Tips, Ideas, and Dreams
Keyhole Garden

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You can even add a couple bricks to allow you access the mulch area easier. |
One final note is that when you water the garden, be sure
to over-water the mulch pit or keyhole area.
Doing this drives the nutrients out into the surrounding soil and keeps the decomposition process going so the bacteria can do their work.
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Olive Tree near the keyhole garden |
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Strawberry plant in keyhole garden |
Fenced Garden
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We let the Soap berry tree grow for two reasons: It will eventually shade the garden and it is good for natural soap berry clothes detergent! Yes, look it up online! |
A few things to
note about the garden:
- There is an old electrical pipe that sticks up in the
garden. It goes back to the well. It could be cut off completely to get it out
of the way of a roto-tiller. We left it because we had thought of possibility
utilizing it to bring electrical to the garden from the power pole. Maybe to a greenhouse?

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Plum tree along the back fence. By the time these are ripe, you could be in the house! |

Mulch Bins


Keep in mind that you should not throw anything into these bins that will not decompose. Greasy items, plastics, and other similar items should not be placed into the mulch bins as they will not decompose or will cause the mixture to become unusable.
The horse shed, pond,
and keeping animals
The old horse shed had to be torn down. However, this
site is an excellent site to build another.
This was in our plan. We had
intended to clean the area completely and build a new horse barn in this
spot. It is a good area because the
lower field is very good for horses. To
keep horses you will need to replace the electric fence that used to cross the
fields below the rocky banks that start up to the house.
While the upper rocky areas are not good for horses, they
are fantastic for sheep, goats, and donkeys.
This is because of two major reasons:
1. Rocks are needed to trim these animal’s feet. 2. The pond is a significant source of water
for much of any normal rain year. In
fact, there have been years when the pond never went dry, though during the
drought it went dry every year during the summer.
The fence that crosses the property was placed so that
animals can graze right up to the house at the front. This allows you to interact with your animals
without joining them in the field which can sometimes be messy. We had donkey’s that would come and stand
near the rock wall where we could hand feed them.
Water Reclamation

One note, there used to be two reclamation tanks on the
house. One of the tanks developed a
problem and had to be removed. We left
most of the piping intact so you could add the second tank again. Or if you prefer, you could move the one tank
to the other side.
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We plan to add down spouts on the current configuration. |
The deep water well
The well is running well. Haven't had too many issues with it over the years. Had Hamilton Well&Drilling come out to take a look at it at one point and they gave it a clean bill of health. We were told then that its depth is somewhere around 380 to 400 feet. When we moved to the property, someone had built a very poor shelter for the well. It pretty much fell apart so we completely removed it. Since there is a nice cement pad around the well we thought it would be nice to build a well house around it, but it is not necessary in Texas. We still covered all the pipes and have kept a tarp over it.
Big Dreams
As you scope out the property, you will notice that the wet
weather creek was rerouted from its original stream bed across the property to
the road – this was done long before we got here. This helps keep water in the
field which would make it ideal for growing grasses, crops, or even having a
very large garden. However, a garden
could be placed at the bottom of the hill below the house (the area you can see
when you look out the living room windows).
This area is in the natural flow of the creek. The current creek could be diverted on demand
with irrigation techniques to flow water to the garden spot downstream through
a pipe or just a ditch. Even without this, the area described above stays moist
for longer than other areas due to the natural lay of the land.
There is a sizeable area for a garden in the spot
mentioned above. Most of it is cleared as well.
A high fence would be needed as deer are prolific in this area and jump
a 5ft fence easily. This area would also
be the logical choice for an orchard due to water being close to the
surface. In fact, during the spring it
is often so wet that you can dig down with a shovel and find surface water.
Hope you enjoy this place as much as we did!
-Mike&Sarah
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