Minnesota River Interviews -Richard Handeen & Audrey Arner, Moonstone Farms

"We suffer the consequences for harboring some of the silt here, but on the other hand, it doesn't get to the Minnesota River."

Video Text: "One of our dreams was to have a pond on our farm. This is really the place where we monitor the circulatory system of the farm. There is constantly water flowing in, most all year long. Sometimes in the driest of summers it trickles down to almost nothing, so at that point evaporation will take out some, so there is an actual flow.  The depth of this is fifteen to eighteen feet out in the deepest part out there.  You can probe it now and you will find four to five feet of muck settled in there from this opportunity for fast moving water with silt from fields to slow down.  The Walleye fry that we put in here the last two springs did not survive either summer because it probably got too warm, they may have survived if it were deeper.  So we suffer some consequences for harboring the silt here, but then on the other hand, it doesn’t get to the Minnesota River. 

The river is about two more miles past the impoundment and it goes through a ravine much like this one before we put the dam in. It meanders through pasture and what was a feedlot and a program helped our neighbors get the cows off the stream directly. It then goes through some wooded area before it reaches the river."

This page was last updated 8/08