Harris Greenwood locked his dream away for more than 40 years. He and his wife, Romelia Favrot, saved boxes of magazine cutouts, pots, pans and other objects in the attics of the various homes they occupied.Every box of scraps they saved bore the same label, “Ranch.”

Identifying grass are Kade Hubbard, contractor; Ralph Ebeling Jr., Pedernales Soil and Water Conservation District chairman; and C.A. Cowsert, Blanco County Natural Resources Conservation Service district conservationist.

Greenwood’s dream was born out of his childhood memories of his family’s summer excursions out of the city and into the “magic and mystery” of the Texas Hill Country.

As a boy, Greenwood recalls swimming and fishing in spring-fed ponds and cool nights spent on a sleeping porch overlooking the swimming hole marking the headwaters of Indian Creek. He recalls the smell of wet cedar when it rained and the bleating of Angora goats on the hills of his family’s “place” three miles south of Ingram. Greenwood’s father had purchased this property for the lofty price of $17 per acre so his family could escape the summer polio threat plaguing Houston and other coastal cities during the 1940s and ‘50s.

In the early 1960s, with six kids in college, the family had to sell the “place” and abandon their Hill Country retreat. With the sale, Greenwood left part of his heart and soul there and replaced it with a dream to someday return and make the Hill Country his home.

Until 1999, Greenwood’s dream remained just that. While in bed with pneumonia for a week, he resolved to memorize a poem, Kipling’s “The Gods of the Copybook Headings.” Something in that poemcaused Greenwood to ponder the dream he had carried for so long. Would it stay a dream, a random stash of hopeless rubbish, discarded in yet another attic? Or, would he and Romelia take that transcendent risk and cut away from a world that proved lucrative, but one that Greenwood and Kipling alike found “lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind?”

This was Greenwood’s epiphany. He immediately told Romelia that he was “cashing out” of the game and returning to the old “tried and true” where fundamental values still ruled. They were going to find their place again in the Hill Country.

Harris Greenwood stands before his "dream ranch,” which sprang to life after selective brush management.

One week later, while practicing his recital of “Gods” and perusing the Hill Country real estate ads, Greenwood’s eyes fell on a ranch ad with the title words, “Water, Water, Water.” He and Romelia toured the property the next day. The biblical saying “if you find a field with a treasure in it, you need to sell everything you have and buy that field” rang through Greenwood’s thoughts as he and Romelia signed a contract on their 347-acre “dream ranch” within a few hours after the tour. They named it Double HH Ranch.

The ranch was exactly what Greenwood wanted. It wasn’t a highly improved showplace, but more of a project in the waiting. After years of overgrazing and neglect, the ranch was inundated with invasive plants such as McCartney Rose and Ashe Juniper (also called cedar). Springs were being choked out by this brush and reduced to a mere trickle in places. Ponds were heavily silted and levees were leaking.

With the help of locals such as Karl Hartmann, the couple went to work on removing these invasive plants, and like his dream, the ranch began to spring to life.

They commuted to the ranch from Houston on weekends for the next six years and moved there permanently in 2006. All the while, they continued to peck away at the cedar infestation. In 2007, they sought the help of C.A. Cowsert, the Blanco County district conservationist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), who wrote a conservation plan for the ranch.

He also enrolled the ranch in the Lower Colorado River Authority’s (LCRA) Creekside Conservation Program, an 18-year-old effort to help landowners reduce erosion and slow sedimentation in the streams and waterways within the Colorado River Watershed area of LCRA’s 10 statutory counties and Lampasas County. This program provides up to a 50 percent cost-share match with a maximum reimbursement of $20,000 per project. It is funded in part by a $508,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board, awarded to LCRA in 2004. In 2007, another grant was awarded LCRA for $458,000, allowing more landowners to participate in the program.

Double HH Ranch owner Romelia Favrot; Pedernales SWCD directors Dwayne Hoppe, Roy Bruemmer, Ralph Ebeling Jr. and Ann Holt; and ranch owner Harris Greenwood.

With the help of the Creekside Program, Greenwood hired Kade Hubbard’s 5-H Ranch to selectively remove the dense stands of cedar. After consulting with retired Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist Bill Armstrong, Greenwood decided to leave pockets and corridors of cedar for wildlife shelter. After Armstrong’s advice, Greenwood chose hydraulic tree shearing and chainsaw cutting as the preferred method of cedar removal because of the minimal ground disturbance that these practices cause.

“We wanted to do everything we could to help our soil, water and wildlife,” said Greenwood. “With the help of the LCRA Creekside Conservation Program, we now have our cedar down to approximately 20 percent of our total land mass and have limited it to ridges and steep slopes where grass production is minimal.”

With most of the invasive brush removed, the rangeland can grow native grasses and forbs that provide food for wildlife and soil-stabilizing ground cover. According to Cowsert, “Rainfall is absorbed into the soil instead of being caught up in the cedar canopy and returned to the atmosphere through evaporation or running off the surface of the land, taking valuable soil with it.”

Romelia Favrot takes the lead role in ranch conservation issues. Recently, she applied her “green” knowledge to the construction of a “barnhaus” that is supported by rainwater harvesting and has a Franklin stove to provide heat from firewood gathered on the ranch. She recycles everything.For instance, she had the middle wall of the shack on the property converted into a refectory/dining room table and benches.The shack’s floor became paneling for the bunkhaus that she and Harris lived in for two years.

Greenwood and Favrot are active conservationists who love to share their enthusiasm with others. Through the Creekside Program, they have strengthened friendships with the Pedernales Soil and Water Conservation District’s Board of Directors Ann Holt, Roy Bruemmer, Dwayne Hoppe, Jim Odiorne and Chairman Ralph Ebeling Jr. Last December, the couple hosted a ranch tour for this SWCD board. Then last spring they hosted the Pedernales River Advisory Panel on another ranch tour. They organized the Pedernales Wildlife Management Co-op as a way of joining efforts with neighbors to improve wildlife and habitat quality.

Needless to say, they take an active role in the conservation community. As Harris puts it, “We are ‘foreigners’ from the flatlands and don’t claim to have all the answers.” “They may not have all the answers, but they sure are asking the right questions,” says Ebeling, the conservation board’s chairman.

Contractor Kade Hubbard holds loppers used to selectively remove small juniper on the Double HH Ranch.

So, ask Harris Greenwood about that dream that was once locked away in some dank, dusty attic of his mind, and he’ll get a gleam in his eye. He just might feel the urge to recite some poetry. Perhaps a little Kipling...

“Rolling grass and open timber, with a hint of hills behind...
Got my strength and lost my nightmares. Then I entered on my find.”
The Explorer, 1898