The annual Owners meeting has been scheduled for August 17; to date we've had a great deal enthusiasm from owners to attend. Come and enjoy the positive energies from our owners and community family.

It will be available to dial in from any platform (computer, mobile, etc)

The general meeting agenda will be per the below and and like every decision of the Bar D Ranch, it has been vetted and agreed upon by all Board Members.

• 1000-1200 Social time and lunch; 1200-1300 Introduction of attendees (in person and remote);
• Review of Covenants and Bylaws and Board requirements and our Park County Ordinance requirements; Ranching 101 (what makes a working ranch run, what makes it fail)
• Review of past year projects, finances, budget for 2024; 1300-1330  Q&A from Owners; 1330-1345 long term plans (cattle program, roads, fencing);
• 1345-1400 How can owners participate and contribute to the ranching operation of Bar D; many have already offered their time and resources from afar (out of state) and locally.

Ranch Owners; we had a very successful annual meeting.

Bill Hooper sent out an email asking that owners send the Board any questions or concerns over the course of the last year. This was done to ensure that our meeting didn't get twisted with outburst and any potential for an uncontrollable meeting. He sent out an agenda to the owners prior to the meeting and we included remote owners via a Google Meet virtual meeting that was located in the machinery barn. Cathie Meyers and Mauryan Halfacre took time out of their day to run to Costco for platters of appetizers at a very nominal cost.

He's taken a great amount of time to clean out and maintain the machinery barn over time and corrals so that it's ready any ranching related effort. Brought in a load of gravel/rock to eliminate the muddy mess and a enable a working environment inside.

See below for the Agenda and Meeting Minutes

Owners, you're invited to our Ranch Corral Chat room to share in fun and constructive thoughts and ideas.

Bar D Ranch Owners, we had a fantastic day of running fence yet again as we did last year.

Our goal within the Ranch is to establish snow fencing and snow traps to protect our roads and ensure that control what snow ends up on our roads to ensure we provide as much access to owners as possible.

Snow traps are widely known from an engineering perspective for years and the County leverages that effort as well across many roads. We have 7 traps and Bill will ensure we have the final one completed prior to the next major snow fall.

We didn't purchase additional treated post and metal tpost but leveraged existing post from other areas on the ranch that Bill Hooper had recovered from pasture clean up from 3 years ago; additionally we didn't purchase new fence but leveraged offerings on facebook marketplace at less than half the new price. We employed the same effort as we did last year per the pics above.

This year Bill Hooper had an established ranching relationship with our neighboring Bar Star Ranch and based on the numerous hours of days/hours in support he'd given them for their cattle management on horseback they offered to help us. Nick Brailes (Bar Star Cowboy) offered to help us run fence-no charge. The no-charge aspect of ranching is something that we believe is important as community efforts are critical to operating a ranch. We now have their machinery support as well going forward for a potentially snowy winter. Cowboys and Ranchers are a breed of folks that believe in a community of work. Sometimes that work is very demanding but very rewarding - this is a synergy that Bar D Ranch believes in.

Bill Hooper prepared for ranch day by firstly acquiring the materials; which included purchasing well ahead of time (months): the t-post (brand new for $8+) purchased at auction for $1.5, snow fence (new roll at $100) purchased for $40 per role, 12 gauge smooth and barbed wire (new at $100 per roll) for $50/roll. Then punched the holes and concreted them in a week ahead of time (using his gear - gooseneck, mixer, generator and then braced the work to prevent cattle from rubbing and moving them out of place. It's important to reflect on cost as it's our collective responsibility to minimize our financial footprint with every effort. Being self sufficient is key to our ranch success.

2023 Bar D Letter of Agency (LOA)

2023 Bar D LOA Notice

2023 Bar D Dues Sheet

Bar D Ranch owners,

As announced in the email of July 5, 2022, we have our annual meeting of association owners on Saturday, July 16, 2022.

Meeting hosts: Brittany and Grant Borgeson have been very gracious in their support of the ranch to host our annual meeting.

Address is: 641 South Park Drive (2nd house on South Park Drive – left from the cattle drive intersection.
Time: 1:00 PM for official meeting
Arrival/Socialization time: 11:00 AM
Please bring your own chair(s).
Please bring your own beverage(s).
Food will be catered.
Please come ready to enjoy a friendly day with our community!
Roads: Please review the presentation material contained in the email of July 5, as there is extensive information about:

Strategy for long-term road improvement
Report of past and current road conditions
Explanations, recommendations, and cost estimates from Park County road experts
Photographs, diagrams, and tutorials on gravel road construction and maintenance
If all members will review the presentation material before the meeting, and be prepared with questions, our discussion will be much more fruitful. For your convenience, the presentation material is available below for viewing, printing, or downloading:

Bar-D-Ranch-Road-project-3July22
Cheers!

Bill Hooper, Bar D Ranch President, on behalf of the Bar D Ranch Board of Directors

Snow drifting is a major concern at the Bar D Ranch, and we fight with it every year. This post will discuss some of the science around snow drifting, how to minimize drifting, and our plans this year to try to minimize future problems in coming years.

We are lucky in that we have some residents that have lived on the Bar D Ranch for 20+ years, and they understand the drifting issues. However, most of them are incredibly frustrated because nobody will listen to them and learn how snow drifting works, based on our prevailing winds. This post, will, hopefully, make it a bit clearer to everyone that owns property at the Bar D Ranch.

The Science

Let’s start with the basic science.

Wind has a load capacity of what it can carry when it comes to snow. The higher the wind speed, the greater its carrying capacity.

In an ideal situation, with all land being flat, the wind will pick up snow and carry it along without dropping any more than it would pick up along the way. However, we do not have an ideal situation at the Bar D Ranch.

When wind, with its snow load, encounters an obstacle, it experiences turbulence. The loaded wind faces a compression zone (the area upwind of the obstacle) and a decompression zone (the area downwind of the obstacle). In both cases, the wind is disrupted, loses some speed, and drops some of its load.

If you think of a snow fence as an obstacle, you can see that, depending on its height, snow will drop on the upwind side, but the vast majority of it will drop on the downwind side.

In the drawing, at the right, if the snow fence is 4’ high, then you can expect some snow to drop on the upwind side, up to 60’ before the fence, and you can expect most of the disrupted snow to fall on the downwind side, up to 136’ after the fence. These numbers are based on the snow fence having 50% porosity to allow the wind to pass through and disrupting it just enough to cause the vast majority of its load to drop on the downwind side.

A solid fence, or a wall of some kind, for example, will have a different result. Using the same height, you could expect drifting out to 48’ on both the upwind and downwind side.

Clearly, walls are not as good at controlling where the snow drops, as the wind is disrupted.

Takeaway

Snow drifts can be managed, to a large extent, by placing snow fencing well upwind of a road, say about 140-150’, so that the wind is able to drop its load before the road. As an added benefit, the wind, stripped of its load, can pick up snow that might exist on the road.

All plowed snow should be put on the downwind side of the road, off of the road a good bit, as that snow that is left as a berm acts like a wall.

Ideal Road Configuration and Plowing

What we would like to see for our roads and our plowing is a situation like this drawing provided by Jim Halpin.

In this drawing, the wind will blow the snow over the road. Once it is deep enough, which would be more than the 4” shown, the snow should be plowed so that the resulting berm is n the downwind side.

The berm, at this point, is similar to a wall, and the wind, with its load of snow, will drop some of it in the compression zone and some of it in the decompression zone.

The Problem We Face

When this year started, the grader was not available, and roads were cleared using the backhoe. Because of this, snow was not all moved downwind, and we ended up with berms on both sides of the road. Drawing, also provided by Jim Halpin.

Considering these berms as walls, that would mean if the berm is 12” high, then it will cause drifts of about 12’ out onto the road for the upwind berm, and the downwind berm will cause the same amount on its upwind side.

As the berms grew in size, on each side, the wind would drop its load on both sides of both berms, and we got drifts as illustrated in red in the above picture.

Two Solutions

The problem could have been corrected by either:

• Moving the snow away from the upwind berm so that it is on the downwind side.
• Moving the snow in the upwind berm way out into the fields on the upwind side so it acts as a solid wall and provides a 50/50 split on its upwind and downwind sides well away from the road.

New Problem – Mud

Well, it isn’t really a new problem, in that we see this every year, but the melting snow is now melting onto the roads and causing lots of mud. This is a significant issue on Clark, for example, where snow was placed upwind, and uphill. As the uphill berms melt, the water flows directly onto Clark.

This year, though, we have even more snow stacked up alongside all of the roads, and the amount of mud is worse than in the past, and it will not be alleviated until all of the snow is gone and the roads have a chance to dry out.

This Spring/Summer Plan

A large amount of snow fence, and fence posts will be ordered and placed in several locations to reduce drifting on our roads.

This serves a couple of purposes:

• Reducing the drifts on our roads, obviously
• Capturing the snow so it melts into our water basins

Sources

About Snow Drifts

Basics of Blizzards and Snowdrift Control

Controlling Blowing and Drifting Snow

Controlling Snow Drifts

Optimization of Snow Drifting Mitigation and Control Methods

Snow Drift Control

Snow Fence Guide

Wind and Snow Control Around the Farm

After the Annual Meeting was held, on June 26, 2021, Stephen Winkler hosted a pot luck lunch at his barn.

Folks brought their own chairs and a dish to share. Please let the board know what you will be bringing, and we will try to update this post with the dishes and who is bringing them. Please note that power is available for hot dishes.

Bar D Ranch provided hamburgers, hotdogs, utensils, and condiments, beer and other beverages.

Update

Thank you to everyone that participated this Saturday. We had some great people do some great work. Thank you to the owners of the following lots for contributing 4-5 hours of hard work:

• Lot 5 – Russ and Annabelle Kaufmann
• Lot 16 – Bill Hooper and Mauryan Halfacre
• Lot 51 and 52 – Dan and Mary Demillo
• Lot 65 – Steven and Lisa Armour
• Lot 71 – Keith and Stacey Bushaw
• Lot 94 – Stephen and Susan Winkler
• Lot 96 – Terry Pierce
• Lot 98 – Denis and Yolanda Meade

We managed to install over forty rolls of snow fence, and there will be some follow-up work to complete even more rolls over the next couple of days.

Special note: Bill Hooper has been taking on a major clean-up of the grader barn area, including hauling off the old culverts that have been there for two years.

————-

The Bar D Owners Association will host a Work Day on June 5th starting at 10am. Our goal is to deploy approximately 40 rolls of snow fence in key areas around the ranch to mitigate snow drifts.

The BDOA will credit each lot $50 towards the annual dues for participation. We will also plan another work day later this summer, the date is TBD.

Please meet at the Bar D ranch at the grader barn at 10 am and make sure you sign-in so we can provide appropriate credit for participation.

Last year, we put out 17 rolls, so this will be significantly more work. However, with a good turn-out like last year, we should be able to get most of the snow fence installed.

After much discussion, it was decided that we should move the annual meeting to the middle of the year when the weather is better and more people are able to attend.

BAR D Ranch Owners Association (BDROA) Annual Meeting
Stephen Winkler’s Property, Lot 94
1126 Reinecker Court
Como, CO 80432
June 26, 2021
10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Eligible Attendees

All owners current on their dues. A written proxy may be provided to another owner to vote for an owner that is unable to attend. A proxy may also be emailed to bardownersassocation@gmail.com.

Proxy Info:

The proxy can be a simple statement, such as this one:

I, am providing my proxy for the annual meeting on January 9, 2021 to . I understand that my proxy may be used to vote during the meeting.

An email to the Bar D Ranch Owners Association address, above, will be accepted as well a written letter sent to the BDOA at:

Bar D Ranch Owners Association
P.O. Box 259
Como, CO 80432

AGENDA

Old Business

        - Road maintenance  

Reports

        - President’s Report  
        - Treasurer’s Report  
        - Secretary’s Report  
        - Cattle Manager’s Report  
        - Member at Large – Road Report  

Elections

President – Russ Kaufmann has filled this role for the two terms. The term of the President will run from June 2021 to June 2023. The duties of the President are to lead the BDOA board and ensure standard responsibilities are completed by all board members and to review and address ad hoc owner requests.

Treasurer – Stephen Winkler has filled this role for the last two terms. The term of the Treasurer will run from June 2021 to June 2023. The Treasurer needs to be bonded and is responsible for BDROA finances, bank accounts, paying bills and invoices approved by the Board, handling change of property owners, sending bills for dues/late charges, filing the Agriculture Status Forms and filing liens when necessary.

Any owners interested and willing to serve in any of these positions should contact the Board with any questions at bardownersassociation@gmail.com.

New Business

      New business items will be discussed at this time.  

Closing Comments

————

The Bar D Owners Association invites you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: BDOA Annual Meeting

During the Annual Meeting, we had three elections:

• Secretary
• Member at Large
• Cattle Manager

With the split between the Zoom attendees and those attending in person, we had a great deal of confusion around the Member at Large vote. After the confusion during the election, we had to make some decisions as the board in consultation with everyone involved.

Dan Demolli, Celeste Jain, and Bill Hooper will assist the board, and the Member at Large. Bill Hooper is a full-time resident and will also assist with equipment operation as his time allows, and he will also assist Alison Baker. While Bill and Dan’s roles are not formal, their participation is highly valued, and the board will listen, closely, to their counsel and input.

We are very fortunate to have such outstanding owners stepping forward to help, especially with the confusion around the election based on some people that were present in person and others present via Zoom.

Thank you everyone for your patience, and special thanks to those that have stepped up to help out.

The current board membership is as follows:

• President: Russ Kaufmann
• Treasurer: Stephen Winkler
• Secretary: Daphne Patton
• Member at Large: Josh Baker
• Cattle Manager: Alison Baker

Note: Please refer to the communication plan located on this website in the Documents section and try to keep in mind that everyone involved is a volunteer.