Hello everyone. I live in an area somewhat similar to a few of you that have posted on here. It's a little over an acre of moderate-at-best cattle range just under 6000 feet that's dotted with stunted junipers, rabbitbrush, blackbrush and some grasses. I started living on it this spring in the back of my truck, then built a shed and started living in that, then upgraded to a fancier shed which I now call home and probably will forever. I've been catching water off of the first shed with an eave gutter running to rain barrels with great success, and plan to do the same with my new casita which has nearly eight times as much roof space to catch on. I'm hoping to be up to just shy of six hundred square feet of roof to catch on by the start of the next monsoon, and 680 gallons of reservoir to catch in.
All that water will hopefully be put to good use as I plan to start planting in the spring. I'd really like to plant an apple tree. There's just something about picking an apple off of a tree that makes me feel like a rich man, but I probably should bide my time and get a windbreak planted first. I've considered digging up juniper saplings from around the area and transplanting them because they're free and I imagine they'll take, but I'd also like a tree that will be of a functional height before I'm in the grave, so I don't know. Anyhow, as has been noted there's not much point in planting anything on a range without a fence up, and that's still a work in progress as well, so I shouldn't get ahead of myself.
I managed to procure some old rolled up fence from the roadside that's four wires high, has tensioners maybe every 6 feet, and only enough rust to cause a minor case of lockjaw. It's hard to properly tension it - especially as it's all bent a little akwardly from being rolled up haphazardly for so long - while tying it off to t posts or stapling it to wood posts, but I hope it'll have enough tension to keep the cows out at least until I have something a little more tempting growing inside. I've put in the t posts every five paces and every fifth post is wooden so I can get good tension going again from that. Although really I've been able to tension it pretty well with clips to the t posts. But anyhow only about a quarter of the fence line is completed so I've got some time to mull over my choice of trees. I don't really like the idea of a fence, it's just those damn cows. I'd like to put in a gate on each fence line just so I don't feel trapped in.
Projects for the year aside from what's mentioned are putting in covered compost bins for humanure and food waste, a boathouse (just to be clear this is just a shed for my boat, not some new term in the vein of "earthship"), swaling the shit out of the whole acre - oh and that reminds me of the cowpats I saw loaded in someone else's swales, I like that idea, clearly delineating my "driveway" boundary so that the adjacent shrubs can rest a little easier when I pull in, likewise delineating walkways to access my swales so that the grasses nearby aren't trod on unnecessarily, and rigging up a place to hang my hammock so that if everything else is done before winter I can lay down and relax for once. Oh and that reminds me of one other thing: a woodstove before next winter. That might as well go at the top of the list, though it might lose a few places as memories of this miserably cold winter are melted away by warm summer days in the hammock. If it doesn't snow soon, in fact, I might forget about it within the next few days.
Well, I guess that's enough for now. And there really isn't anything more to say. Everything else is just postulation and counting my chickens before they hatch. I just wanted to say thank you all for sharing what you're doing and where you're doing it. It's encouraging to see some like minded people doing some things like I, and I look forward to seeing your progress as it comes. If I have any breakthroughs, like how to make money grow on a juniper, I'll let you all know but it'll most likely be slow going as it has been. Take care.
