameter poles in it, and it is VERY heavy, so I'd imagine the Moso is, as well. And it can grow to 75 feet, I don't know if it will for sure here or not. We've dropped 75-ft. tall pines, so I'd imagine we'd do it similar to the way we do trees.

I tend to like vertical stuff, because I hate stooping down. I'm 5'9", and bending all the time kills my back, plus being on my knees while gardening is quite enough. I leave some of my huckleberries to get tall enough that I have to pull branches down to harvest. It breaks the monotony when I pick down low for a little, at standing height for a bit, and then reach high to pick a little. I can pick berries for several hours without getting sore, ever.

We do occasionally get wild Canada geese in our pond, and we see herons, egrets, and we once saw a wood duck, but no duckweed. Maybe our ducks eat it before it can become established? I tried putting water cabbage out, but they ate it before it could get going. (I have a few survivors in my 80-gal. rain tank.)

Thanks for the heads' up on the willow. I think I will trying looking into dwarf varieties, if there is such a thing. What I had in mind was trying to coppice some an appropriate type of willow on the upper bank, and try to start spiling it when it has grown enough. I don't think I need a lot of height for that, more just growing up the bank and long enough to be woven when it is young. Here is a picture of what I have in mind. My bank is nowhere near this steep. http://www.wildlife-landscaping.co.uk/erosion_control_spiling.htm

Our pond is very small - - maybe a quarter-acre. (?) DH had it built because it was continually wet in the back, and he wanted bream and a few bass, and a few ducks. It is nice to have a way to flush commodes in a power or well outage. (After filtering it a bit.)

Thank you, for those links, also!

:8}

I know what you mean, love of place is a wonderful thing, and it has satisfactions in it that replace the more risky things this culture has to offer. I have a "real job" that supports my farming habit, and on the days I'm not working at home, when I drive out of the driveway, even for the day, I always feel sad. I think everyone at this site who loves to garden has one of the greatest advantages in this life to have an arena for creativity, knowledge and satisfaction.

That is a really interesting willow fence! Are you sure, though, you want to be standing in water to maintain it with your feet heavy in the mud? If it's up a slope, you'll have to be on the muddy downside trying to clip it, is that dangerous? And once you get it in place, it will always....always need trimming, brushing, and hauling away once the fence is high enough. You won't be able to let up for even one season.

If your slope isn't that steep, maybe just the right plants is all it will take?

Our pond was built by the previous owner, who is from a long-time farming family in this area. He knows what he's doing, and all the ponds in our area have these same plants around them, but they are too invasive. I'm sure he was fine with using RoundUp to keep things under control, but I just can't do that. We've also got pussy willows that are filling in the other side from the willows, and I can spend a week cutting and hauling and dumping, then those things are right back the way they were a few months later.

Here is a good pond book, and the site also has lots of good off-the-grid lifestyle information, grey water handling, etc.:

http://www.realgoods.com/shop/shop4.cfm?dv=4&dp=401&ts=1080557&kw=pond

That big bamboo furniture is neat! Are you guys into furniture making? Here is a willow-furniture-making farm. I've seen some of their furniture and it's got different colors of willow, green, red, beiges, really pretty:

http://www.californiaheartland.org/archive/hl_621/willow.htm

How nice you get such great birds on your pond! I can alway tell when the season really is going to change when certain birds show up, and their warbles and territory fights start up. I'm so impressed with birds, now that I've live with them and watch them daily...amazing how they work in teams to protect their nests.

If you have any, send me some pics!

>>That is a really interesting willow fence! Are you sure, though, you want to be standing in water to maintain it with your feet heavy in the mud? If it's up a slope, you'll have to be on the muddy downside trying to clip it, is that dangerous? And once you get it in place, it will always....always need trimming, brushing, and hauling away once the fence is high enough. You won't be able to let up for even one season.<<

***Perhaps I will train the goats to swim and let them keep it trimmed up. :^O

>>If your slope isn't that steep, maybe just the right plants is all it will take?<<

***Problem is, sandy soil and gully-washer rains. Willow grows incredibly fast and deep, which is why I am considering it. In addition, DH's ducks keep eating stuff I plant. (Reference previous remark - waiting for said ducks to join the choir invisible prior to planting aquatics.) The other thing is gullying - - we're trying to get clumping grasses established uphill to slow the flow, but we got almost 5 inches in a couple of hours Saturday morning, and we've had four or five storms like that since the beginning of April. Devilishly hard to get many plants to grow under those circumstances. Our average rainfall here is 60+ inches per annum, sans hurricanes/tropical storms, so water can definitely be a problem even when it is well-drained soil.

I'll see if I can't find some pics to post. I'll try this weekend. I will warn you - it's not landscaped or anything. (Heck, we're still trying to get that stinkin grass to grow!)

Ah, I hate those gully-washer rains. We get them about once every 10 years, and I wake up in the night and wonder if the driveway will be in one piece by morning, or will a few tons of gravel have washed into the road! then I have to wait several months before the gravel trucks can bring new loads so they won't get stuck in the mud, leaving me with a mess, or shoveling my own 4-5 tons of gravel. (been there, done that, got the t shirt!)

The goats would eat that fence, wouldn't they? Or is that okay for them? Maybe if it wasn't right next to the water?

This might be where the BFM, fiber matrix mat could be put down right away, and then plant right through it. And permaculture would say at this point to do something like berries so that you are producing food and not just labor. And I use wild berries to help with erosion, and although they grow like crazy, they are easily mowed.

I just saw a landscape program that talked about bamboo. You've probably discovered this, but just in case....there are clumping types and runner types, the runner type being the invasive one. There is 18" rubber matting that you sink into the ground, like a bottomless swimming pool, around where you plant the bamboo so it won't escape beyond it. It doesn't sound like you are that concerned about it overwhelming plants nearby, but just in case you're interested.

60" a year! Holy cow!! Are you growing rice yet?