Adventures on my property

I've been told that I should add my work on my property to my blog.  I thought that was a great idea, but just never got around to it.  So here it goes.

A little less than 3 years ago, my husband I bought roughly 5 acres in a subdivision right off the highway.  For a very long time, we told no one.  Primarly because we couldn't even get on it without fearing for our safety.  There was a crazy, paranoid guy living toward the end of the subdivision who put up a locked gate on the easement road.  Unfortuantely, he was within his rights to do that - I'll get to why later.  But he threatened all curren landowners, realtors, and potential landowners that attempted to get to their properties.  He terrified my realtor, and supposedly caused another realtor to quit her job, but we bought the property anyway.   We figured it would be a good investment, but we did look at getting our own easement into our property to avoid his locked gate.
We got approval for the new entrance, but we never needed one.  The crazy guy moved away, taking half his house with him and selling what was left to an unsuspecting woman from El Paso.  The well was dried up, and he had built the addon over the well-head, so she had to dig a new well.

Anyway, back to our property.  With the crazy guy gone, we were free to move ahead on our property.  We had nothing but sagebrush and a few small trees. 

One 3 mature Yucca plants we found.

So much sagebrush.

Full width of our property from highway to western edge.

 We had spent all the time not being able to work on the property by getting a layout for the landscape.  My husband plotted where the house would go, fences, sheds, etc.  We had a surveyor come out and mark out all the importan corners for our fence.  Our first order of business after that was to have the gate permantely removed. 

Ding dong, the gate is gone.

Hole left by the gate, turns out this side was on our property, the property marker had been removed to accomodate the gate.

Other hold left by the gate.  The post next to it was also put in by the crazy guy.

Then we had the same company that removed the gate come in and pound in large metal pipes for our corner posts.   It was quite an exciting day. 

Corner post going in!

Another post being added.

Afterward, we the same company come back and mow down all the sagebrush, leaving the trees and few yuccas we had discovered intact.  That day was even more exciting because that was the first day we could actually walk and drive uninhibited on our property.   We found a beautifully massive rock on our property and carried it to a circle of trees to keep for later.

We could finally drive on our property!

The next spring, we decided that we needed to plant grass, so we hired someone to till the land for us. That's when we discovere that lone rock was not alone.  Oh no, there were literally hundreds of thousands just below the surface, hiding.  The person who tilled broke his tiller on the rocks, and even though we did finally get grass planted on one half of the property, we realized we couldn't do much of anything else until we removed all the rocks that had been turned up.  We ended up buying a dump cart and hiring a friend to help us remove the rocks. 

Piles upon piles of rocks!

My son ready to work.

Wall of rocks that kept growing and growing and growing....

He's quite proud of the pile he made all by himself.

This is one heavy duty cart.

So dirty.

Rocks!

More Rocks!

But during our adventures of rock picking, we found some incredibly cool things. 

Cacuts growing out of a rock.

Spoils

Very intricate design

So cute

Mini barrel cacuts

Caterpillar

Invisible plant.  What is this?

"Rock picking" took us the rest of the summer, and well into the fall.  But, we had a secret savior.  A close friend loaned us his tractor.  He hauled it all the way from Oklahoma just for us to use it.  We accomoplished our task so much faster, and we were even able to work on our internal road system. 

Unloading the tractor

Of course he gets to be the first to drive it.

But, I got to drive it to.  I'm in love.

My son got in on the action as well.

One of our neighbors decided we were working too hard and loaned his backhoe.  We accomplished quite a bit with that as well, including moving the wretched gate down to the property of the woman who liberated the subdivision.  She said she had use for it, and once we had a means of getting it to her, we were glad to give it to her.

Getting ready to haul the gate away.

There it goes.

I (with my husband's urging) decided to claim the semicircle of trees for myself and eventually, I will continue the circle.  In the meantime, I have put all the rocks that I liked there, as well as a large wooden chair built by my husband and a friend that moved away.

It adds a unique touch

The birds like it too.

On one of my adventures out there alone, I had discovered that someone had messed with our dumpcart.  It had rained the night before, and the only tracks into the subdivision were from my vehicle.  I discovered tracks farther down the road leading to the end of the subdivision.  So, I decided to follow them.  I discovered no fence at the end of the subdivision, but a road instead.  I realized this road led all the way to a community north of us.  On the road I discovered an illegal dumpsite.  I didn't go far out that day because I was alone, but I went back not long after that with a friend and made some amazingly cool discoveries.  I would love to get my hands on that car and bring it to the property, but I have no idea how. 

1940 (ish) Ford Coupe

Bullet holes!

Gallon Vintage Wine bottle

So awesome

I plan on taking several more trips out there to collect more vintage bottles.

Well, the rock picking brought us into the spring of this year.  We finished that up, and have started on new tasks.  Currently, we have been digging holes to plant trees.  Because the ground is so rocky, we are digging them 2 feet deep and refilling them halfway with regular dirt, then the rest of the way with a dirt/mucl mix.  We are also burying a 2ft irrigation pipe into the hole to give the roots a deep watering in order to survive.  We will plant in September when 40 baby Rocky Mountain Juniper Trees will arrive.  This is no easy task, many of those holes have solid compacted soil in them, making them nearly impossible to dig without the use of persistence and a handy dandy, but incredibly heavy, spike bar.  So far, we've dug 26 holes.  September seems far away, but in reality, it will be here sooner than we realize.

Digging holes

Spike bar doing the hard stuff

Completed hole, watered in to compact and wait for the trees

The family that works together...

Raking out rocks from the dirt piles.

And that brings us to today.  A day off from working out there, but not a day off from planning our future out there.