Accidental Birding

One last post for the day. After all the work, I took my folding chair and set it in the shade of a runt oak and with my 10x binoculars set up to see what I could see. Eastern Cardinals abound on the land and their beautiful song echoes from side to side as the males compete for attention. I'm used to seeing flashes of red as they flit by.

Today however, I saw a new shade of red, tinging to orange. A new bird! The orange was so unusual and he kindly alighted on a treetop where I could observe him with the binoculars. Longish beak, round head with a crown flowing back to nape splashed in brilliant red-orange. I could only see his head and white face and long beak, but nothing more of his body except a hint of gray or brown through the leaves. When he flew off I was surprised that he was pretty large and my initial impression was that it was the size and shape of a woodpecker - but I've never seen one with that much color before.

So when I got home I googled Central Texas bird identification and found to my surprise that I had spotted the Red-bellied Woodpecker. I've never been into birding, but it sure was a joy to see a bird I've never seen before. According to the range maps, this area is about as far west as they get so it was a special treat!

Good Neighbors and Measuring Lay of Land

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Originally uploaded by johntestsgo

Even better than the picnic pecan is our neighbors. The first day I visited the land I dropped by the neighbor's house and asked them about water, electric and what they knew of the history of the land. They were as friendly as Texas! And ever since we make it a habit to drop by and say hi. They even invited us to a BarBQ with even more neighbors in attendance. I can't wait to put on a brisket feast in return. (More future plans...) Anyway, the photo is of our neighbor shredding about 1/2 acre in the South East corner where we will be planting the orchard.

After shredding and in addition to chopping vines from a copse of trees, I made the first measurements of the slope from the planned water harvesting tank to the orchard. The land slopes away in all directions from the SE corner. We will build a water harvesting shed with a 1700 gallon tank which will service the orchard of a dozen trees with some left over for some garden use. I needed to know if the slope is sufficient to generate enough head for drip irrigation without the need of a pump.

With a 50" board, a level and a tape measure I took measurements of rise over run every 10 paces from the point I staked out as the likely water tank outlet. The average was 4.75":50" which gives about a 9.4% slope. I sketched this out and calculated that we have a 4' 8" drop at 50' which is about where the 1st row would be. The tank will be elevated on a pad which would give almost a 6' head which results in 2.7 psi at the first row. This is a bit low for drip irrigation where the recommended minimum pressure is between 15-30 psi. It looks like I might need to investigate a pump for the system too.

The picnic pecan

One of the pleasant discoveries on Die Weide is a native pecan tree in the pasture. We guess it's native because the nuts are a bit on the small side for a cultivated pecan. However, what's odd is that pecans usually grow near streams and rivers and this one is in the middle of a pasture on a hill.

So, taking advantage of this tree's size and location, we moved an unused picnic table from home to under the tree. This has become our base of operations and the pecan tree will anchor the orchard we will plant, hopefully starting this coming spring.

Texas Veteran's Land Board Bid

My how time flies! Several weeks ago we submitted a bid for 10 acres in Milam County that the Texas Veteran's Land Board re-possessed from a non-performing VLB loan. Only Veterans are eligible to bid and I've been on the lookout for a piece of land worth bidding on for several years. (And waiting for sufficient budget for the down payment and closing costs.)

After my wife and I looked over the land we knew it met our needs. About 1/3 native pasture, and 2/3rds woods with "wet weather" creeks. So we talked it over and decided to bid on the tract. We went over a bit to be sure to win, and on April 27th they read the bids at the TVLB offices, which I attended since we live just outside Austin. I anxiously listened as our bid came up and as each envelope was opened and bid read, sweated that someone would outbid us. But ours was the only bid so we won by default.

So this week, Tuesday, we will close on the land and it will be officially ours (and TVLB on the loan.)