James Everett

Love the works and making me ready to get started on mine.  Just pulled one big chunk of my debt out of the way so now I can afford to spend a little more to get things started.  Just need to get more into a good design on a few ponds for my land here too and a stream both up out of the draw here and in the draw itself to help hydrate more of the land rather then being relatively flat as from one end of land to the other is a 10 ft elevation difference except for the draw itself where it drops 40 ft or so.

In my short experiments on my yard is just reshaping the ground a bit to hold back the water really changes the land.  If you notice the grasses up in where water is held is already greener then the grasses out away from the small basin and swales.

Welcome from West Texas.

Mike Barkley wrote:Somehow I lost track of this thread. The progress look great!!!

    Part of that is this year I kept being put on night shifts at the jail cause people keep quitting so it seemed more work was jailer and not enough day time to work as I was sleeping most of the summer.  Just hopefully this year will be more productive as I will have more funds available to get some stuff I have in mind worked on.  Only so much one can do alone.

Well since it hasn't rain in several weeks decided to fill my swales.  Will at it weeded an area for future basin and using the cuttings to cover the newer swale.

Ready for April to get here to be free of truck payments.  Then maybe things will really get going.

Love your work this year.  my work this year hasn't been as extensive as you have made on your land.  I think about all I have done this year on my own is collection of many brush piles through out my land that I had landscapers move in.  Finished working on my 150 foot swale finally. Other then that have been working more at the jail this year due to many people quitting and me and a few other having to fill in the empty shift work.  most of the stuff I planted this year the rabbits made quick meals of so needing to work on the 350 ft fence around the area I want my garden to keep them from eating it up next year but pounding out the post take a good while through the caliche.  Love what you have done.

Wayne Mackenzie wrote:I’m not qualified to give advice lol. I can only comment on my mistakes and what I’ve witnessed at work.

Soil depth is huge. Many people are on rock/gravel and don’t know it.

Tell me about it.  my soil depth on the majority of my land is caliche rock and been trying to figure out where to start with planting trees and if they will do well.  Though pretty much I plan on just adding more trees around the existing Mesquite trees through out my land and creating some dugout basins to help soak in more water and hopefully over time break down the caliche layers and be more adaptable.  Just holding back water on my caliche land has allow more grasses in my yard close to home to become much more prominent and helping to create soil much faster.

I think I need to do the same way until trees are big enough for rabbits they are numerous around here and keep eating things down to stubs

Tyler Ludens wrote:Somebody ate all the Bur Oak seedlings in spite of the brush fence, so I will put up a real fence and replant next year.  Germinating the acorns in damp sand in the fridge worked great.  Next time I will plant twice as many.

if anything like my place it was probably rabbits.  They tend to eat anything in their way.  I like how things are progressing your way.  

So have and new people in this area Started working in this area besides me.