[AT] In the market for a rural place

charlie hill charliehill at embarqmail.com
Thu Oct 31 03:52:31 PDT 2013 

yeah I understand.   Luckily for me our tenant farmer doesn't know about it
and is keeping the pond banks pretty clean.  I think it' ok to mow them but
not to cut any trees that might have grown up.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: Cecil R Bearden
Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2013 12:11 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] In the market for a rural place

That Blue line stream thing came along in the last few days I was
there.  I have not really tried to learn what it is all about, because I
want plausible deniability sonce I think I have one on my place, but I
am not going to look real hard.....

Cecil


On 10/30/2013 8:42 PM, charlie hill wrote:
> Well that pretty well explains it Cecil.  Yes I knew you had experience in
> that area and  figured you had a good explanation of it.   I'm glad we
> don't have those issues here.  However the government is putting more
> and more controls on water here even though we have plenty.  We have
> two irrigation ponds on our land that my dad had dug in 1960.  Our land,
> our ponds, spring fed, no streams involved but now they have them 
> designated
> on the maps with a blue line around them meaning a "blue line stream"
> designation.
> Technically that means we can't even cut the trees and bushes that grow up
> around the ponds, let alone drain and fill them if we wanted to.  Nothing
> has been irrigated on our place since about 1966.  At this point the 
> things
> are nothing
> but an "attractive nuisance" in legalese.  Meaning something a trespasser
> can fall into and sue us for.  I wish I could give them to you.
>
> Charlie
>
>
> I worked for the Ok water REsources Board for 30 years and retired there
> in charge of the safety of dams program for the state.  I started out in
> the water rights division.  I have stream and ground water rights on
> this place also.   However, the pond in question is small enough to not
> be under the jurisdiction of the OWRB and also is within the domestic
> use allowance of the upstream landowner.  This state says that
> recreational use ie  aesthetics, \fishing, swimming. is a
> non-consumptive use.  In this area of OK we have an annual lake
> evaporation of 4 ft or more.  If there are 10 lakes upstream, each one
> holding 3 acres of water, that is 30 surface acres x 4 ft or 120 ac ft
> of water that is evaporated.  In this area we have only 4 inches of
> annual runoff.  so just to keep those ponds full, it takes 480 acres of
> watershed.  We have several ponds like this that do not have near enough
> watershed area to support them without spring flow.  The downstream guy
> is just screwed, because by the time the law gets the upstream guy his
> allocated domestic use, there is nothing left....
>
> Far better to be upstream with a shovel than downstream with a water
> right.!!
>
> Cecil in OKla
>
>
> On 10/30/2013 4:16 PM, charlie hill wrote:
>> Cecil,  I always thought there were laws against diverting water onto or
>> away from another
>> land owner?   It's not a problem where I live.  If anything we have to
>> much
>> water but
>> it seems there should be some legal remedy for you from the guy that
>> diverted the water.
>>
>> Charlie
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Cecil R Bearden
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2013 4:06 PM
>> To: Antique tractor email discussion group
>> Subject: Re: [AT] In the market for a rural place
>>
>> My advice to anyone looking at a place to move/retire to is find one you
>> can grow a garden on.   We live NW of Oklahoma City on 80 acres that
>> were bought by my folks as an investment without really investigating
>> the details.   When my wife and I moved out here, we later built a house
>> near the old homestead site, but growing a garden for food is next to
>> impossible.  Water cannot be found on this whole place.  There is some
>> surface water that comes from springs on neighboring land. The best
>> source was diverted by a rich newcomer so he could have a pond to look
>> at.  Livestock water is now from a rural water system. Our water bill is
>> never less than $75/month.  The red clay n this area is either hard as a
>> rock or slicker than #2 gun grease.  When dry the ground will crack open
>> as much as 2 inches and nearly 2 ft deep.  When the cracks close up, the
>> ground quits absorbing water.  You can move 1/4 to 1/2 mile in any
>> direction and the land is totally different.   Soil surveys do not
>> explain this either.  This land is one of the highest points in the
>> county and it appears  that it was just under the beach when the Permian
>> sea was at full level.  When the sea receded the first time, the sand
>> moved down slope and left this #@$% red clay.  It is only good for
>> pasture ground and it takes many years to get the native grasses to
>> cover completely.  What good soil was left on this piece of land was
>> washed away with the farming practices of the dirty 30's.   We had a
>> garden over the lateral field of our house trailer we lived in when we
>> first moved here.  I brought in a semi load of river sand, and a truck
>> load of cow manure from a feedlot.  Then 3 pickup loads of grass
>> clippings from the city.  I roto tilled this several times before
>> planting.   Water was supplied by pumping from a water hole in the creek
>> and hauled by a tank trailer to water the garden.   Now, due to
>> development, upstream there is no water in the creek nor in the spring.
>> Well water is non-existent, we have 3 dry wells, and we only water with
>> rural water.   Selling out would involve a lot of work and probably
>> might not result in much improvement except a place to grow a garden, we
>> have been here over 30 years.  Now that we have time to move and could
>> afford it, we just don't have the energy.
>>
>> As I stated at the first.  Find a place you can grow your own food on,
>> it will be necessary in the future.
>>
>> Cecil in OKla
>>
>> On 10/30/2013 1:00 PM, John Slavin wrote:
>>> My son-in-law and I were having a conversation about this topic a couple
>>> weeks ago.  He's career navy and will be retiring in a few years and was
>>> just thinking outloud about some farmland.  He has some rather specific
>>> needs and wants a mix of rolling, treed and tillable farmland.  It is 
>>> not
>>> as easy as a city person might think to find land with all the 
>>> attributes
>>> you want within a certain proximity of the place you want to live, at 
>>> the
>>> price you want to pay.  It's the old, you can have two out three deal.
>>>
>>> Plus, I have been observing that some auction houses in particular, and
>>> to
>>> a lesser extent realtors, are splitting out the tillable farmland from
>>> the
>>> rolling ground, so instead of 40/80 acre tracts, or combinations 
>>> thereof,
>>> you end up with gerrymandered metes and bounds tracts of prime farmland
>>> or
>>> rough land sold separately from each other.  Makes sense, given how
>>> expensive land has gotten, but makes it more difficult to buy a farm 
>>> with
>>> a combination of land use types. Just the other day I saw a farm that 
>>> had
>>> been together for generations split up.  The bottom ground and flat
>>> upland
>>> was sold to out-of-state investors.  The hill and rolling upland (that
>>> the
>>> investors might perceive as junk) was sold to a completely different 
>>> kind
>>> of buyer.
>>>
>>> John
>>>
>>> John C. Slavin
>>> jslavin at marktwain.net
>>>
>>> Everything around you that you call life was made up by people who are 
>>> no
>>> smarter than you.  Steve Jobs.
>>>> Message: 11
>>>> Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 06:24:10 -0400
>>>> From: "Dean Vinson" <dean at vinsonfarm.net>
>>>> Subject: Re: [AT] In the market for a rural place
>>>> To: "'Antique tractor email discussion group'"
>>>> <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
>>>> Message-ID: <002a01ced55a$2d2c3d50$8784b7f0$@net>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>>>>
>>>> Thanks very much, gentlemen.  I've had some electronic searches set up
>>>> via a
>>>> realtor for a couple of years now, just to get familiar with what's out
>>>> there, and got pretty serious about it last spring.
>>>>
>>>> In August we let an auction get away from us that I still have some
>>>> regrets
>>>> over...the house and barn weren't much but if there's a nicer parcel of
>>>> rolling USDA-prime farmland, pasture, and hardwood woods in southwest
>>>> Ohio,
>>>> I don't know where it would be.
>>>>
>>>> Gene, I'd be honored to be your close neighbor and would love to get
>>>> some
>>>> plowing time in with the Super M.  As it turns out I might at least 
>>>> come
>>>> a
>>>> good ways in your direction--there's a place west of Urbana that we 
>>>> just
>>>> decided to go take a third look at.  First look resulted in "Wow, this
>>>> could
>>>> be it."  Second look resulted in "But there are some practical issues
>>>> that
>>>> we're not entirely sure we're up for, so probably best to keep 
>>>> looking."
>>>> But that decision isn't setting too well...so time to go back and make
>>>> sure.
>>>>
>>>> Dean Vinson
>>>> Dayton, Ohio
>>>> www.vinsonfarm.net
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