Zoning In

Our surveyor is out of town taking his dad to the doctor— yeah we are at that age— but deposits are coming in so I decided to pull up the Google map of our property so we can get an overview. It’s an old picture, maybe 8 years old, before we fenced the property and built the turtle house, but still illustrates the existing zones.

The green zone is the lowest point on the property, a green belt catching water from either side. The green zone is now a march larger pond that our tractor guy Rodney dug out years ago. Rodney, needing to displace the dug dirt, built a high pond wall, creating a plateau tall enough to see not only the entire ranch, but also the surrounding properties. Across a land bridge is an equivalent plateau formed from the original pond. The tan X’s mark the plateaus.

The yellow zone, while the lower elevation, has better viewing for a moving shadow. The property runs east to west, and the eclipse runs northeast to southwest. The shadow should move from the highest end of the property diagonally across the pond area and onto the cow pens at the elevated homestead. If I buy a time-lapse camera, I will set it up in the yellow zone. Fortunately, we are in the path of this year’s partial eclipse, so I will get a trial run.

The red zone is the highest elevation on the property, probably one of the highest elevations in Maverick County. That area will most likely have more amenities because we already have a line of permanent RV lots there. There is at least one area up top that looks down over the valley, but mostly it’s flat, flanked in all directions with mesquite trees.

The black zone is the homestead, the turtle house, the rental village and the livestock. That zone has the most amazing view of the sky, with its fantabulous sunrises and sun sets. The blue zones around it are overflow camping spots. Those spots have no amenities, but are a short walk to where we are building permanent outdoor restrooms. (Plumbed and wired, but not yet built. No guarantee of accessibility.)