For those new to our project (those who haven’t already read about it on my other blogs, where posts about the land are mixed in with other topics)\u00a0 here’s a quick overview.<\/p>\n
We live on the edge of a small town (literally on the edge–the city limits cuts through our house.)\u00a0\u00a0 For twenty-two years, the field north of our back garden was someone’s cow pasture, leased to various people, some better managers than others.\u00a0 When it came up for sale, we were in a rare flush period, and bought it (well, we and the bank bought it…)\u00a0 because we’d\u00a0 always hoped it would stay undeveloped.\u00a0 The original field had one corner occupied by a construction company (they have about 10 acres, I think) and a house and yard occupies another half acre.<\/p>\n
When we bought it, the person then leasing it was not the best manager…he leased both it and an adjoining, larger place, but overstocked them.\u00a0\u00a0 Overgrazing had taken its toll; in places, the only vegetation left was what cattle wouldn’t eat, and the nubs were separated by several feet of bare dirt.\u00a0 Dirt that eroded rapidly in every rain.<\/p>\n
It’s basically a long skinny rectangle with the long axis roughly east-west, with a notch cut out of one corner of the highway frontage, where the construction company yards are.\u00a0\u00a0 About three-quarters of the way to the far end, a seasonal creek (dry all year this year) cuts across it, north to south.\u00a0\u00a0 About ten acres of riparian woods borders the creek and one tiny tributary.\u00a0 Another nine to ten acres of brush tops a low rocky knoll along the north (higher) long side.\u00a0\u00a0 Originally, it was tall-grass prairie (historical data plus the evidence of old-prairie plants still remnant here and there) but the grass land had been used for cotton first, then corn, then grazing, with some terracing and the planting of “improved” non-native pasture grass and (by one of the earlier managers) winter oats for forage.\u00a0\u00a0 The original drainage of the main grassland was temporarily changed by a ditch (probably at the time of terracing) leading water from a highway culvert to the south fenceline; years\u00a0 of neglect and trampling by cattle allowed a more natural alternate drainage to form again, but highway runoff dominates that end of the place, including copious runoff from the construction company–turbid with roadbase from their parking lots.<\/p>\n
For wildlife management, the existence of varied habitats on one relatively small\u00a0 piece of land is a great help.\u00a0 Winter resident songbirds segregate by preferred habitat–some like the brush, some like the woods, and some like the grassland.\u00a0\u00a0 The same is true of the breeding bird population in the spring and summer.<\/p>\n
Terrain is gentle–there’s only about 20 feet in elevation difference between the highest point and the lowest, and only where former owners gouged out gravel and “road base” from the rocky knoll is there a steep slope (obviously not natural.)\u00a0\u00a0 Soil varies from solid rock to deep black clay, with areas of brown clay, red gravel, and exposed subsoil (from erosion.)\u00a0\u00a0 The land is subject to flash floods on the creek (due in part to the rainfall patterns, but also to bad land management upstream that’s led to less permeable soil.)<\/p>\n
In eight years, we’ve increased the species count to over 800 (animals and plants) and within taxa counted in the original survey, most have doubled.\u00a0 Though most of the grassland is still dominated by the introduced non-native King Ranch Bluestem (KRB), it’s being invaded by native grasses including meadow dropseed, little bluestem, sideoats grama, white tridens, knotroot bristlegrass, Indiangrass.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We’ve also seen the reappearance and spread of original prairie forbs–plants no farmer\/rancher in the meantime would have planted, such as Mirabilia alba, four different milkweeds, three different gentians,\u00a0 and many others.\u00a0 We’ve been able to reintroduce some of the original prairie dominants: big bluestem, switchgrass, eastern gama, seep muhly.<\/p>\n
Long-term, the plan includes eliminating non-native plants and re-introducing natives missing from the present array.\u00a0 Some re-introductions have been successful\u00a0 and some not.\u00a0 Yet.\u00a0\u00a0 We use rain-barns to supply water for wildlife and for plantings in the first season (when we collect enough extra water.)\u00a0\u00a0 Our wildlife management plan, written and carried out to conform to the laws in Texas, requires activity in seven categories (habitat management, provision of supplementary food, water, and shelter, predator control, erosion control, and census.)\u00a0 In addition, the prairie restoration project focuses on maintaining existing “pockets” of original vegetation and increasing the extent of it.<\/p>\n
Last year we hosted visits by a nearby Audubon Society group (a bird walk) and a few others interested in specifics, and next year will host a visit by the Texas Native Plant Society (and, no doubt, others.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For those new to our project (those who haven’t already read about it on my other blogs, where posts about the land are mixed in with other topics)\u00a0 here’s a quick overview. We live on the edge of a small town (literally on the edge–the city limits cuts through our house.)\u00a0\u00a0 For twenty-two years, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-land","tag-land-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}