“Did you guys plan on doing this while I was visiting?” asks the pond builder’s son as he toils away today. No we didn’t, but thank goodness the pond builder’s son was hanging around the farm in between his Army assignments. We hired the Octaform consultant to come out for two days to help us with the new inner pond panels that were finally delivered last week. It’s basically round 2 of creating the pond walls. We took down round 1 panels, tore down the outer structure support the concrete guy had created, and today we built an inner support structure.

It was not very fun, but my job over the weekend was to get some of the water off the pond floor and sweep out the leaves that have been falling.

This morning we started putting the inner structure together but there was a hang up. Our concert contractor had installed rebar but some of the pieces were not in the right place and there was a lot of wait time while our contractor squared how the inner structure would sit. Army guy did a ton of work with the Octaform contractor. Pond builder was not with us the whole day but he noted, someone needed to be on the phone making money to pay for the koi pond build. Good point.

It was a pretty long day and we hope to get the walls up tomorrow since we have scheduled the concrete pour for Wednesday. The Octaform contractor is not sure if we will be done by Wednesday morning. I’m thinking we HAVE to be done. I’m going to think optimistically.

My koi are pretty much oblivious to all the drama happening over their new home. They are still milling about inside the garage. The weather is getting a little cooler so I have been feeding them a little less often.

The chickens have been allowed to free range for short periods of time while under some supervision. They are very excited when they see the pond builder or me walking towards chicken land. They gather around the gate of the chicken run hoping to be let out. They don’t travel to far from the chicken run, less than 10 – 15 feet and are very good about returning when shooed back towards the gate.

Aside from the exciting koi pond build restarting, we continue to clean up dead/dangerous trees in our forests. This weekend we tackled a 70’+ pine that was dead and waiting to fall in some future storm. Fall is always a pleasant time to clean up because there are less leafy branches to deal with and less annoying plants underfoot. The poison ivy vines are terrible all year though and we are careful to wear gloves. Unfortunately if you brush your face with your glove on, you might get some poison on your skin. I have a patch of itchy, inflamed skin on the right side of my face now. Hazards of farm life…

Time for me to go to sleep. We are getting an early start tomorrow in the hopes of finishing the pond walls. Fingers crossed that it will be completed!!

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