Jim and Judy Reed at the Trinity River; half of the Reed Ranch lies with the Trinity River floodplain.

When TWA members Jim and Judy Reed took over management of this 1,780-acre ranch on the middle Trinity River, it had been overgrazed and overhunted for decades. It was already on a downward slide that would lead to fragmentation among family members or sale to someone outside the family. After three generations in the Reed Family, the land was in the danger of being lost.

Water and family involvement turned out to be the magic ingredients that allowed the ranch to heal inself.

With a background in systems management, Jim Reed looked for a land management system. He settled on holistic resource management. (HRM).

"HRM leads you through a goal-setting process," Jim said. "Within those goals were land stewardship and water conservation, and relationship to native plants to the ability of land to hold and secure water."

Those principles have largely guided Jim and Judy's stewardship of the ranch.

Reed with bunchgrasses, cows, and electric paddock fence. With water management, Reed doubled the land's carrying capacity f rom 150 cow-calf pairs to 300.

"When we took the place over, it had more cattle on it than needed to be," said Jim. "It was overgrazed and overhunted. I saw what was happening to other places around here as parents died and the kids cut up the land. I wanted this place to be economically sustainable. I had to increase income and lower expenses."

The Reeds began working with what they already had. About half of the ranch lies within the Trinity River floodplain and periodically floods. The Reeds installed a water control structure in the dam of a 23-acre lake, and primary duck-hunting area, to allow for moist soil management to improve waterfowl habitat and enhance the quality of water that returns to the river. They also stabilized the dam with cobble to control erosion. Depressions were created to hold water and slow run-off and increase percolation.

Native grasses such as Alamo switchgrass and eastern gama grass were planted in the bottomlands both for grazing and to minimize water loss to run-off and evaporation. In a forested wetlands project, they planted 600 cypress and 16,000 oak seedlings. "We tried to move away from a monoculture toward a diversified landscape," Jim said. "When we did plantings, we tried to intermix things as much as we could."

The Reeds planted native grasses such as Alamos switchgrass and eastern gama grass in the bottomlands both for grazing and to minimize water loss to run-off and evaporation. In a forested wetland project, they planted 600 cypress and 16,000 oak seedlings.

After considering removing cattle from the place and relying strictly on income from deer, duck and hog hunting, the Reeds decided instead to use cattle both to generate income and improve the wildlife habitat. Jim spent a couple of years on the computer and on the ground designing a 33-paddock, Savory rotational grazing system. Key to making that work was the construction of a 10-acre water supply pond on the elevated portion of the ranch that uses gravity flow to deliver water to each of the paddocks.

"We doubled the carrying capacity of the place from 150 cow-calf pairs to 300," Jim said. "The cow-calf operation is very profitable. We could not have done this without separating the place into paddocks, and we could not have to the paddock system without water."

Jim fondly recalls summer Sundays spent at a log cabin his fathers and uncles built atop a bluff overlooking the Trinity River.

"I wanted to hold onto the place so we could pass it down," he said. "I hope my grandkids' grandkids can still be enjoying it."

Web Links:

Reed Family Ranch: http://www.reedfamilyranch.com/
Holistic Resource Management of Texas: http://www.hrm-texas.org/