SPRING IS SPRINGING IN COLORADO! PRIVATE LAND STEWARDSHIP & RESPONSIBLE MANAGEMENT

Spring is springing in Colorado.  Mother's Day is coming and gardens are being planned and landscaping ideas are being discussed.  It made me think about responsible gardening, that lead to looking for information and it ended with writing about responsible small acreage management.  That is how my brain works over coffee in the morning.

A South Carolina friend posted a story on Facebook about the evils of the “Bradford Pear.”  I thought, “How can a pear be evil? Pears are yummy!” Having never lived further east than I do now on the Front Range of Colorado, the "Bradford Pear" didn't mean a thing to me; I had ever heard of it. The story was an ever-more-familiar one of “landscaping gone bad.” The story from Greenville.com (SC) actually said that the pear was worse than kudzu; I KNOW what kudzu is and it is really bad! I loved learning and hope that little by little folks "get it". It is amazing that once I learn the truth about something that is outwardly beautiful (as in pretty flowers or trees in bloom) it loses its loveliness. What is true though is that this story can be repeated across the nation; just different plants in different places.

On the Central West Coast, where I lived so much of my younger life, you can pluck out "Bradford pear" and plug in "Scotch broom". It is beautiful with bright, yellow, tiny flowers and the aroma is sweet and amazing. Until you learn it is invasive. Then it becomes a vast sea of "yellow hell" with a sickly-sweet, worse than church-lady perfume. It is hardy as a Scotsman. Some municipalities now require that a land owner fully eradicate all Scotch broom on their land before they will issue a building permit.  This is a tall order for some and can cost in the 1000s to 10s of thousands of dollars.  It can be negotiated as part of the closing when you buy land; you can ask for allowances for it much like carpet that needs replacing or an aged roof.

Scotch Broom

In Colorado it was once the Russian olive tree. Note these names “Scotch”, “Russian”? Pretty clearly non-native! People did get wise of the olive trees long ago and do not plant them like they once did; they also make a mess. Colorado is that we are not Greenville, South Carolina -- we are "High Desert-Ville.” Even the stuff that you really WANT to grow, is hard to grow. So when you destroy the native environment on your land it is very hard to regain.

The bane of our existence on the Front Range are not so much trees but noxious weeds. Most of the proliferation of these weeds stems from poor small, farm/ranch acreage management. Folks come to Colorado for a "lifestyle". Some are “townies” or urbanites who pick Denver as their new urban stomping-grounds surrounded by a playground. It is definitely an up-and-coming urban experience and it has become wildly expensive to live there. These tend to be younger, professional folks sans kids. Then of course mountain ski folks who can live 10 people to a condo just to ski! There are some are hard core athletes who relocate here to train and then lots are pseudo-farm/ranch dreamers, “let's raise the kids in the country" folks. It is laudable and I wish more kids grew up in the country -- even though where these folks live isn't really the country it still has some of the great country experiences. If you can buy a latte within 15 minutes of home it isn’t really “the country” but I digress!

Some of these ranchette subdivisions seem a far sight better than the scrape-the-ground, postage-stamp-lots with-cookie-cutter-clutter where there are four styles of home, with a slight orientation variation and 6 shades of beige paint. There they are allowed to call their drainage system and retention ponds “open space”.  Developers are getting much better about creating real variation and designating meaningful open space but the massive growth that Colorado experienced in the last 20 years moved far faster than planning regulations did. The five-acre ranchette subdivision is financially unsustainable but what is already here is here to stay.  These developments cost far more to support than they ever pay in property taxes – there are too few tax payers per mile of roadway. This sort of development sprawls down the Front Range from Fort Collins to Pueblo – there is rural sprawl on top of rural-sprawl. I have seen some of the worst land planning policies ever here in Colorado. In planning there is a balance of private property rights and jurisdictional planning regulations.  We are all “in this together” to a certain extent.  You don’t have to stray very far from city limits to find a free-for-all environment when it comes to county planning. People think they live in the sticks if they don’t have curb and gutter…but they don’t and what they do does affect the native environment greatly.

Now back to invasive species. So these people buy their little 5 acres on the Front Range; they get 3 horses and maybe a 4-H critter or two. I love the idea of kids raising animals – the life lessons are valuable and profound. They fence their 5 acres and turn them all out. They look so pretty and pastoral out there grazing! They think they have grass. They do not have a CLUE.

On average in Colorado it take 40 acres of ground to support a SINGLE cow-calf pair or a SINGLE horse. Some places a little less -- some a LOT more. There are years we are so dry that you can't rely on grazing stock much at all unless you have big, BIG land.  So often people graze their 5 - 35 acre "ranchettes" to the point that it looks like a bomb went off. In the livestock world this is called “dry-lot.” No grass. No grazing. Just dirt. If left on the ground unchecked horses will eat the slow-growing, native bunch grasses and leave the weeds alone. Now there is far less competition the next year for the noxious weed seeds that blow in, come in with the Kansas hay or that drain off the dirt road when the county last put imported “gravel” on it. The next year less grass, more weeds and so on and so on... It is awful. You can see it from space. Use Google Earth and scroll around some of these ranchette subdivisions in Elbert and El Paso Counties and without knowing a thing -- you can see who does and does not manage their ground well and you can see exactly where the fences are.

Grazing Patterns -- Colorado

If someone wants to trash their own ground in some ways it is none of my business (although I am so passionate about soil, native foliage and ground that it hurts my heart). It IS their land. BUT when what THEY do with their land adversely affects me and MY land? We gotta talk. If my neighbor has a glorious crop” if Canada thistle, musk thistle or toadflax, it will plunder my property and become quickly my problem. Once you leave the more dense areas and get into a county just outside the metro area you will find there is little over-site and even less education.  It is nearly impossible to “patrol” these vast, scattered counties. The little university extension offices in the counties have no meaningful way to reach all of the residents with the small land, ground management information they DO have. The fact that these developments already don’t pay their way, makes the county budgets where they exist even tighter.  There is no revenue stream tied to code or weed enforcement so it goes undone.  The miles involved in patrolling these areas is also prohibitive.

ABOVE: Canada Thistle RIGHT: Yellow Toadflax

 
Real estate brokers in Colorado are often, clueless about land management and zoning regulations.  A broker from a city just 10 miles away may know nothing about rural land use. Some don’t care; they simply want to make a sale. I know only a handful of truly brilliant brokers.  As a former county planning director I was often stuck being the “bad guy” when a new land owner came in to talk about their plans for their land.  I would be rich if I had a dollar for every time I heard “Well my real estate broker TOLD me I could.”  I always told brokers how much I appreciated them when they came in to do research for a client. They would apologize for taking so much time and I will tell them it was time well spent for both of us!

  

I believe that part of the land buying process, of ANY land that is zoned to have equine or livestock of ANY kind, should require a visit to the local planning department for a “land buyer” meeting.  It would be a requirement of the broker due diligence and it would mandate a sign off from the designated authority. The buyer and/or seller would pay for this meeting so the county tax payer did not.  It could even be a conference call with the broker and buyers reading the regulations online together with the county staff person. After the call, the county could email a certificate for closing to verify completion of that requirement. Part of that would also include a willful and specific sign-off from the buyer stating that they understood their land use rights and land management best practices. It is a buyer beware state. If we did this, the buyer would not buy something that wasn’t going to work for them and would not destroy his own land and damage the lands around him.

The stories I have heard brokers tell to make a sale are mind-blowing more sad really. I don't mean to vilify all brokers; I too have been a broker!  I just find that some brokers are willing to represent clients when it would have been more appropriate to refer them to a regional expert.  Even I know that is a hard thing to do. What I have also found is that even when a buyer learns after the fact that they are not allowed to have 27 horses on 5 acres, they do it anyway – since their broker told them they could – and we end up in a “watcha gonna do about it?” situation.  If everyone is fully informed prior to closing, it makes enforcement a lot more possible and it sets expectations appropriately.  It also educates brokers and that is a good thing. We are stewards of our land and while I am an ardent defender of private property rights, it is part of the fabric of this nation. I am also passionate about land stewardship and defending my own property rights from being damaged by my irresponsible neighbor. 

Just an idea.