What to do with a lot of bottom land?

Have you looked into Permaculture?

http://www.geofflawton.com/sq/15449-geoff-lawton

https://www.youtube.com/channel/HC5j0ZF16SFA0

Diversity is the key.

If cows are too big, have you thought of goats?

I think Texas is known for growing brown rice. I buy organic short grain brown rice by the 25 lb bag. I think it was close to $50 for the last bag.

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"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

I'd bet one of the reasons that land has been used for pasture is you don't have a water rights to grow any irrigated crops like rice.

WWW

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If the grass looks greener it is probably over the septic tank. - troy n sarah tx

Our existance here is soley for the expoitation of CMG

As I said, if you are looking for a decent return with minimal output then grazing grass cattle is the way to go. No bulls, no calving, no haying, no casterating, branding, and you get your winters off.

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Flaming Xtian
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
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Libertarindependent

I know someone who got water buffalo to milk. They thought there was a good market for the specialty milk.

__________________
"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

There is a fairly substantial water buffalo dairy industry in Italy.

__________________
Flaming Xtian
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi


Libertarindependent

If it were me, I'd go with some type of cattle/haying operation.

I don't know anything about wild hogs but could you make money by letting people come in to hunt the hogs for you.
I probably couldn't because I wouldn't want people around although being over run by hogs might change my mind!
Congrats on your inheritance. What a wonderful gift!

Will the fence hold goats? a lot of meat goats grown in Texas. With you being out there every day, hunting, protecting the property, would be a good match. Feeder cattle or goat lease like tinknal suggests if you do not want to have the year around work....James.

WWW there is no problem with water rights. Thank goodness Texas isn't like that. If you own your property....you own all of your property. Well, except mineral rights.

I plan on having an orchard, so goats are not an option. As far as I can tell...you can have one or the other, but not both. Goodness knows I've tried to have both for a long time and it's never worked. It's all fenced in barbed wire for cattle and wouldn't hold goats...or probably sheep either. I have thought about sheep since I'm a spinner and may end up with a small spinners flock.

Seriously? People milk water buffalo? Ya learn something new every day!

I will check into feeder cattle, however that may represent a larger investment than I want to make.

I'll check into the thatching reed suggestion. Heck if only for my own use that would be pretty danged cool! Yes! I am going to be coppicing some willows. I'm looking forward to trying it.

I've had lots of folks wanting to go hog hunting on my place, but the liability issues are just too great to let folks I don't know go hunting. There is a pretty good market for trapping them live and selling them to processors. Seems that some city folks get chefs to prepare them 'wild boar' in some of them fancy restaurants. Tickles me to think that they are eating piney woods rooters! It's a plumb shame that I no longer eat meat. I'd never have to buy any more meat for the rest of my life living here.

FYI, mozzerella cheese is made from water buffalo milk. Still is, in Italy, with some from cow's milk.

Sheep do not do well at all with wet feet. They get foot rot. Treatment is hard work, expense, and does not always help the sheep. Romney Marsh are more resistant than most, but sheep are basically dryland animals.

I don't know whether it's an option for you or not, but some people make money out of Christmas trees. If you're doing plantation pine, doing your thinning in December can make you money. However, there's an awful lot of overgrown forests packed solid with spindly scrawny pine trees, half of them half-dead, which were planted for Christmas trees by optimists who couldn't afford to cut them or manage to sell them when the end of the year rolled around.

It sounds like a lot of hard work to me, but the land would be ideal for water chestnuts, which are a bulb at the bottom of a type of reed or rush. Could be interesting just for your own home use though, if the pigs didn't catch on.

There's a big lucrative market for whole-carcass wild boar, exported to Germany. The problem would be finding the people to sell to in the USA who have tapped that market, though. On a cottage scale, though, have you any areas near you where German migrants congregated?
How about people who cater spit-roasted pigs? Would any of them need an occasional wild boar? They might even appreciate young animals (sucking pigs or up to half-grown) that are not as fat as shed-grown domestic stock.

Whatever you do, you'll do better if you can tap into specialist up-market markets, rather than just trying to churn out bulk commodities. Your land isn't suited for anything large-scale (like bulk commodities) except the cattle (and pigs) that are there now and go look after themselves most of the time. I think that's fairly important. Why spend most of your time incurring costs while you chop down the stuff you can reach of what your land is growing, when cattle will do it for you, do it better, and make you a profit at it?

Take a look around, and see if there's outlets for grass-fed beef and water buffalo. That's an upscale market, if you can tap into the right channels. One of the best ways is to cut out middlemen. If your special stock don't go through common auctions, but skip rungs in the ladder to market, say direct to a gourmet supplier, then both you and the buyer can pocket more money.
Those beasts are big, though. You are right that you don't want to wrestle them on your own. However, if you round them up regularly (quarterly? half-yearly?) for worm treatment, castrate the young males and draft off the grown steers and cull cows for market once a year, you wouldn't need to hire much labour for long. The animals may not be fond of it, but at least they'd be used to being herded and penned.
Dogs make an enormous difference when working stock. They can make the difference between impossible and just straightforward hard work. They would let you handle single animals if you needed to without bringing in a costly outside worker. Australian Cattle Dogs are good, but find out who uses what dogs in your area, and talk to them.

I've had to tell other people other times that you've got to make a decent professional profit out of whatever you're doing, or the sort of series of setbacks that always comes along sooner or later will send you out backwards because you simply don't have the reserves you need to ride out the storm. It really sounds like your land is already doing what it's best suited for. Big changes would be risky at best, maybe even dangerous. However, what you can do is fine-tune it, and introduce a bit of innovation and diversity.

Sounds like it might be a good location to keep some domestic waterfowl if you can find a market for the meat or eggs. (Goose eggs are desirable for crafts.)

Since you'll be living there, what you ought to do is sit down, make a list of the possibilities that seem attractive to you, and chart the yearly labor each would take. Then see if you can make yourself a steady year-round job out of several of them, or would they pile up with way too much work at one or two times of the year? It sounds like you might be able to find a few acres of ground dry enough for the small flock of sheep you want. Except for shearing and lambing, sheep don't take a lot of time (need a LGD with them, though). Your coppiced willows would need most work in the winter; spinning and weaving could also be primarily a winter occupation. Rice and water chestnuts would be growing season work, at the same time that you'd be working on your garden. And so on.

I think you should consider continuing your leasing arrangement for now, fencing off the parts of the property you want to use. As you come up with uses for more of the property, take it out of the lease agreement. That way the land won't grow up while you are getting things going.

Kathleen

Excellent suggestion Kathleen and definitely the way that I am leaning at the moment. Though I have a lot of experience with cows, I'm just not anxious to get back into them.

If I am looking at things from a purely monetary point of view, I should just stick with bees, plant a larger garden and propagate plants for sale. I can stay full time busy with just those pursuits.

Water chestnuts....definitely putting that on my list of things to research!

Yes there is enough high ground to keep a small flock of sheep. I'd have to shut them up in a barn at night due to mountain lions and coyotes, so I wouldn't want a large flock. There are too many predators to try and raise ducks and geese in any kind of numbers.

As I am spending more time looking and exploring I am delighted at the foraging potential. I found some walnut trees that I didn't know were there today and some huge areas of honeysuckle. The potential for bees is amazing.

Wogglebug there are buyers here local for all the wild pigs that one cares to transport to them. I'm not sure how much they pay, but I know several people that trap full time and sell to them.