Please do something about the dandelions in your lawn
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Nothing that has flowers gets pulled up, at least until it stops flowering. I don't have a lawn any more; I turned all of it over to shrubs and mostly native perennials. My next-door neighbor hates me because he's one of those assholes who poisons everything to try to make his tiny lawn look like a fucking golf course.
That is terrific about hiring the organic guy. They're around--just have to look for them. We have a truck around here that's a team of women who go around doing organic lawn work. Wish I could remember the name--it's clever.
One of the first years I was in this house, I noted the neighbors all had those pesticide companies come around. What really ticked me off was that I have a pool built into the side of a mountain, and so the ones on the level of the pool would be spraying these pesticides and they would come floating right over to my head while I'd be floating around in my pool. Not only was I breathing it, it was going into the water. The chlorine's bad enough; now I'm floating around in pesticides, too.
So I took action: I looked up the kinds of chemicals they sprayed and made photocopies. Then I dropped off a copy at each neighbor's house. As I recall, the pesticides they were using at the time affected fertility. In no time at all, and I mean about two months, not one pesticide company was coming around.
And that's been it. I've not seen one since and that was 18 years ago.
Cher
This type:
It will help keep the moisture in while also preventing most weeds from flourishing (as it cuts off their light.) When they do pop up, there will be fewer of them
It's too "dry" for me 
Well, the only other idea coming to me is to plant wildflower seeds and overpower the weeds that way
This company is for seeds native to the Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana region, but there may be similar companies for your state. Native is always the best way to go.
But since the year I had three major operations, two of them in the summer, and spent most of the year inside, my system has decided it likes low humidity. It doesn't help that the unchangeable preset on our air handler keeps the humidity at 50% or lower.
The weeds I want to get rid of are blackberries (because of the thorns) and a wicked stuff called Spanish or Shepherd needle or Bidens alba (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidens_alba)
I wouldn't mind them but the seeds are nasty - they grab onto fabric and have to be pulled off one by one. They don't even come off in the wash!
The shepherd's needles reach from a center point and can leap en masse up to 3 ft (0.9 m) in order grab onto your socks - that's a lie - but it sure seems true sometimes.
http://floridata.com/Plants/Asteraceae/Bidens%20alba/898
I let them grow where I don't have to walk or work - the bees and butterflies love the flowers and other creatures seem to like them, too. I think some of the birds eat the seed and help to spread them. In the few flower beds we're still getting established they grow faster than the perennials we've planted and shade them out.
It's just on the paths and in those beds I want to get those out - the other fifty nice and a half acres of our farm are almost completely natural. We planted dogwoods, cedars and loblolly pines almost forty years ago that replaced the trees that were aging out and put pasture grass in to replace the cornfields and pig pens that were here when we bought the farm.
After we built out new house we spread wildflower seeds over the drainfield - bought them at the local native plant nursery. We still get some coreopsis coming back every year but I think I will reseed a few pounds of them next year.
However, the other disagreeable problem I have with low humidity is that it turns me into a biological Van der Graff generator 
It sounds like you have a nice piece of land and have done well at making it livable
My parents have about 60 acres in the Texas Hill Country, and my father has done an enormous amount of work getting it back to a natural state. The entailed first getting his Master Naturalist's certification, and then getting rid of the juniper trees (cedars) and fire ants. He also got many native grasses to the area re-established and growing again. I think he knows the name of every single kind of plant over that acreage!
What do you grow on your farm?
I love live oaks
You can also encourage more wildlife by making piles of wood and other organic refuse. Just let it rot like normal, and animals will use it for shelter. My father did that all over their place, too.
Now they also have a lot of deer, but he also feeds them. Part of his getting a Texas Forestry Service certification for the land requires that he do things like that. He also gets a hefty property-tax break. Nonetheless, the land is better off for the work done to restore it.
Your property sounds picturesque! I can just imagine, well, something picturesque, anyway
Fire ants. I believe my father used Amdro. I was thinking he might have used Logic, but that requires more work. Logic is granular and has to be re-applied every couple of months. I have used it when I lived in another part of town where I had a yard to use. It worked great, so long as you kept up with the application of it regularly. It works by inhibiting the hormones of the ants so they can't reproduce. Amdro is simply a poison.
Here's a link from Texas A&M on controlling fire ants.
Now, if you know any metal-workers, you could offer your anthills to any of them willing to pour molten aluminum into a hill, like this artist does:
http://www.anthillart.com/
So it would ground me and bleed off the static electricity. 
Yes, we make brush piles anytime we do clearing. The crew that cleared the fence lines for me kept calling them "burn piles" but I refuse to allow them to burn them. When we make them in the pastures, they also protect seedlings - the horses will yank seedlings up so it's nice to have areas they can't reach.
In one field where there was a huge brush pile we now have a nice stand of black walnut trees. There is one ancient one in that pasture, but the horses always tore the seedlings up. By the time the brush pile rotted, the young black walnuts were large enough the horses can't kill them. There are a few cherries, some pine and maybe a few oak trees in that area, too.
I've got a bag of Amdro - I just need to go out and put some on every fire ant bed. I used a different stuff earlier this year - the beds died off but new ones showed up in a few weeks. I almost hate to kill all of the fire ants - the armadillos seem to love to dig their beds up, probably going after the eggs.
Oh - I think the casts of fire ant beds are cool! There are some great YouTube videos of people doing that - some by Anthill Art, the guys you link to.
The biggest problem is that here we're on a solid red clay ridge - digging up the castings would be damn near impossible. When we were getting ready to start our house the full sized bulldozer had trouble scraping thin layers off the clay!
so it might not be a bad idea. That, or copper soles on your shoes
Yeah, a lot of people don't understand the concept of brush piles. They think everyone wants to remove all "debris" whether by burning or hauling it off. The very idea that you would let it rot over time just doesn't enter their minds as a viable method.
I didn't know horses would eat tree seedlings. I guess if it's leafy-green enough and tasty, then it's fair game.
The thing with fire ants these days is that you don't have one colony per anthill, the way it used to be. You have one super-colony over all of the anthills. If you don't get rid of them all, the super-colony remains and expands again.
Your clay sounds as bad as Oklahoma caliche! I've read what they have there is even harder than the kind we have in Texas. Seems like they have to blast through theirs; digging through it isn't good enough.
But the car we use the most these days is a Prius and it's mostly plastic.
The horses don't so much eat the seedlings as yank them up. The younger horses are worse about it so I think it's part of them exploring their environment.
We have one tree that is now a beautiful specimen in front of our older barn and next to the round pen. That oak was dropped by one of our weanling fillies in 1980 - she'd pulled it up on her way to the barn and dropped it in anticipation of her dinner. We planted the poor little seedling and it has survived nicely and now provides welcome shade to the front of that barn.
Most of the time we didn't find the seedlings until too late to save them. 
I'd forgotten about the super colonies - I'm sure that's what's going one! Maybe I'll borrow a drop spreader and cover the entire yard with Amdro though it would be better to cover the entire upper 30. I'll talk to the people who are taking care of the farm.
Thanks for the reminder.
The way I get out of the car is to always grab the metal frame, often with both hands, to make sure I'm grounded. I don't get shocked getting out much any more, just when I have to put the key in...
I chuckled at the antics of your horses, making me think of how some animals give you a gift
I'd say you managed to save enough, by your previous descriptions. Those trees are happy
With fire ants, you have to stay on top of them, so to speak, especially if your neighbors don't do anything to get rid of them, too.
To your success! 
The only thing you have to be careful about is mildew. But, make the dandelion-root spray mentioned above, and it won't be a problem
that's what I was talking about in my post upthread.
Cher
I'm posting about that at the gardening thread tomorrow. I do hope you'll stop by and tell about your results.
I used to make dandelion bouquets for my mother when I was a little girl.
Now I make dandelion tea. This is one of the most vitamin-packed teas you can make. I don't mind the bitterness, but those who do can mix it with another tea or with some agave. Dandelion tea is a nutritional powerhouse!
But I do understand the person who made the sign. I assiduously clip my flowers before they go to seed. Imagine having a neighbor with hundreds of them...
Ay yi yi, the work.
Cher
those little yellow dandelion blossoms. 
Is an impressive story. I will tell that to my gardening classes.
Cher
Because I will be cultivating dandelions.
Maybe I should put up a sign, too. Such as:
"Experimental Dandelion Cultivation Research Station"
Both the wildflowers and the sign. Plus, it will make the less-informed think it is official. It might even work with problematic HOAs
