Farm Pond -- Design and Zapper

Made a trip to Boone, NC, with two granddaughters and parents.  While older granddaughter, dad, great uncle, and granddad took a short hike on the Appalachian Trail in VA, younger granddaughter joined mother and great aunt to local Ashe County attractions -- cheese factory, 50-cent Cheerwine machines, museum, etc.  Check out previous post about Ashe County Museum -- VERY nice HO train layout.  The AT group returned worn out, chilly, and pleased; the Ashe County group came home wanting a "water feature" on the Blacktop Crossing!

Plans so far are to create a farmpond between the cotton field and the cotton gin.  Not a lot of room, but enough, we hope.  Proposed scene would be something like this:

Oops, photo should be rotated 90 degrees clockwise!

Got into a sequential vortex of sorts:  farmpond to be surrounded by horse pasture, horse pasture to contain shed (already constructed), horse shed needs a few bales of hay, DIY hay bale calls for short static grass glued to piece of balsa wood, there will be plenty of static grass left over, maybe can use it somewhere else on layout, but need static grass applicator, so here comes DIY applicator.

Lots of folks on Internet seem to like using bug zapper for DIY applicator, and brag about less than $10 expense.  Ordered zapper and picked up strainer at Ollie's -- cost must be less than $5!!  Pieces:


 Alligator patch cord, solder, hot glue already available.  Haven't tried out applicator to date!!

Outlined pond on plywood by poking scratch awl through paper drawing.  Not sure yet how to make clean cut to allow lowering pond AND sealing sufficiently to use epoxy "water".

Most supplies are on hand:  ground goop ingredients, toothpicks for fence post, 1 mil copper wire to try to use for fence line, a few Woodlands Scenic trees (obtained at discount at Hobby Lobby), a couple of young boys fishing, epoxy water, etc.  Just waiting on next visit from granddaughters, although hope to have pond "lowered" by then.