By Loydean Thomas. Originally published: September 2004. This story originally appeared in San Antonio InFocus magazine. Some information may have changed since its original publication.
“You can take the boy out of the country”– Or can you?
“Almost every guy who has grown up in Texas wants to raise horses or cattle,” said David Phillips, general sales manager of the Phyllis Browning Company, a local Realtor. “And lots of people are interested in land for hunting and recreation. It’s all part of our Texas heritage, the lifestyle we treasure.”
“The people who buy close to town are more gentleman ranchers or farmers because the land gets expensive closer to town,” he added.
Embracing Texas Hill Country Ranch Living
Two related families have found their own Texas Hill Country Shangri-la in Smithson Valley on Texas Highway 46, between Bulverde and New Braunfels.
Kyle Oliver, previously in the hotel and restaurant business and now “gentleman cattle rancher,” and his wife P.J. bought their 242-acre Triple O Ranch in 1992. In 1998 they built a 6,000-square-foot limestone ranch house that stretches along a hillside overlooking the highway.
“When we started looking for a place in the country, we had three criteria,” said Kyle, a Texas A&M grad who grew up in a family of outdoorsmen in Rockport. “We wanted to be in Comal County because of the lower tax rate, and we wanted to be outside an incorporated city.” The third requirement was to locate outside the recharge zone of the Edwards Aquifer, which has environmental restrictions protecting the underground water supply for San Antonio and much of the Hill Country.
P.J., a city girl who grew up in Pasadena, Tx., and is still getting acclimated to the solitude of the country, had one additional requirement: “I wanted to be where I could see the highway.”
They settled on property that offered an additional bonus. It was right across the road from the 1,700-acre WR Ranch owned by P.J.’s father, Eric W. White and his wife Carolyn.
When the Whites bought their property in 1991, they were driving around looking for five or 10 acres on which to build their retirement home. Carolyn spotted the site in the rolling hills on Highway 46. “I’ll take that, right there,” she remarked.
“It was mostly cedars and cactus,” Carolyn says of the now-beautiful park-like site of their two-story, 7,000-square-foot brick home. “We enjoyed cleaning it up, and we did most of it ourselves,” she said.
“We have enjoyed this more than anything we have ever done,” Eric said.
Eric founded Garden Ridge Pottery and World Imports, a company that has expanded to 44 stores in 13 states. Although he sold his interest in the company and nominally is retired since 1992, he still goes daily to his office at C&W Properties in Schertz to oversee his investments.
True to his industrious nature, Eric’s involvement in cattle ranching goes well beyond the “gentleman rancher” designation. In addition to his ranch at Smithson Valley, he owns a ranch in Poth and a ranch and auction barn in Floresville. He raises registered Brangus, “the Cadillac of cattle,” which he sells to cattle breeders all over the country who want to upgrade their herds.
The Olivers also run a few head of Brangus cattle, but their primary interest is in the recreational opportunities offered by the Hill Country.
“The contents of our freezer runs the gamut from squirrel and rabbit, ducks and geese, doves and quail, wild turkey, wild hog and venison to fresh fish and seafood (from the Gulf Coast) all taken by my own hand and all free from pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, worming agents, stabilizers and preservatives,” Kyle said.
Visitors to the White’s place love driving around and looking at the veritable Eden of domesticated animals and wildlife: three dogs, four barn cats, five geese, a racket of guineas, a pride of peacocks, and a mischief of miniature goats. The wild population includes white-tail deer, red deer, axis deer, fallow deer, black buck, sika deer and Mongolian sheep, and all of them gather around to be fed when they hear the ranch truck approaching.
“I’ve hunted all my life and I’ve never seen this many deer,” Eric said. He said visitors love driving around and admiring the deer.
“We’ve got a lot of animals, and they are all fat,” Carolyn added. However, these animals are not destined for the freezer. Tenderhearted Carolyn sees to that.
“I like the outdoors, but I don’t want to hunt,” said Carolyn, who grew up on a farm in Tennessee. “We let outsiders hunt a little bit, but I don’t want to do it.”
“She won’t eat home-raised beef or chicken. She goes to town and buys meat for the table,” Eric said. “She wouldn’t even eat the eggs from our chickens.”
Although P.J. had to adjust to the fact that her 10-year-old daughter Kayla’s social life involved an often-lengthy auto trip to pick up a playmate, she enjoys her life in the Hill Country.
“I like the idea of being here, of coming to something new to see what you can make of it,” she said.
P.J. manages 17 rental homes, a business that keeps her busy, but still allows her to spend her time with her daughter and to serve as a substitute teacher at Kayla’s school.
As for Kayla, she has taken to country living like ducks take to the lake her father built on the property.
“She likes to swim in the pool, play on the trampoline. She likes to fish and hunt and do it all. She’s right in the middle of it,” P.J. said. Her cousins, who also enjoy hunting and fishing, visit often. “Kayla says, ‘Dad, I hope we never have to go back to the city.’”
Her pets run the gamut from the mundane to the exotic. She has a dog, a cat and some fish, of course, but she also has a python and a tarantula that live in her father’s office behind the garage because they aren’t allowed in the house. For a time she was bottle-feeding Billy and Brianna, a pair of baby goats “that just showed up one day.”
The wildlife, the domesticated animals, the family get-togethers all serve to foster and strengthen the powerful connection the Whites and the Olivers feel for the land.
“My grandparents, Cletus and Elsie Wyble, were married 63 years. They died three days apart. He was 91, she was 81,” Kyle said. “A year before they passed away, they said they wanted to be buried where they could look over our lake. So that’s where they’re buried. When P.J. and I die, we’re going 6 feet under, right here.”
However, the changes that have taken place, just since the two families moved to the Hill Country, make them more than a little uneasy.
“It’s becoming more congested,” Kyle said. “When we first moved out here, we wouldn’t pass two cars on the way to town. Now we sometimes sit at the gate for five minutes before we can get out on the highway. People flock to Canyon Lake. They come to the antique car and motorcycle shows in Boerne. They go to Gruene shopping or floating on the river. And it seems every month a new subdivision is coming out.”
Carolyn said: “We came out here thinking we were moving to country. Now it’s closing in on us. I don’t think I could ever move back to town, though.”
Eric is more philosophical about the prospect. “You’ve got to have progress. That’s the way of life.”
Realtor David Phillips doesn’t believe that ranches like those of the Olivers and the Whites necessarily are bound for the endangered species list.
“We have sold a number of places in the Hill Country and almost everyone is using them for some personal use—vacation, getaway sort of place. We have not sold one place that has been broken up. The cost of development is so high that if land is not contiguous to I-10 or 1604, it’s not a good prospect for development. What happens quite often is that tax laws, which skip one generation, in some cases force heirs to sell off some portion in order to pay taxes, but those are sold mostly for hunting and getaways.”
