What do I want?

Well, we are almost there. We have cleared the spot for the barn, located a builder, a septic guy and plumber, and set the date for the build. We have done our plans through an architect, and are ready to go forward. Through all the lengthy (and sometimes painful) process of designing the floor plans, picking out windows, and making lots of phone calls, we are finally at a bend in the road that should see progress by the end of summer.

Now, it is time to step back and ask myself; what do I want? Aside from picking out the colors of the barn walls and trim, what do I hope to have at the end of it all? As I step back from all the planning, I have to revisit that question. I must make sure I have not veered off track on all of this, and occasionally have to re-evaluate why we did this in the first place.

I want to spend clear nights under the stars, with nothing obstructing my view but a few tall and healthy trees. I want to see so many stars when I look up each night that I experience a child-like amazement, like it were the first time every time. I want to hear the sounds of the night; hoot owls, coyote howls, and frog croaks. Not the too-close hum of busy highway traffic that never ceases, even deep into the night.

I want to wake up each morning and walk out my door to smell sweet wet grass and wild weeds and the dust in the dirt. I want to hear the birds echoing through the trees and drink my morning coffee on a long, long porch in an old chair. I want to watch the light grow in the blue sky and not hear car alarms and traffic and loud, booming car speakers.

I want to see nothing but the view of meadow and forest out my windows, and maybe an occasional passing deer. I want time and schedules to slow down. I want peace.

 

I want my grandchildren to grow up climbing trees, playing in the dirt, hiking, camping, and fishing on this place for years to come. I want to hear their laughter often through the woods. I want them to love this place as much as I do. I want to continually improve it, so it will provide years of enjoyment to our family and our friends. I want when I am gone, for it to be a treasure for my children and grandchildren to continue to cherish.

What don’t I want? I don’t want our time here to ever end.

Progress

The area around the pond is getting greener every day, but being Winter Rye we will soon be faced with seeding again with something more suited to summer heat. The Rye grass has done it's job of keeping erosion down to a minimum, however, so it was well worth the effort.

We are now into our second Winter of property ownership and with mowing and snakes taking a vacation, we can now accomplish other things. Our son-in-law did a wonderful job of putting together our first lawn ornamentation, and we love it!

We also have the treehouse underway, thanks to some help with a few friends.



Pond Saga

Remember in an earlier post how I said the pond was going to take some work to get it looking like we wanted? Well, that has been our focus for the last few weeks, and I wanted to get some pictures up here so I can show the progress. We had a local person with a bulldozer service come in and widen and deepen the pond, as well as clean up all the surrounding land by filling in low areas and taking out brush and dead trees.  We were shocked, as well as pleased, with the result. It is amazing how the landscape can become completely different with just a little moving of the dirt. Here is a reminder of what we started with:

We had the work done at the end of September, to take advantage of the fall and winter rains. The first step was to drain the pond as much as possible so the bulldozer could get down inside. We need the rains to fill back in as much as possible before next summer when things become drier.  Here is the same pond just after bulldozing was completed:

All you can see is lots of mud. Lots of it. Did I say mud? An understatement, for sure. You can image our shock when we drove up for a first look. Our initial impression was “what have we done?” Progress can be painful, so we moved past it and purchased 200 lbs of winter rye seed and spent a day walking around the whole area spreading seed everywhere.  Driving home that day, we said a few prayers that the rain would not wash it all into the pond before it had a chance to sprout and the deer would not have a feast on the seeds we left laying open to the elements.

Our return a few weeks later lifted our hopes that this would be a good thing after all. I even brought down a few pots of Purple Fountain grass to plant as an experiment to help with erosion. If this can survive on its own, I will be bringing more to plant along the water’s edge. We even brought a nice concrete bench and erected it at the best possible lookout spot so we can enjoy watching our mess. I have posted below a few pictures below to show the growth. I will post more as the grass fills in.



Trees

Over the last few months, I have taken quite a few pictures of some of the glorious trees we have on the property and thought I would share them here. Trees for me are a wonderful thing. I love to walk beneath them and look up at their twisted branches and catch a glimpse of the sunlight peaking through to the ground below. Most of these trees I have pictured here will not carry leaves for much longer, so I wanted to post some of the prettier summer pictures as something to remember when Winter gets here.

It's Going to be a Long Lonely Summer

Progress this summer has been slow. With enough occasional rain to keep the weeds growing heartily, it has been a bi-weekly trip to the property all summer long just to keep the cleared areas mowed. Not much else can be accomplished when the heat is so stifling you can’t breathe and the mowing takes the bulk of the time we have to spend at the place.

However, I have to reflect back on how things looked earlier this year and pat ourselves on the back (especially my husband) for all the progress we have made. Slowly but surely we might just tame this place. All of this hard work has done more than just send us home beat and exhausted all summer. This land is doing more than just growing trees, weeds and grass. It now has it’s clutches into our hearts.

Flora and Fauna - More of an Introduction to the Land

One of the things about being in the country that a city person has to get used to is the flora (being surrounded by more green stuff and less concrete is great!) and fauna (here is where it took some getting used to).

My husband and I both grew up in an area that was kind of country back in our childhood years, so we have plenty of memories spending time in the out of doors. Our environment has changed drastically over the years, however, and one can tend to get un-used to life in the country if not regularly exposed. We are doing our best to get re-acclimated to the wilderness, and quite willingly I might add. I guess it kind of seems like going back to our childhood to have purchased this land and be able to go there and mow and forge trails out of the tangle of trees, underbrush, and vines, looking for the perfect spot to plant our home.  

Along with all of this great flora is a multitude of fauna to keep us on our toes. We had our first encounter with one of the snakes on the property during our first mowing of the season. He got too close to the lawn mower. This little guy is a Copperhead, venomous, and I am sure he has friends somewhere in the area. I am not anxious to meet them.

Across the road we have some very cute neighbors, the most interesting being Chico the donkey. He also has horse buddies in his coral with him, and they like to visit my grandkids as much as the grandkids like to visit them.

Of course, we have the usual variety of bugs, deer, coyotes, wild pigs, hawks, and other assorted (and yet unidentified) creatures of the wild, but we are learning to live with them all. You might ask why would we want to leave behind the conveniences of the mall, the multitude of large and well stocked grocery stores, the restaurants brimming with people... I think the next picture will sum it up nicely. Nuff said!

Beginnings

Let me introduce you to our little slice of heaven, and what will undoubtedly take most of our time and money from here forward. We purchased 12.5 acres about an hour east of Austin in January of this year, and have been working as many weekends as possible to tame it since. I know this will be a long and exciting (sometimes painful) journey, so I thought this would be the best way to document our progress for both ourselves and our family.

The picture above is our pond, and it is beautiful. I have hopes of making it even more beautiful, but it is going to require much back-breaking work (my poor husband!). The deer come often to drink, and I will one day have a porch to watch them from. Most of our property is woods, with this one pond, but we have about 3 acres that were cleared by the previous owner and require diligent mowing. Hence, we also had to purchase a lawn tractor.

Our grandson loves it, of course! You can see by the fire in the background we have been burning a lot of brush. There is a lot of that to burn, but it will take time. This picture was taken before it got so hot and dry, so future burning might have to wait until Fall when it gets cooler and wetter.

Our plan, after much consideration, is to build a Barndominium. Although they are becoming extremely popular, most people don't know what one is. Let me just keep it simple; it is a metal building/barn with living space inside. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? I thought so too until I did my research. I won't post pictures here of what I found on the internet, but you can Google the term to find out all about it. Besides being more energy efficient than a standard home, they are also more fire resistant. I thought this a plus living in the country surrounded by lots of open land and potential wildfires.

I will leave you with that thought for now, but will post here as much as possible going forward to get caught up.