"Jangchub" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:33:13 GMT, "brooklyn1"
wrote:

I have sixteen acres here, about eight acres parked out... another three
acres if I count my pond area and wildflower meadow, the rest is pretty
much
wooded although I do tend to a lot of those areas too, especially keeping
wild grape and other vines from smothering small trees/shrubs. I had a
half
acre on Long Island, I never liked my plants all right near to and up
against each other, and having to limit what I could grow due to lack of
space... here instead I'm limited by what critters eat, but I like the
wildlife too and there is always fencing. Down the road I have another
property of 91 acres, about ten acres wooded, the rest is in hay... the
haying pays all my taxes plus a small profit. Were I younger I might've
considered building a house and living on that property, but I'm happy
here
and have no plans to more.


I pulled out our survey to make sure I was giving the right amount of
space and it's a bit over 1/3 acre, not 1/4. It's just big enough to
be a lot of work for me to do. It is a very quiet area and there are
many species of birds to admire. The Indigo bunting was such a charge
to see. When I get finished planting and transplanting this years
stuff I will take a bunch of photos and put them on the blog. Our
garden was on the PBS show called Central Texas Gardener in 2005. It's
also been in magazines locally.

I am not that abled so this is huge for me to manage. Would I love a
hundred acres? Yes. Can I afford it? Certainly. What I can't do is
the work. I am not well.

Whose abled, I'm probably less abled... but I've discovered that larger
tracts of land are easier to tend than smaller properties, as the property
surpasses like five acres it begins to become easier to tend, I'd say at the
ten acre mark is where one surpasses the point of diminishing returns...
tractors remove decades from one's age... I often ride my small tractor from
my vegetable gardening shed the 800 feet to my barn where I house my large
tractor, saves my legs, especially when I may have to make those treks
several times a day. I also like the seasons, aside from all the sensory
stimulus they cut my physically demanding gardening chores fully by half, I
get to hibernate. The first thing my friends who still live on small
surburban lots ask is how do I keep all my miles of borders so neatly edged,
I laugh, I don't, they are as the giant mower leaves them, quite messy in
spots actually... but when viewed from many hundreds of feet away they look
perfectly manicured. I've learned not to bother with precision anymore...
it's the overall appearance that counts... I've come to like macro
landscaping much better than micro. You see, in a development of small
properties everyone is looking at each others property up close and
personal... my nearest neighbor is a thousand feet away... I can garden with
my peepee hanging out and no one can see, and I do, do you think I'm gonna
hike a thousand feet to the terlit, let alone traipse through the house with
muddy boots, when a few feet over is the pond... just gotta be careful Mr
Bullfrog doesn't mistake it for a gnat! LOL