Hi to all and a very hearty happy new year to everybody on the board...
PecosMike here, and while I retain the moniker, my project, which I will summarize and update folks on, has moved, geographically. I am now within 9 months of completing payment on a 22.5 acre property in Presidio County Texas in a low valley with mountains on all three sides,(purposely omitting the name of the mountains for my present privacy.)
In good "cave man" fashion, I will be leaving the rat-race for good in exactly 269 days...and will be devoting myself full time to working exclusively on my property to develop it into a project that I think will interest some of the board's readership. It will be my homestead of course and this will consist of an earth sheltered building that will withstand the Transpecos Summer temperatures but also be virtually invisible on the landscape, the final effect being no more than a grassy lump on the property. My agriculture will occur in a pit well below eye level, and protected by a living fence of mesquites/Honey Locust and thorny acacias, cultivated and hand woven as it grows, to be inpenitrable to man and beast, particularly my garden's chief nemesis the ever-hungry and numerous Aoudad of the area. It should also be obscured by grasses large and small and appear non-man-made, and all but invisible, which is a theme of mine.
It is 22.5 acres, positively teeny by Texas standards, but to me it is the equivalent of 28 football fields for fun... Chiefly it will be a breeding project for Gemsbok and some Blackbuck antelope and probably some Ostritches as well. I have reseached as carefully as one can, suitable trees from South Africa that will grow in USDA Zone 8a and I will be planting at least five species of African Acacias from seed, with Winter protection for the tenderest for the first two years. The groundcover will be parts Buffelgrass, a native grass mixture, Four Wing Saltbush and Forage Kochia (my secret weapon for Gemsbok nutrition.) Because Gemsbok feed in "three dimensions" they can graze and forage indiscriminately on grass, bushes, seedpods and green leafy tree matter and the property will be planted with the agressively growing Acacia farnesiana, Honey Locust, Mesquites, and all those Acacias (I am in posession of about 2,000 seeds Acacia seeds at present with more coming.) The Forage Kochia, which I am also greedily stockpiling I hope will provide much of the ground level nutrition for the animals and will likely be used heavily by the Blackbuck Antelope as well. It's nutritional value is considered somewhere approaching that of Alfalfa.
I am attempting to develop a home-away-from-home for the Gemsbok in particular, a carefully-constructed, constantly updated and as ecologically-tweaked an environment to imitate as much as possible a transitional savanna-to-mountain biome.
I am also interested in collecting plants which are documented as among the earliest foraged or cultivated by our paleo-human ancestors.
My goal is also to do nothing more than make it nice and expand the idea, re-investing Gemsbok sales into acquiring more land, to do it larger and better. Part preserve and part laboratory. I have already gathered a small posse of interested folks from accross the fields of animal husbandry, Paleontology and anthropology, and I like the mix, alot of new ideas are coming from these people from diverse disciplines.
Why I am doing this--- I will not say that I have any noble intentions in the least, except that I would like to indulge myself by standing in a place that was a little like it was at the beginning of time beneath the broad umbrella of an acacia and see the stars as our earliest ancestors did. I am quite open to allowing other folks enjoy it a s well, and open to various sorts of ideas as how to use the project in different ways (although the Gemsbok are not for hunting.) I invite suggestions and inquries....the first shovel of earth gets turned Oct 1, 2012.....again happy new year...PecosMike
