I SPENT $79,000 On A WASTELAND. What Is Wrong With Me?

one thing that's been surprising is to see houses out here I've driven nine hours to be here pretty sure that this area is my land 53 240 trees [Music] it's 8 A.M on a chilly December morning it's 40 degrees in the middle of the Chihuahua Desert of West Texas I am 42 miles from Sierra Blanca which is that way on the other side of the Eagle Mountains Van Horn is technically closer at 25 miles but it's actually about a 65 mile drive from here because I have two mountain ranges standing in my way I am five and a half miles from the Mexican border in fact right now I am looking at the Rio Grande the easiest way to get here is down a dirt road that best case scenario takes two hours I believe I am in the most isolated Road accessible spot in the state of Texas back in February I bought this property it is 320 acres and I paid an average price because I bought two Parcels of 247 dollars per acre the natural question you're asking yourself is why why buy 320 acres in the middle of nowhere why is it so cheap and what's the plan for it if you hang out here on the video for a little bit I'll give you a tour and give you some background why howdy my name is Sean and hopefully you're watching this as part of my first episode on YouTube what I want to do is turn a desert Wasteland into a forest not only do I want to create water and tree resources but I want to do it to the extent that you can describe it as a real genuine desert forest now I'm at a point in my life where I have the time and the financial resources to pursue it let me give you a brief overview of myself I grew up in Texas in the Fort Worth area Northeast Tarrant County still live here although I've spent a significant portion of my adult life abroad I lived in Yemen I've lived in Qatar I've lived in Jordan I've lived in Ireland Panama Costa Rica Ecuador so I've been all around the world my company is accruvia and we specialize in API Integrations we're sort of like a traffic cop for data so if you have two software systems that don't talk to each other where the traffic cop in the middle to make sure that everything communicates in a way that all the software is Happy I've been following permaculture videos online for almost 10 years there's really three projects that I followed closely one is a project out of state Saudi Arabia called the L Bible the other inspiration is Andrew millison I really like his videos uh it's fun watching him on YouTube just draw on the grease board I also follow Jeff Lawton he has a project in Jordan called Greening the desert they started with just a half acre area in an urban setting with Rocky Barren soil devoid of life and now when you watch the tours of the property 10 or 15 years later he has a very rich ecosystem and it's a sustainable project and it's totally doable my commitment on this channel is that I'm going to learn on camera I haven't done anything like this on YouTube before I have no meaningful experience in agriculture I love gardening in my backyard word and it's just not even remotely the same thing I'm not mechanically inclined I've never had to work with heavy equipment before I've never owned a truck before I'm a dude from the suburbs I almost always bootstrap I don't know what I'm doing and I don't know where I'm going but somehow someway I managed to claw and figure things out and stay alive and not Hemorrhage money I basically I play like a poker player keeping just really hanging onto my pot and I know when to bet before I bought the property I came out here to inspect it because I had spent a ton of time looking at properties on the internet I drove seven and a half hours yesterday to spend the night in Van Horn right now I'm on my way to Sierra Blanca and I am so excited this is the last jumping off point before I get to see this land for the first time I've been looking around at everything trying to take in views really appreciate the scenery talk to people in Van Horn I'm looking forward to seeing what what's in Sierra Blanca very briefly and then heading over to the land part of the research using satellite photos and Google Maps was identifying potential routes to get to this property the easy route is from Sierra Blanca that's 42 miles and it's mostly down County maintained roads the roads are generally not great but they're adequate but you also have to drive 60 miles out of the way it's very difficult to get here I'm here in Sierra Blanca after a long and profoundly boring drive it's not until I got up near Van Horn that things started to get really interesting coming into town I saw the big white sign you can't miss it it's the little Hollywood of West Texas area is Charming in its own unique way but as you can see behind me this area is struggling economically this town is about half abandoned but what this town does have going for it is the geography and the people and now I'm going to make a turn off onto the dirt road so I can finally drop into the valley Sierra Blanca made a strong impression on me because I had done enter internet-based research to learn a little bit more about the town and all you find on Wikipedia is that Sierra Blanca has the only Adobe courthouse in the country really fighting hard to distinguish yourself the economics of the town are it's a struggling economy the average income per household in Sierra Blanca is 25 000 and most people in this area if they don't work on a ranch then they work for the government that's kind of it one thing that's been surprising is to see houses out here I've looked on the satellite maps and there's not really a whole lot but here on the ground you see more than you notice from up in the air I really want to know the back story behind everybody here what brings you out in the middle of the desert where you live in a small cottage or an RV or a school bus a double wide how does that happen what is your story what makes what makes you find this particular spot to decide to settle and if I do wind up buying this property I really want to get to know the people and their backstories I think that this area is so harsh and remote that if people choose to live here they got to be interesting coming down this Ranch Road for the first time was a real surprise when you look at a road Network on Google Maps and I'm a software guy so I'm relying pretty heavily on software and internet connections to make decisions and do some research I'm going down a dirt road into the middle of the desert and I am completely relying on Google Maps to be accurate and not lie to me it would be a mistake to pretend like I feel 100 warm and fuzzy going down this path I don't have a ton of water just enough for an emergency and nothing more I feel really apprehensive going this way because if Google Maps doesn't get me all the way to the property then I have no idea how to get there just finding your property out here is a challenge because there's no fences out here I'm so close to the property line but I just can't tell because of the way I've marked it on Google Maps I can't tell if I'm actually on the edge I think I'm just a little shy I just need to go up a little bit more and I think I'll be on what will hopefully be my property pretty sure that this area is my land and luckily there's more satellite based tools like on X to figure out and make sure that yeah I'm safely comfortably past the property line This vegetation and this view is the reason or I guess a big part of the reason that I'm out here I've driven nine hours to be here it's completely exhausting gas is so expensive it's a big investment just getting out here and really I hear absolutely nothing just a gentle wind blowing it's so peaceful and calm I could already tell that the descriptions of the properties didn't match up at all I saved the web page of the listing for my land and it said that it's close to town that amenities and entertainment options are nearby that it's on a County Road it's not if you're shopping for land in West Texas on the internet you got to be really careful because the kind of people that are engaging in the buying and selling land out here are they have a bad reputation is the nice way to put it and because this is so pretty and I brought my drone I'm going to send it up in the sky so you guys can take a look at this property from above most of the people out here that own property have literally not only do they not visit the property I would expect that most of the people that have bought property out here in the last 30 or 40 years have never even been out here and most of them have never even been in hudspeth County so of course this property was incredibly cheap I paid 247 dollars an acre but the plan is to turn it into a desert forest and I still haven't answered that question for you what is a desert forest and what does a desert forest look like this is a semi-natural desert forest this has clearly been modified as a water catchment it's designed to be a low-level water area right now we're looking all at Mesquite and it's a nice Big Thicket that has taken root here and there's two reasons one is that this is deep sandy soil and two is that there's abundant water and you can see that this is pretty good size that's 15 feet tall if not if not 20 and that's a huge tree for around here when it's raining this entire thing is bright green grass and the grass comes up to here but this wouldn't exist if somebody didn't take heavy equipment and modify this water flow so that it would spread out and sit and sink the takeaway from this little spot is that if you add water and the right soil conditions you're going to have life this wash is one of the main reasons I bought the property in an average year I should have about 800 acre feet at least flow through this wash it's not so much that I'll be able to use all of the water or anything close to all of the water what I really liked about this is it's an obvious clear sign that water does come here it's just the challenge of making sure that you get the water to stay around as long as possible so that you can do something with it and as I did more and more research I came across a report from the Texas water development board they had a study of the aquifer that this land sits on which is red light draw aquifer and they mapped the rainfall in this area and way up on the mountain it gets 30 inches of rainfall but down here it gets 12 to 14 inches and then by the time you get down to the river it drops to nine inches based on the studies I found later that actually is true so I'm now focused more on micro catchments and building mini forests and building structures to help grab some of this abundant humidity that's in the air right now the humidity as I speak is 78 so there is significant moisture out here it's just making sure that you capture it and that you direct it to where you want it my plan for phase one of the project is 88 acres fifty three thousand two hundred and forty trees and the way I'm going to do it is with micro catchments like this this channel is a big experiment the main motivation for doing this is I hope that I can be an example to other people I know lots of people that are interested in buying land in West Texas and they have different ideas for it but not necessarily a fully formed plan what I'm doing in this channel is documenting my learning process I am not an expert now I'm stepping into this as a software guy I've never run an agriculture project before mistakes are going to happen it's part of the process so if you see me either making a mistake or you have ideas that might be more effective leave comments I view a big part of my effort in this project is doing my part for Texas and Texans and I hope that in the process that I Inspire other people to follow the same path if you follow this journey of watching me attempt a permaculture project on a property that I don't live live on and a million miles from nowhere if I can prove to you that I can do it in the most isolated spot in the state of Texas the property that you're considering buying in the future it should be doable for you as well I really enjoyed sharing my vision with you and I appreciate you watching if you want to be notified about the next episode make sure to like And subscribe and I'll see you in the next video everything about West Texas is so kitschy and interesting well there is a road and I am going to try it but I'm not feeling too optimistic about it it's looking pretty dead

Channel: Shaun Overton | DUSTUPS

Views: 1,948,577

Keywords: wasteland, west texas, dustups. texas, americanwest, dustups, texas land, van horn tx, el paso tx, migrant, excavation, off grid in the desert, desert life, land in texas, moving to texas, cheap texas land, texas, wasteland in texas, most isolated place, isolated place, isolated places, texas ranch, ranch, forest, beautiful Ranch in Texas, ranch in texas, tx, my ranch in texas, most isolated place in texas, texas ranch land, most remote place, MOST REMOTE PLACE in Texas

Id: D6fl8dap5nk

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 26 2022