High Desert Cowboy- How far is it up north?

[Baymule]

You sent us your winter, thank goodness you didn't send the snow. But it has been cold for this part of the country. Looks like the coming week will be the coldest yet. And we are scheduled to get snow and ice.

I'd gladly send it back to you so you wouldn't have a dry summer!

 

[Latestarter]

Good to hear things are going OK and that all is well. Sorry for your lack of moisture... That's the main reason I left Colorado and moved here to east TX. Lack of moisture & high cost of water. Course a little warmer weather was looked forward to as well. I am being thwarted with that this winter... Been plenty chilly here!

 

[High Desert Cowboy]

Sorry y’all are getting all our cold weather, we’d gladly take it back. After double checking the snowpack levels we are up to 25% of normal. That’s better than the 7% we had on the first. But it’s not near enough. Water here is always the big struggle it’s worth more than gold and drives the prices way up. I’ve known guys to sell land at 14,000 bucks an acre just because it had water rights. It also gets really ugly when someone catches their neighbor stealing their water turn for even a minute. I don’t have worry too much about that because we only get 1.3 acres of water for our 5 acres and it comes from our 200+ ft deep well so no ones gonna swipe it from us.

 

[Mini Horses]

Not in a water controlled area here in VA....plus have own 500+ foot well...so explain pls --

we only get 1.3 acres of water for our 5 acres

what does that mean for you? How is it monitored? Geesh, I have mineral & water rights for my entire 14+ acres.

We may have water use limits in some of the nearby cities if the lake levels drop (from which they draw their supply). That will generally control washing cars, watering lawns, etc., for the city piped water. But if they have a shallow well, no limit to do those things.

OH -- I would GLADLY send you any snow from my place. WISH you could have had the foot from 2 wks ago!! I like to share.

 

[High Desert Cowboy]

like I said water is gold in fact it’s not uncommon to sell a house with property and sell the water rights separately. Or tag on an extra $10,000 per acre share of water rights to the price of the property. What it means for me is that I can’t use all my property for pasture unless I choose to purchase more water rights

 

[Bruce]

Why would anyone buy dry land? Great love for sagebrush and lizards?

 

[Latestarter]

To understand it at all, you'd have to review some 200 years of legal precedent regarding water wars and rights in the west. Out there, water IS very valuable and every drop is litigated and "owned" by someone somewhere. Even the rain that has yet to fall (surface water rights).

 

[High Desert Cowboy]

Bruce while I do love my sagebrush the biggest draw for me was property out in the county where I could keep my animals. And I’m right on 250,000+ acres of BLM land that I can ride and hunt, with my neighbors well spaced and all the land directly north and east of me devoted to cattle (and now sheep). More water would always be nice of course but there’s something about this wide open country with its sagebrush and cedar trees that just calls to me. I might have to buy a little more hay for my critters and I only get a small window of grazing but the cattle bellowing to each other and the smell of rain on the sage make up for it. This is as close to Gods country as you can get outside of Mancos Colorado

 

[Mini Horses]

So, you can only utilize water, or irrigate, on 1.3 acres? The other 3.7 are fenceable but not "waterable"? Or not even fenceable to contain animals at all? Does rainwater on your 5 acres, being absorbed, matter? Can you not water on the 3.7 acres? Garden? If a feed bucket is on there, it catches rain, is there an issue? I'm stumped.

 

[High Desert Cowboy]

So the 1.3 acres is just an easier way of saying X amount of gallons of water. I can fence the whole area as I see fit and keep my animals but I can not effectively provide pasture for them. I’m welcome to garden and I can store up to 2500 gallons of rainwater provided my collection system has been registered with the state. Being a desert they like to know where all the water is going. That 1.3 acres of water is what was decided as being sustainable by our aquifer. Mind that aquifer is being shared by my neighbors out here and we all get an equal share. If I go over my allotment I do get billed by the state and it’s not cheap. I can understand your confusion if you’ve got lots of rainfall and abundant water sources. I’ve always been blown away at how green things are back east, but then again I’ve spent the majority of my life in the western states and outside of two years in Spain I’ve never lived east of the Mississippi.