With greatly varying weather, inhospitable flora and fauna, and a hardscrabble citizenry that has learned to endure and thrive, Texas is the romantic stuff of legends. Driving a pasture road at sunrise or sundown is the best time to appreciate it. Midday it may be 110 degrees, a time when man is the only animal dumb enough to be out. But when the sun is waxing or waning, the abundant wildlife begins to stir, either heading out to feed or heading for daytime shade. Colors that were bleached in direct sunlight become vivid, and the breeze that dehydrates you at noon carries a bit of moisture and the musty smell of a fecund ecology.

It is this complex living puzzle that draws its human inhabitants. The romance and the belief that this land will produce abundantly for whoever has the gumption to take it on, declares Jim Mullen, is why people buy property here. In Finding, Buying, and Developing a South Texas Ranch, Mullen outlines how to do exactly that, exposing the prospective ranch buyer to the basic principles of buying and developing rural land in this great state.