My retreat

I bought some country property a couple of years ago, before the idea of needing such a place to bug out  ever crossed my mind. The truth is that I just always wanted a place with live water here in the Texas Hill Country ---  where the creeks runs clear over big limestone slabs  and into deeper pools.  I found my place through an unusual bit of serendipity.  Property here has gotten really expensive, and I never thought I would find anything like the place I have, which is beautiful and has a lot of old native pecan trees. I have the very best forty acres of what was once a four hundred acre ranch. Most of my land is creek bottom, but I have a high bluff with a clear view of the private road into my place. The only thing I don't like is that a few neighbors have an easement through my property to get to theirs. But there aren't many of them, and so far they have proven to be excellent neighbors with no exceptions.

I have a deep well (over 300 feet) with plenty of water, and one old pioneer well with a defunct windmill, the drawworks of which is still in place. One of my projects is going to be getting that well functional again, because the deep well would be useless without electricity. I looked into solar power for it, but currently it's just too expensive to go there.

The only structures on my place are an old double wide that has been converted into a decent (if rustic) cabin....and a hoop house greenhouse that I'm currently using for a barn.

So far I'm not growing any food, but I have stockpiled a couple of those big cans of heirloom seeds, and I'd like to get a garden going. It's about an hour from my place in town, not quite as remote as most survivalists would like, but it is very rural.

Currently I am gearing up for a couple of beehives, taking some classes and getting my hives ready to put bees in them in April. I've also planted one big food plot with a couple of varieties of clover that bloom at different times. This has occupied most of my spare time since the first of the year. Now if it would only rain!

This has never been the wettest part of Texas.  Only one year in ten has traditionally been a truly wet year, and global climate change seems to be bringing drought to this part of the country. Water conservation is a big deal here. I have lots of non-native juniper (they call them cedar here) that hog the groundwater and have to be eradicated. Another project...