Lot 22-A

Late September, around four in the afternoon, and the heat has finally turned loose. Thunderheads stack up white over the oak timber on the far rim. The meadow has changed color to gold, the prickly pear is showing off it's yellow rose of Texas, and a truck out on the blacktop announces itself long before you see it. Room is the first thing this 35-acre tract hands you. Tract 22-A sits inside Walnut Creek Ranch, 845 acres of oak-timbered Kerr County, and of all the ranch land for sale here, this is the one whose wide middle tells you where to build before you've finished crossing it.

The approach is already made. An asphalt ranch roadway runs all the way up to the entrance, and an electric gate stands at the turn-in, which is the difference between arriving on a February night in blowing rain and fighting a rutted two-track in the dark. Roughly 1,520 ft of frontage runs the northeast boundary where that pavement goes by. Access rights are a matter of the deed and the plat, not of what you can see out there, and we'll put both documents in your hands. Power has already been brought to this tract as well. Ask us where it stands and what a service connection would involve, and bring your own electrician into that conversation.

Water moves across this tract in a way you can read on foot. A draw enters at the northwest corner and carries better than a quarter mile, about 2,220 ft, across the property to the southern boundary. Burr Oak Creek clips the northwest in a short run of about 70 ft, and a second shallow draw cuts about 240 ft across the northern end. These beds run after a rain and sit dry between. That's how this region behaves, and anybody who tells you otherwise hasn't spent a dry August here. What the draws do for an owner is predictable and valuable: they hold the shade, they funnel the deer, and at dusk the trails that feed into them are where you'll see movement.

The land lifts about 91 ft across the tract, roughly 1,945 ft at the low end up to 2,036 ft. You feel it under the truck. That rise is what gives you choices for a homesite, because you can set a house up on the crest with the wet weather drainage carrying away from you instead of toward you, and still have the clear middle of the tract laid out in front of the porch.

About a fifth of the acreage is wide meadow, running from the northeast corner clear across to the southern boundary, and the rest carries cedar and motts of oak thick enough to screen a building site and hold game out of the wind. Wire runs the full west boundary and better than half the southern one. A cross fence angles northeast to southwest, from the east boundary over to the southern, splitting the tract into two pastures, which is handy if you ever run a few head or simply want the horses kept off your yard. Don't read any of that wire as a property boundary. The recorded survey settles where the corners are.

• Roughly 1,520 ft of frontage on the asphalt public road, northeast boundary
• A seasonal draw running the northwest corner to the southern boundary
• About 91 ft of rise, roughly 1,945 to 2,036 ft
• Wide meadow spanning the northeast corner to the southern edge

This is handsome Texas Hill Country, and it has history under it. Kerrville is an easy run for groceries, fuel and a doctor. Fredericksburg pulls the other direction for a Saturday afternoon. In between, you've got oak hills and quiet.

Every tract here is surveyed, and the restrictions are kept minimal with no business use allowed, which is what keeps the neighbors' intentions predictable. A pipeline easement crosses the northern end of this tract, east to west, as is common across this region; it is shown on the survey and set out in the title work. We owner finance with as little as 5% down, and we'll go over the tax valuation on the property with you and what maintaining it would require. Nothing here is complicated.

Wear boots and good britches, since the pear is thick in spots. October and November are the best months for covering all 35 acres without sweating through your shirt. Meet us at the gate and we'll take you up the pavement, across the meadow to the crest where most folks decide the house belongs, and then on foot to the draw where it leaves the property on the southern boundary.