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Pictures from around the Homestead

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sixball:
I posted some wildlife pictures on EDNY's "Chickadee" thread and though it best to start my own thread with pictures from around the place here and maybe a few other spots. They may include some of the house, shop, and junk piles. We bought this 80 acre place in 1972 when I was 27 and had built enough to move here by 1980. We'll stay as long as we can but it's not easy sometimes. Anyone else is welcome to post their similar pictures and thoughts.

First a couple I took of the place while deer hunting this year. One is from the canyon above the house looking down and across the valley. The other is from the ridge where some of the eagle pictures were taken.

sixball:
Some of the smaller critters. There are at least two kinds of ground squirrels, pack rats, chip monks.

EDNY:
Neat country out there...is it possible for soft wood like pine trees to survive in large numbers?  Just curious - when I bought this old farm back in the 90's it was previously a dairy farm with open pasture.  I began planting about 2000 various pines and spruce each Spring for few years.  Planted them in random groups of 6-8 hoping to draw in wildlife (deer), some of the trees are now 30' tall and the deer showed  up.

The trees have begun broadcasting on their own and misc trees are popping up everywhere.  Have also planted hard wood like black walnut, horse and (100%) American chestnuts. 

sixball:
Ed, This area is a series of micro climates. Elevations change rapidly and Northern and Southern exposers change within feet because of the mountains. The snow stays much longer on the northern slopes and more plants grow there. Water is scarce. An old saying here is, "Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over." It is as true now as in the old days. Nevada has twice as many water rights than it has water. In 1916 Nevada and Arizona almost went to war over the Colorado River. This whole area is in the rain shadow of the Sierras. Wet storms from the west are squeezed as they come up and over the Sierras. It works like wringing out a sponge. The dry sponge (clouds) continue west and actually draw up moisture and carry it away, to repeat the process at the next mountain range. I still like the east slope of the Sierras more that the more forested West slope.

That said almost anything will grow here if it's in the right spot and has water. We are able to live here because there are springs on the property. They are the reason this became private property in the 1800s. Nevada water laws are different from anywhere else in the country because of the mining that the state was built on. The minerals and the water were seldom found in the same place. Virginia City gets it's water through ah big syphon tube from neat Lake Tahoe. Before the mining most of the mountains around here were covered with Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir. There was also more Pinion pine and Mountain Juniper than there is now. The trees were striped from the mountains for mine timbers and firewood to fuel the big steam engines used for the mines and mills. Pinion and Juniper are what is growing here now. This deer season I saw for the first time a grove on Ponderosa in the mountain range behind my house that I had heard about almost 50 years. It is several miles away. Just a few miles away between Virginia City and Reno there are lots of Ponderosa and Doug fir.

Cottonwoods and willows grow where there is water along with lots of brushy plants. Fruit trees do well. I have tried to reintroduce some of the larger evergreens with no success yet. I think with the clear cutting in the mining days a lot of soil was lost from the mountain sides. Another problem we have is so many man caused fires and sone caused by lightning. Stupidity is the cause but invasive non-native plants are the fuel that drives them. Cheat grass brought fro Russia in hopes to improve grazing along with tumble weeds and fox tail. We have been very lucky but have had one right here and many around us.

The Pinions are great trees and make the best fire wood I have ever used and that includes Oak, Madrone, Almond, Eucalyptus , and more. It is very dangerous in wildfires because each tree is a wildfire waiting to happen. They have a high pitch content and have dead branches from ground to the top on the inside of the needle canopy. They make their own chimney. We call them gasoline trees. In Mexico they make lamp fuel from the pitch. They produce great pine nuts and are Nevada's state tree. The junipers called cedars in some places make great fence posts, an industry in the old days, and is a nice smelling wood to burn.
#1. A sign just over the hill from me where a fire started by stupid shooters burned for a few days. I got this years deer on the edge of that burn.
#2. What looks like a cloud is smoke from that fire.
#3. A hillside spring with several large cottonwoods.
#4. the road home

EDNY:
Kinda reminds me of working in the desert near El Paso, TX and Anapra, NM.  Worked the entire southern border at some point over the years. Used to really enjoy the smell of the desert after a good rain....hard to describe but the desert even felt good to me after the rain.

You mention pitch...pitch pine is common up here, the pitch can be used as a survival food or a hot warm up survival tea.  You gotta be really lost to chew or drink it! :o  I bet it makes a good glue also...takes days to get it off your hands!

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