Fish kill!

Yesterday morning I woke up and looked out the window of our bathroom to see something rather large floating on the surface of our pond. Was it a dead duck? I called down the stairs to Mike asking him to check it out. He walked out onto the deck and quickly realized it was a dead fish! And then he saw another one and another and another. Then he said the pond was covered with dead fish!

I called the local Soil and Water office, where the woman said the fish kill was probably due to chemical run-off from a nearby field, and she suggested I call a fish biologist at the Department of Natural Resources, which I did. But he wasn't in his office, so I left a message, and of course he called back when I wasn't home. He spoke to my son and told him to call the EPA, which my son did. The person on the phone there said that someone would probably come out to investigate.

Today I realized that if the EPA put our address in a GPS system, they'd arrive at the pond down the road and leave because it looks lovely. (GPS doesn't know where we are.) So, I called the EPA this morning and had a lengthy conversation with someone who told me that they don't usually get involved in private pond problems unless there is evidence of definite pollution. So, he suggested I call the DNR. I told him that DNR had actually referred us to him, and he said that maybe DNR thought the EPA would be interested, but they're not, and the fish biologist at DNR would be our best bet in figuring out what happened. He said that most fish kills are due to oxygen deprivation, but he also gave me the name of a water testing lab in Peoria in case we wanted to check for the presence of chemicals in the water.

I emailed the water testing lab, and they said the fish kill was probably due to oxygen deprivation, but for a few hundred dollars they could test the water. So, I've spent the last few hours reading about fish kill and duckweed.

As you can see in the above photo, the surface of the pond is mostly green. It's not algae though. It's duckweed, which has never been a problem until this year. Apparently it can be spread by wild waterfowl visiting your pond and dropping off a plant or two, which can then multiply every single day! And before you know it, the surface of your pond is covered with duckweed. The good news is that it killed the algae because it doesn't allow any light to get into the pond. The bad news is that it's as bad for the fish as a huge algae bloom because it can ultimately reduce their oxygen and suffocate them.

So, we have one vote for poisoning and two votes for suffocation, and my reading is leading me to think that suffocation is probably the culprit. I did call the fish biologist again, however, and am waiting for him to call me back.

Our new canoe

We are now the proud owners of a canoe. Originally my husband's mom gave it to one of her other sons who wanted it for paddling along a river near their home in New York. But they decided it was too unstable and gave it to us. After all, we actually need some type of small watercraft and have killed three inflatable boats over the years. We gave up on the inflatable boats and have simply waded out into our pond when necessary. This means braving leaches and snapping turtles in the best of times. Sometimes this is even more unpleasant, however ... like when you need to fix the aerator in late fall when the water it close to freezing. Luckily my husband has survived such ordeals in the past, but it is not the kind of thing he ever wanted to repeat, so having a real canoe is quite exciting for us. Within the first day, we decided to take it out on the pond for a little spin.

Julia the American Guinea Hog was quite curious about the canoe and followed Mike all the way to the water's edge. She was probably wondering if she could eat it. Food is pretty much the only thing Julia seems to think about. I totally understand why people equate overeating with being a pig.

The goats were also quite curious about us being on the water.

And it was fun for me to see things from a different perspective, such as the back of our house

and the chicken house.

And we can pick mulberries that were previously inaccessible to us!

And of course, now we have a better way to access the aerator when it needs attention. And if another turkey tries to fly across the pond and fails, we'll be able to rescue her in style! I do agree with my brother-in-law though that it does provide a shaky ride. I don't think I'd be too excited to travel down a river in it, but it's perfect for our little pond!

Another view from my toilet

You might recall that a few months ago, I said that my toilet just might be the best seat in the house, because there is such a great view. Well, the view has not been so great this summer, because algae has really started to grow on the pond. After doing a lot of reading about algae control, I finally decided that we should remove as much of the algae as possible by hand. Jonathan actually volunteered for this job. Sounds like something a teenager would enjoy doing, but as he started working, it seemed a lot like mucking out a barn. He initially thought he would be able to simply grab the algae and toss it, but he decided fairly quickly that it would be better to use my idea.

My brilliant idea was to use snow fencing as a net to grab the algae and pull it up on shore. For you non-midwestern readers, snow fencing is this flexible plastic fencing that farmers put up as a temporary fence to create snow drifts where they want them. So, I stood on the shore, holding one end of the fencing, and Jonathan took the other end and walked through the pond. In a few spots he had to swim. It was much more difficult than I expected it to be. I was surprised when I almost got pulled into the pond as he started pulling his end through the water. It didn't help that the edge of the pond was really slippery. We were able to cover most of the pond by pulling the fencing across three different sections.

You can see the pond looks much better after Jonathan's hard work, which took several hours to complete. My contribution was pretty minimal. Now, to get the water clear and avoid future algae blooms, we need to create long barley straw snakes with the snow fencing and empty water jugs as flotation devices. If this sounds way too weird, but you're intrigued and want to learn more about how barley keeps ponds clean, check out this link from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. I hope we can get the barley snakes out there before the algae takes over again.