Today we’d like to introduce you to Caroline Schoneveld & Willem de Lange .
Hi Caroline & Willem, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
We were on our honeymoon and each got to choose 2 weeks. My husband picked Nevada and I picked Texas as I was in Texas a number of times as a teenager due to my dads job. The head office of his company, Datapoint, was situated in San Antonio. My husband wasn’t looking forward to Texas as he thought there would just be desert combined with muggie Houston and a ton of mosquitoes. I on the other hand just remembered green hills and fantastic hospitality.
As we arrived in the Hill Country during the last 2 weeks of May 2007 my husband couldn’t believe the beauty of both nature and Texans. On our last day in Bandera he picked up a real estate magazine and while flipping through it pretty much decided on the spot that this was the area he wanted to grow old. A new lady friend we met during our stay at a dude ranch in Bandera started looking for us on internet (she wanted to rent a property for herself and her horses so we made a deal) and soon after we arrived back in the Netherlands on June 1st she found a property that suited us. The search for a bank who could loan us a little money started and also almost immediately ended in a failure as no bank wanted to help us eventhough we were funding 70% in cash ourselves.
The realtor in Hondo came to the rescue. He knew the CEO of the Hondo National Bank (now the TXN Bank) and was able to convince him to give us the loan for the 30% we couldn’t get together. The sale happend really fast and on September 9th 2007 we returned to Texas to become the proud owners of a tiny ranch of 25.6 acres. We only saw the property on the internet and had no clue what we bought exactly. The first time we saw the ranch was on September 10th 2007 after we signed all necessary papers at both the bank and the Hondo courthouse.
As Dutch people we couldn’t believe our eyes as we saw the size and beauty of the ranch. In the Netherlands 10 acres is large so 25.6 acres seemed humongous to us.
There were many birds, flowers and trees, a tiny house on blocks in the front of the property and a 40 foot trailer in the back. The friend who found the property for us rented the property from us and arranged for electricity and we coordinated the digging of a well from the Netherlands as we had to go back 10 days after we bought the ranch.
The little house in the front of the property was moved over to the back.
The next visit we started putting a new roof on the little house and the visit after that we replaced all outer walls, one inner wall and we built a small bathroom with shower. Newly made friends had a septic put in for us as we were in the Netherlands again. The next project was a little Derksen building we had put in as a guest house for our family&friends. We bought a shell and did the whole inside ourselves. It took about 4 weeks with help from family and friends and a cute little guest cabin was born.
After that we had a cabin brought in for a ranch manager. As we could only be in the United States for a few months as foreigners the manager looked after the property during all the times we could not be here.
In 2017 in November 4 guest cabins were placed on the front of the property by Spring Branch Trading Company. We put waterlines in from our well to the front of the property and installed electricity. Then we started designing and decorating the insides as each cabin has a different theme. From a cabin with Dutch items to a tiny Beach Cottage, A Horse Barn cabin and a Texas Bunk House cabin. On February 18th 2018 at 6.18 pm we opened our Airbnb.
Since then our very talented friend from the Netherlands designed and built 2 porches on the 2
4-guest cabins and also a common Campfire ring was built.
We offer a back to basics Airbnb where we like to give our guests a time to relax, enjoy nature while taking small hikes on our little ranch and on good clear nights some neat stargazing over the Campfire. We do not offer tv nor wifi as we would like guests to experience a time with no social media and lots of relaxation away from mass tourism and daily busy lives.
With so much to do in nearby Bandera, San Antonio, various State Parks, Tubing, Hiking, Mountain biking, Trail Rides by horse and motorcycle routes guests have many things in the area to chose from.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In 2020 things started to go down hill. Corona came and brought less and less guests. Access to the US was not allowed any more as the borders closed due to the pandemic and to make matters worse in July 2020 after having spent 30.000 dollars in lawyers and consulate costs, our investment visa got denied for no apparent reason. No explanation no logical reason. We just got told to apply for a new visa and to turn to our lawyer. Unfortunately we could not afford to start over again and had to give up our dream to live on our own ranch in Texas. At the same time the US consulate also closed to all people except American citizens that lived in the Netherlands so no visa applications were possible any more. And that was not the end of our misfortune. At the end of April 2021 a tornedo hit and damaged cabins&cars and took out our stables and shed. Friends from Spring Branch came to the rescue and repaired everything as good as they could. Then in February 2022 a big freeze came and again a lot of damage was done with a ton of repairs. In the summer of 2022 our wonderful guest manager started her own Airbnb and stopped working at our ranch. She had done a great job during our absence and we were devastated. Also our ranch manager decided he had had enough of free living on our property for himself, his girlfriend, 5 horses, 3 donkeys, 2 miniature horses and 7 dogs and told us we needed to get our horses of the property as he was done taking care of them. He left never to be seen again. As we were still stuck in the Netherlands we pretty much panicked by then as we did not know how to deal with the situation.
Yet again our friends from Spring Branch came to the rescue together with our totally fantastic friends from Glen Rose Texas. Accompanied by our former guest manager, where needed, they took care of everything!!!
From that moment on everything started to look up again!!! Never in our lives could we have wished for better friends!!! The Glen Rose friends came to pick up our horses and took them in on their ranches and treated them as their own. They nurtured our horses back to beautiful animals and never asked for anything in return.
Our dear friends from Spring Branch found their own children willing to take over our Airbnb business as well as the management of our property. They rebuilt the cabin that we had given to the first ranch manager as it was nearly impossible to use it as a house to live in any more. Then they opened the guest cabins back up and started clearing the land. A new life was put onto the ranch and into our friends lives as in December 2022 a beautiful baby girl was born. Accompanied by their other young daughter they took on the massive challenge to make our property the paradise we dreamed of again. They have very successfully ran and managed our humble back to basics tiny ranch since October of 2022.
In November of 2023 we were granted a new tourist visa as the US consulate finally had opened back up and they got to the end of the pile of tourist visa applications which is were our application was. We stayed for 1 month and 2 friends/colleagues from the Netherlands came to help us.
We started working on improving the ranch right away by building a new shed and fixing our good old Dodge pickup truck. In 2024 and 2025 shutters were put on our little house and the roof was redone. In 2026 the stables will be restored and improved and our fences will be fixed so our horses will be able to return to the ranch.
Our Spring Branch friends who became our new family worked in and on the cabins a lot as well as the land.
We unfortunately are not able to live on our ranch due to the visa situation but we have accepted that we can only come for visits and are just extremely thankful for ALL of our majorly FANTASTIC friends in both South and North Texas whom we now all call family. We are grateful for all the wonderful things that came upon our journey and are enjoying every single moment we get to spend with our new family and on our humble property!!!!!!
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I (Caroline) work in the Netherlands as a coach/trainer for VW/Audi dealerships as I train employees in the After Sales departments. I also am an application manager for VW/Audi. My husband (Willem aka Pim) is a financial controller at VW/Audi also in the Netherlands.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
We fulfill our goals if we can make our guests and employees around us happy and always want to lend a hand and be there for our friends and family.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.picaranch.com
