"Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands........" 1 Thessalonians 4:11

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

The damaged meadow has grown a ............"mountain"

A caliche mountain.  However, this is a good thing as the company has had a crew removing their things from the land and now scraping up the caliche parking lot.
It is much bigger than it appears in the photo and the damage goes on behind the small grove of mesquite trees and down to the farmer's cotton field.
The ground you see in front of the photo use to be tall prairie grass and plants.......now it has been trodden down by large machinery. 

To give you a good idea at how large this pile actually is, there is a large loader machine with a shovel on the front sitting behind it. 
As you can see there are still caliche spots but hopefully this will be all scooped up and carried away in a few days. 
All of this land is land .......that was not even rented to the company for use.
They just moved onto it and took it over.
The agent that represents the company has been good to call each day that the crew works and to tell me about the process that is going on the land.
Of course I go down after they all leave to take a look.
We are to inspect the land when all of this is done and then make further negotiations as to what we expect done .
For me, I am heart sick. 
 Although they are cleaning it all up, I have found that the native grasses that grow on this land are hard to get to grow and the seed to cover the land is costly.
Although the company will pay for the seed...........the agent told me that they are not landscapers..........and of course I really don't want them to just throw the seed onto the land and let it blow or wash away.
I will be the one who will need to plant it and nurture it back to being alive again.
I have no idea if anything will ever start to grow there again and at how long it will take to do so.
This at the moment is very overwhelming.
But one good thing is the knowledge I am getting about this land I love so much.
There are 5 different types of native grasses that grow on our land:
Sideoats Gramma, Little Bluestem, Indiangrass, Plains Bristlegrass, and Sprangletop, green,
I found this out from the local extension agent. He asked for my property address, Google Earthed it and was able to know exactly what belongs.
So if you are interested in what grows on your grounds.......call your local extension agency. 
Hopefully in a week or two........there will be a piece of land that is flat with top soil on it.
Thank you readers again, for your encouraging words and helpful information!

5 comments:

Connie said...

That is a daunting task to think about reseeding all of that land. I feel so sad that your land has been damaged in this way, Kathleen. I'm glad they are at least making some effort to make right the mess they made.

Sherri Farley said...

So sad to see the land damaged so badly, but you've done a good thing by making them responsible. Perhaps they will behave better in the future so, hats off to you for taking a stand. I'm sure it's going to be a big job ahead, but have faith it will pay off. In no time at all it will return to it's natural beautiful and be full of the native critters. Hang in there!

Elaine/Muddling Through said...

I am so glad it is all getting put back the way it belongs! Glad also that you will be the one to nurse it back to life. No one who does not love it as you do would do nearly so good a job of it. You'll do fine, just don't let yourself get overwhelmed. <3

Henny Penny said...

Hope it won't be too hard to get the native grasses back. You have done good at staying on top of things and getting those folks to listen.

Kathleen Grace said...

I do hope the land can recover. It may take a while, but nature has a way of healing itself if we let it.