We closed on the property on March 4th, 2016. And while technically the bank owns it, we are now landowners. Everything went according to plan. It was actually quite a pleasant experience. Even our lender, Jon from Capital Farm Credit was...
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Water is fundamental to life, so when I we were choosing the property, it was one of the primary considerations for selections. I was told that the local water supply coop serviced the property – unfortunately that was not the complete...
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As everyone is suffering from post-election exhaustion here in the USA, we at Amber Oaks are focused on ways to distance ourselves from those who wish to rule us. I’m just about finished with our rainwater catchment system. Before we left...
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It didn’t take long for the cisterns and small pond to fill up, so I expanded the puddle to a full-fledged pond. This will make a nice water feature in the front of the house and will further aid in providing irrigation to the orchard. The pond...
More infoAfter several months of waiting, Dunn’s Fish Farm showed up at a local feed store. I bought 200 Channel Catfish, 200 Black Crappie, 100 Copper nose Bluegill, and 10 lbs of Fathead Minnows ($475). Unfortunately, half of the crappie were dead...
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If you were with us for And More Water – Part I, you saw the cisterns that we put in to capture rain water from the house. Yesterday I finally got around to completing the system. When I built the cistern, I left a 2″ stub up in order to...
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Hurricane Harvey passed through this month and dumped about 12″ on the ranch over a 5 day period. It was rather insignificant as the water fell at a steady slow rate, and had plenty of time to move through the terrain and make its way off...
More infoWhen I built the pond in front of the house (the one that catches the rainwater overflow) I was left with several yards of spoils. They had been stacked up for several months and were quite unsightly – with weeds growing in great...
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Added more earthworks to the ranch. This time I put a swale in as the first phase of my orchard. A swale is basically a ditch on contour. The idea being that runoff acclimates in the ditch and slowly infiltrates the soil instead of running off...
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I had a few acres cut for hay this year as the cows weren’t keeping up and it was going to seed. On 25 acres I only got 15 bales. I knew one 10 acre patch would be sparse, but I was expecting 2 bales per acre on the remaining 15 yet I got less...
More infoMy previous post was about a disappointing hay harvest. Well, the second cutting exceeded my expectations. I got 39 bales of hay off of ~15 acres. This same area only produced 13 bales the first cutting. What made the...
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