Just looking at the pictures below, you can see that the pond has a lot of potential.  Our vision was to to turn it into a nice place to relax and enjoy the surrounding nature.  You can click on the pictures to read the captions under them.

Step  1 - Mow a path to get to the pond...

Step 2 - Drain water from the existing pond

Step 2 (again) - After the pond was almost empty we received some very heavy rains, which filled the pond back up.  We cleared some of the trees around the pond and then got to work draining the pond again...

Step 3 - Finally the pond is empty enough to escavate it!

The work is done, now it's up to mother nature to fill the water back in the pond.

The pond is starting to fill up with water from a natural wet-weather spring.  The spring only runs until April/May, so we also piped all the downspouts from the church into the pond.

Because we were trying to raise the water level, we built a new overflow for the pond.

We installed a camper-hookup with underground power.

We installed a dock.

We added bluegill, bass, catfish and grass carp.