Welcome! I'm a late 30s guy doing basically the same thing, but with less formal learning or
experience apparently xD. I've been digging through hundreds of hours worth of videos, research papers, crop information, and animal husbandry philosophy, though. I come from a back ground in geography, and I always gravitated towards the soil sciences, so that's kind of my own avenue of entry.
Do you have any ideas for what type of operation you would like to get going, or are you waiting to see where geographically you end up before setting up any mental fencing? We are in the process of closing on 6 acres of sandy scrub pines on the Alabama coast, but it happens to have a wonderfully high organic matter content and mostly good drainage. I'm looking at a hybrid alleycropping silvopasture setup with some of my own holistic tweaks. It will have a few special lanes dedicated to
local polinators that won't get disturbed as much as the rest, I want to set up some
bat houses and a bee hive (even though they're non
native, european
bees are still wondeful pollinators), I've bot a perfect low section that I want to use as a runoff wetlands from a duck
pond in which I'll cultivate duckweed and cat tails for some fodder variation for the eventual hogs, etc. It might be foolish and overly ambitious, but that's me to a tee so hey. Dream big, and all that.
Of
course, right now it is just 1.5 acres of grass
lawn, .5 acre of hard old Ap topsoil, and 4 acres of un-managed clear cut regrowth. Plenty of
trees, though, so I'm also planning on getting a bandsaw lumber mill and a couple 20' shipping containers to air dry some lumber for the eventual barn, office, animal housing, etc. Also hoping to buy a broken old Ford 1320
tractor in a few days here to tinker on.
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