GraceNmercy
Member
Well on the old QDMA forum I used to post all my update each time I went up to work as some of you may recall. I couldn't figure out how to save everything so I'm starting over. For those who are new to my post, several years ago I found that my great uncle who lived on our families 33 property for many many years was facing a judgement and faced loosing the property due to delinquent taxes. He was an old WWII vet in his 90's and the last of my great great grandmothers children who had lived there for most his life. He was living there alone on a fixed income and was accustomed to paying what he could over the years without any assistance from any of those other heirs. I used to go up and hunt on the place, but I hadn't seen in for a while after I went off to college and moved down south to Houston, so I never new how bad the situation was until I got more involved with helping with things he needed done around there. My getting involved to help him out and doing some digging is when I found out about the delinquent taxes after.
I took him to the tax office and setup a payment plan that we started paying on. After we setup the payment plan and made the first payment we sat on the front porch and he talked to me telling me he trusted me to take care of the place and handle it after he was gone. He talked about how the land had been in the family for well over 100 years, and should always be kept in the family and never sold so we could always have a place to hunt, visit and come back to if we ever needed to. Ironically a couple of months after that conversation he passed away at 92 years old.
Since then I've paid off all the back taxes and have been managing the property planting every fall with a reforestation plan that will be ongoing until I get the desired results I'd like. I've also gotten into the field of real estate and in the next year or two will start the process to buy out all the non-involved heirs who want to responsibility or dealings with the property.
I'll post more pics later to show progress from my early plantings until now, but just a few details of what I've been doing. The property is split by highway 175 and has about 20 acres on the south side and a little over 13 on the north side. We are surrounded by larger non-hunted tracts on all sides including 160 acres that connects on the north that's owned by a cousin who lives in Maryland, and a neighbor who owns 112 acres that connects to the south portion of the property. On the southeast side of the property we've started a mass planting of chestnuts in a old upland field near the old homestead with the goal of a chestnut forest type orchard, and various oak plantings in the bottoms along a creek that runs though the center of the place on both sides.
On a sandy slope on the southeast side of the property on the west side of the creek I've planted hundreds of pine loblolly pine trees, white oaks, American chestnuts as a road buffer and to connect a patch of woods already growing within the property. On that same side of the property in another area I've planted Allegheny chinquapins and and also some American hazelnuts along the drive in trail. I've also recently started planting longleaf pines on a sandy hill in the uplands above a steep slope that goes down into the bottom and to the creek. In these upland sites there's a lot of little blue stem getting reestablished naturally and I've been helping it at the same time by collecting and spreading seeds.
This all the work and natural regeneration that's been going on have been increasing the amount of wildlife that's we've been seeing on the place. I currently lease the property out to a couple of buddies of mine so I do all my hunting on national forest or friends who own large tracts of land. Anyway, I'll post some of my recent photos from today's planting and I'll followup later with the older photos...
I took him to the tax office and setup a payment plan that we started paying on. After we setup the payment plan and made the first payment we sat on the front porch and he talked to me telling me he trusted me to take care of the place and handle it after he was gone. He talked about how the land had been in the family for well over 100 years, and should always be kept in the family and never sold so we could always have a place to hunt, visit and come back to if we ever needed to. Ironically a couple of months after that conversation he passed away at 92 years old.
Since then I've paid off all the back taxes and have been managing the property planting every fall with a reforestation plan that will be ongoing until I get the desired results I'd like. I've also gotten into the field of real estate and in the next year or two will start the process to buy out all the non-involved heirs who want to responsibility or dealings with the property.
I'll post more pics later to show progress from my early plantings until now, but just a few details of what I've been doing. The property is split by highway 175 and has about 20 acres on the south side and a little over 13 on the north side. We are surrounded by larger non-hunted tracts on all sides including 160 acres that connects on the north that's owned by a cousin who lives in Maryland, and a neighbor who owns 112 acres that connects to the south portion of the property. On the southeast side of the property we've started a mass planting of chestnuts in a old upland field near the old homestead with the goal of a chestnut forest type orchard, and various oak plantings in the bottoms along a creek that runs though the center of the place on both sides.
On a sandy slope on the southeast side of the property on the west side of the creek I've planted hundreds of pine loblolly pine trees, white oaks, American chestnuts as a road buffer and to connect a patch of woods already growing within the property. On that same side of the property in another area I've planted Allegheny chinquapins and and also some American hazelnuts along the drive in trail. I've also recently started planting longleaf pines on a sandy hill in the uplands above a steep slope that goes down into the bottom and to the creek. In these upland sites there's a lot of little blue stem getting reestablished naturally and I've been helping it at the same time by collecting and spreading seeds.
This all the work and natural regeneration that's been going on have been increasing the amount of wildlife that's we've been seeing on the place. I currently lease the property out to a couple of buddies of mine so I do all my hunting on national forest or friends who own large tracts of land. Anyway, I'll post some of my recent photos from today's planting and I'll followup later with the older photos...
