These seven photos give a good idea of the size of the hole that we dug. The child in the first one is my sister's grandson. He was almost two years old at the time. Mr. Bill is in the second one guiding the drain pipe through the bottom of the berm, and my sister can be partially seen in the third photo working with the pipe on the inside of the hole.
The last four photos were taken during our first attempts to get the pond to hold water. The water would reach a depth of about 2', then the pond would suddenly drain like a bathtub. Why? We live in the center of the Llano Estacado which is a remnant of a deposition basin for both an ancient sea, and the Southern Rocky Mountains. Underneath our thin layer of topsoil is a caliche caprock (a hard soil layer cemented by calcium carbonate), and under that are a few thin layers of sand, followed by thousands of feet of limestone and dolomite, all of which are highly permeable. It took a while for Bill to believe what he was seeing (Canadian and all), but he finally understood that we were never going to get it to hold water without some modifications. We spent about a week packing the bottom, then lined the entire pond with non-toxic plastic sheets. This and the work of leveling the top of the berm were the most labor intensive parts of the entire project, but that all faded when we finally got it completely filled.