80AcresOnline

Every year we have to file an annual report with our county tax appraisal district.    We have to use the TPWD form, which–being written for much larger properties mostly focused on game animals–doesn’t really fit us.   So every year, in addition to filling out the state’s 9 page form, I write “Please see attached supplemental pages” many times and then devise a supplement that goes through the same required activities from our perspective, with pictures.    In detail sufficient to prove that yes, we are doing everything we say we’re doing, and yes, what we’re doing does fit the requirements.  

Putting this together takes…time.  I’ve got it down to less time then it used to take, but still it’s a fair bit of work, and arguing with Word to force the formatting to look right on every page.    It’s importnat to check and re-check to be sure that there are enough pictures, the right pictures, in the right places, with the right part of the text, and (in the whole) showing multiple activities and multiple parts of the property.

This year, because of the extreme drought for the first almost-9 months and the extreme wet conditions from late September through the end of the year, the report was a bit…bifocal, so to speak.   We could not do some planned activities early in the year because of extreme heat and dry winds that made using machinery in the dry (dying or dead) grass a fire hazard…or later, when the ground conditions went from hot, cracked, dusty-dry to  deep black glue in the first four days of rain.  (Ten inches.)

However, I worked on it steadily, and finally got a printout that looked right (using up almost all the blue ink) and today I drove it down to the county seat, to the tax appraisal building, and personally handed it in, insisting on a copy of the front page with the notation that we did in fact turn it in on time.

All 26 pages (altogether.)

It would be really handy if I could just put it online and let them look at it there…but I can’t, so…I expect to be driving down there every January for the rest of my life (or having someone else drive it if I’m 104 or something.)