New landowner looking to take care of it with machinery

[olPete]

Thanks for the welcome! I don't have much in the way of great pictures, but these will give you some idea of what I'm working with:

First, the view of Mt Blanca (elev 14350 - oh yeah, the land is already at about 7700). There are mountains no matter which way you look, but this is by far the best. Looks way better in person, especially without a poorly dressed idiot in the way

Here's the view from the back of the lot facing south towards the "road". If you squint, you can just see my car and the tent at the front of the lot:

I say road in quotes because, although all the roads in the subdivision have been graded and such, it's clear that mine hasn't been done in quite a few years - before I put up reflectors, the only way I could tell where to turn was by a little ant hill in the middle of the road leading to it!

Definitely not the prettiest starting point, but it's mine, and hey, it won't be too hard to grade!

Have just been looking at the area on Google Earth. Fascinating. And very high!! I'm 58 feet elevation here. I'm sure you will soon get your land the way you want it, the plus side is that your canvas is very very fresh.
Curiosity forces me to ask, noticing all the irrigation in the area, will you have water that you can tap into, or capture and store rain? Those circle fields look really quite amazing. Areas of NZ have them but just not all laid out so perfectly.

 

[Wagtail]

Sorry mate thought I'd already replied to your post. I'm considering building a killing shed so we can hang our mutton up away from flies etc and let it set. I think this construction method would make not only a great project, but be low cost and superbly insulated to boot. How thick are the walls?

I just measured one and it's 13.5 inches thick. Mind you, the walls are all 'load bearing' so that will dictate thickness requirements (especially if your local Shire Council has a say in things).

 

[polypolyman]

Have just been looking at the area on Google Earth. Fascinating. And very high!! I'm 58 feet elevation here. I'm sure you will soon get your land the way you want it, the plus side is that your canvas is very very fresh.
Curiosity forces me to ask, noticing all the irrigation in the area, will you have water that you can tap into, or capture and store rain? Those circle fields look really quite amazing. Areas of NZ have them but just not all laid out so perfectly.

The thing is, this area only gets about 7-10 inches of rain a year, so collecting is not an option, really. I'm not even a half mile from a seasonal creek, and I thought about diverting for personal use and land improvement, but water law is unbelievably complicated, not to mention getting easements on the land I would have to trench out. The aquifer, about 120' down, is one of the largest and well maintained in the country, so well is an easy choice.

Coming from the east coast of the US, it was a bit of a trip to see the circle farms for the first time. The relatively clean layout is a relic of the homesteading days, when the country had a ton of land to parcel out all of a sudden. The land was surveyed into townships and sections, with a section being a square mile (640 acres), and actually square in a big grid. The US government sold off sections and quarter-sections (160 acres) for essentially no money, provided you lived and farmed there. Each full-size circle farm is a 160-acre quarter-section, from basically that original survey.

 

[olPete]

The thing is, this area only gets about 7-10 inches of rain a year, so collecting is not an option, really. I'm not even a half mile from a seasonal creek, and I thought about diverting for personal use and land improvement, but water law is unbelievably complicated, not to mention getting easements on the land I would have to trench out. The aquifer, about 120' down, is one of the largest and well maintained in the country, so well is an easy choice.

Coming from the east coast of the US, it was a bit of a trip to see the circle farms for the first time. The relatively clean layout is a relic of the homesteading days, when the country had a ton of land to parcel out all of a sudden. The land was surveyed into townships and sections, with a section being a square mile (640 acres), and actually square in a big grid. The US government sold off sections and quarter-sections (160 acres) for essentially no money, provided you lived and farmed there. Each full-size circle farm is a 160-acre quarter-section, from basically that original survey.

That's really interesting. It was very hard to decipher it all from satellite images, appeared to be no roads.. how is progress?
That's quite a handy aquifer! Will that be your first stage, securing water?
I'm wondering what is already growing on your land, also.. will it be reasonably hard to get rid of? I'd imagine it will have to have massive rooting in that hard soil.

 

[polypolyman]

My little part of the valley used to be one HUGE ranch at one point, then the billionaire Forbes bought out the whole thing and subdivided it into 5 and 35 acre plots fully serviced by road rights-of-way. The county comes by and grades them, more frequently on the roads with more traffic. I'm about 15 minutes of well-maintained dirt roads from the nearest town, and only about a minute on roads with a bit of brush on them. Not awful to get to.

I'm going to wait and do my well and septic system at the same time, of course that will end up costing about the same as a tractor, so it'll be a bit of time before I make it there. For now, I'm just planning on doing a fence, cleaning up the brush, cutting a driveway, and probably getting a shed up for my tractor and tools.

The locals call the brush chico, it's mostly sage brush and rabbitbrush, a little grass and prickly pear scattered around. I can just pull a bush with my hands, so it's not in there too bad, but it's hard enough that I wouldn't want to keep doing it all day, let alone 5 acres worth. My guess is that a brush hog and finishing up with a harrow or landscape rake will make quick work of it.