Family compound! - coming up!

Bruce and Vickie met with a local attorney Thursday and he is going to do the title search and draw up the Purchase Agreement sometime in the next few days, and then they will be closing on that property next door to us sometime in the next couple months.  Yeaaaa!

He also told them that if they were to "rent" the property to us for our horses for the next few years (until they can move back here to BR), they would be able to save something like $1200 a year in taxes.  (The property would be considered pasture or farm land that way.)  So . . . they plan to have the whole thing bushhogged, then graded so that water will drain off correctly. 


Then we'll plant grass on there and once it's nice and thick, we'll let the horses keep it mowed.  They're going to fence the property with some sort of fencing that they can leave up when they build their houses so it needs to be something that will keep dogs in, as well as horses.  None of our fencing (except around the dog yard, of course) would keep dogs in, unfortunately, so it will have to be something completely different. 

The horse fence does okay with really large dogs - but Vickie is a West Highland White Terrier rescue person.  I imagine they could probably run right under our fence, given their small size.  And even if they aren't small enough to just walk under, they would certainly be able to dig out!  Digging is their "thing."

So they'll just have to decide what they want to use -- maybe regular chain link -- or even some of that non-climbable horse fencing, which is significantly cheaper.  The fencing in the photo below is using pipe with the wire mesh just fastened onto it.  Now that would be SUPER sturdy and last forever, but I have no idea how much used pipe might cost -- or where to get it, for that matter.  

Al's place, where we boarded our horses until our place was ready to bring them home, is fenced with used oil rig piping that was spray painted white.  Very nice.  But he did have a relative who was able to install that for him and it was done 20 or 30 years back, as well.

The neighbors across the street have black chain link around all but the front of their property on the driveway entry side.   And you generally don't notice that it's only chain link since it's black.

See - they actually only have wrought iron fencing across
that space from the porch over to their driveway gate.

The entire rest of their property - including the front fence on the other side - away from the driveway - is black chain link.  (That top bar on the right is broken because that tree that's been cut down there in the corner fell on it a little while ago.)

I'm hoping Mark will be able to find the contact info for the guy who did such an incredible job of grading the back pasture here for us.  We paid a fortune to another guy who didn't accomplish a darned thing - except taking down some trees back there.  But that last guy did a fine job in no time at all.  He dug a shallow "stream" across the property leading into a large pond that collects water only during hard rain, then drains it out into the drainage canal that runs down the side of our property and out into Bayou Manchac and Spanish Lake. 

See that "path" running down the center above?  That's that shallow "stream bed" that lets water drain into that large pond.  You can see the outline of the pond, too, but unless there's been a VERY heavy rain, there's never any water in there normally, and the sides are not the least bit steep so it's possible to ride the lawnmower right across it and keep it mowed the same as the rest of the grass.  (And the horses seem to love running up and down the sides, too!)  But it does hold a lot of water when it's full -- it's probably about 8 feet deep or more in the center.

So all that property they're buying, where all those trees are, will, once it's cleared, have to be graded so water will either drain across our property and out into the canal, or to the front and into the drainage ditch that runs along the road  - and also ultimately into the canal.  It might also be a good idea to add a drainage ditch to the opposite side of their property to divert the water from the properties on that side from filling up or crossing their land. 

Here's the ground view of that drain "stream" in our pasture. 
It keeps the rest of the pasture from filling up. 

Here's what used to happen after major rain storms -- that's why we had the land graded.  It was awful!

"BEFORE" !!

Now, when it storms, that temporary stream appears, and the pond fills up -- then a day or two later the water is gone.  Very little of the grass floods, and the land doesn't get so soggy that horses walking on it would make it a muddy mess.

"AFTER" 
(Taken just after the rain stopped.)

And this was taken the following day.
The level of the pond has already dropped several feet.

And then after a couple days the water disappears completely
(much to the dismay of the egrets).

So, on the plus side, since they aren't moving back down here for several years, they'll at least have plenty of time to get their land ready.