Projects
THE RANCH
As of August 2024 - Spring of 2025
This Summer showed some great progress at CSR (Cahone Springs Ranch) and this Spring as we moved towards maximizing our water rights and planting some crops. The first order of business was to repair things that were damaged when I leased the pasture to a neighbor and his rodeo steers. I thought I was ahead on the deal for receiving a steer to butcher for the pasture but they did so much damage that required us to rebuild much of our drip irrigation system. We also replaced 300 + feet of 8' deer fence to total enclose our 1 1/3 acre growing plot. After cultivating the entire field thanks to a Friend and fellow Elder from the RMVF (Ridgway Mt View Fellowship) who also tilled the Garden area. This allowed us to plant 200+ potatoes starts as well as 200 beet seeds. We laid out the Netafin drip tape (from Israel) and set up 3 big gun sprinklers powered by and 8 HP 3" pump from one of our spring ponds. We planted Tredicale and peas in the large field as a soil builder and fodder. After 3 weekends in a row, taking the landscaping crew out for a few days, and heading back out through the week to keep the water going at least once a week. The main objective is to experiment with some crops, work out the kinks on the irrigation system, and to utilize our water rights. We show we were able have info reporting pumping about 45,000 gallons in less than 4 hours which we did twice over the weekend. We had some gracious contributors donate a few building items. We received a 24X60 double wide trailer along with $7,000 to move it off of the lot. We had it moved to CSR in July and poured the concrete ourselves. We had it set it up in November and are we are calling it the "Ranch House". We were busy through the Winter of 2025 and remodeling it by redoing the floors, connecting the two, re-doing the plumbing and skirting it. We look forward to having some more permanent housing coupled with the existing 12X60' " Bunk House". In the early Spring, We had a Father and his two sons get some training as they took on the overwhelming task of cleaning the 10,000 gallon irrigation tank. These boys learned much about initative, diligence and hard work pretty much on their own with some guidance from their father after I lined things out. After the job was done they were able to catch some fish in the pond. More of that to come.