Where the Trinity comes wrapping its way around the Kerens-area hills like a wet jade ribbon, family ranching is looked at in a new way.

Jim Reed is the third generation landowner of the Reed Family Ranch, and he and his wife Judy are intent on managing the resources found there in a way that will sustain them for years to come.

When he inherited the ranch's 1,780 acres, with half the ranch in wetlands and the other half in hill land, he inherited a cow/calf operation that had been host to close family members hunting recreationally for six decades.

Jim received some advice he did not follow. "Most everybody I talked with advised me to sell the ranch as quickly as possible and enjoy the money", he said.

Reed is finding out that thanks to holistic management - a newer, more well-rounded way to looking at the time-honored Texas tradition - modern ranching can be rewarding in many ways.

"It's a belief that we have that anything that moves toward diversity is a good direction for us. Nature is diversified, and the best we can do is to try to work with nature as much as possible....I wanted to make sure it was around for a fourth generation of Reeds." (That future generation is already involved. A son runs the cow/calf operation, a daughter teaches school in Kerens, and her husband leads the hunting operation. Youngest son Jimmy is a student at Navarro College, and he manages the food plots and ranch services.)

Income potential and habitat go hand-in-hand at the Reed Family Ranch. Because the Reeds conduct habitat enhancement initiatives and wildlife census surveys, keep meticulous records, and report harvest numbers, their hunting season is about double the number of days it is in other parts of the state. Hunting, in turn, provides an estimated 25 percent of the ranch income.

The Reeds manage everything from food supply and herd size to frequency of harvest and harvest mixture - how many buck and doe should be taken each year, a partnership with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department that is seen as more important than ever since over 95 percent of Texas land is privately owned.

One of their biggest challenges was to balance the needs of the wildlife with those of the cow/calf operation. Although cattle and white-tailed deer do not directly compete with one another for food supply, there is enough overlap - especially in time of drought - that creating adequate forage is essential. With the help of the electric fences to reinforce rotational grazing, the Reeds don't allow cattle in their forested areas during the white-tailed deer stress periods of late summer or the winter months, because they would compete directly with wildlife for food. Because the cattle open up new grazing areas, the deer tend to follow the cattle around, and are seen frequently about two paddocks behind the cattle, Jim said.

The Reeds also offer commercial hunting of duck and feral hogs as well as the deer. "There are people from urban areas who need a place to go," he said..

On a recent spring afternoon, a group of fathers and sons drove down from suburban Dallas prepared for an early evening feral hog hunt. "Bubba" and his nephew, Seth, were loaded for boar, and whiled away the wait for the rest of their party by fishing in the Reeds' private lake.

The hunt for feral hogs has become a deer hunters' sport, extending the hunting season. Hog rootings, "normally cussed and discussed by locals as a problem" are happily received at the Reed Family Ranch, because their rooting ways naturally and effortlessly (for the Reeds, not the hogs, which Jim bills as "pretty well a wild animal with a bad attitude") till the land.

"I don't ever have to gas 'em up and they never break down or have flat tires like a tractor can. We've now established some pretty healthy switchgrass and gamagrass in the areas that hogs have 'disked' for us." Jim said with a chuckle.

Engineering a holistic ranch is something of a passion for Jim and Judy Reed. They have also planted and re-established native grasses, useful for cattle forage and wildlife cover. Grazing planning incorporates cultivation of separate waterfowl habitat areas to increase food supply at certain times of the year. Bringing in vetch and clover to join the yucca and prickly pear has built a reputation among winged tourists, and helps foster birdwatching.

Sometimes they're engineers - and other times, just fascinated observers. In a remote part of the ranch, a pencil cactus alien to North Texas was likely brought as a seed by a vagrant bird. It has grown up intertwined with the roots and the fate of a mesquite tree, and is slowly yielding its existence to the native tree. "There's all kinds of symbiotic relationships here," Judy said.

An infestation of army worms had the Reeds scrambling to stop the destructive creatures, but acting on a hunch - based on what he knew about holistic management - Reed decided to find out what the worms' own enemies would do. Sure enough, wasps and beetles moved in, assumed their place in Mother Nature's great pecking order of a food chain, and devoured the worms. Had he simply blanketed the area with pesticides, he would have killed off the worms' predators and might have left the ranch vunerable to move devastating infestations, Jim said.

The creation of wildlife corridors has been a hit with white-tailed deer - plots of protein-rich plants like iron and clay cowpeas, alyce clover and buckwheat provide forage.

Jim is convinced other species are benefiting from the wildlife corridors they have orchestrated as carefully as any master-planned community. "My feeling is that these corridors are also being used by a wide variety of species such as the cotton-tail and swamp rabbit, bobcat, ground-nesting birds, and a whole host of other species that need cover from predators." he said.

Figuring how best to cooperative, not compete, with nature, is a challenge Jim has embraced.

"Listening to what nature is saying is one of the best ways I know to make good decisions. Nature already knows what needs to be done and will make decisions for us if we don't do our part. The problem most of us have (including me) is being quiet long enough to figure out what she's telling us...Wildlife is part of all ranches. In order to consider the whole, the wildlife must enter into the planning and monitoring."

"This forces us to focus on the big picture, and creates opportunities to listen to all points of view, perceptions of what the real problem is, and a sharing of the best solution for all concerned."

The upside for the Reed Family Ranch itself? "The land is getting healthier every year." Judy said.

If anyone would like more information about the Reed Family Ranch, you can email the Reeds and/or add your name to the Ranch Newsletter list.

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