We have a small 1.5 acre lot, mostly wooded, which we are slowly working to convert to a food producing powerhouse for our family. We have some valuable
wild edibles on the place, including huckleberries, wild raspberries, thimble berries, service berries, and morel
mushrooms, to name a few.
Our woods consist mostly of doug fir, with a few scattered birch and maple
trees. Our idea is to begin slowly pushing the wild forest back, while attempting to preserve a few good patches of wild berries, so that we can begin replacing the wild forest with an intentionally grown food forest.
I have been reading the book '
Gaia's Garden' and really like the idea of zone planting from the house outward. In our situation, we have a zone 1 close to the house, where our gardens currently sit, and then a zone 5 wilderness immediately outside our small garden space. We are completely lacking the interim spaces for things like fruit trees, hedges, livestock space, etc.
I love looking out and seeing wild forest, but this particular forest also makes it quite difficult to grow anything we want to grow, as we get very little sun.
So, to get around to my question: How can we make pigs, goats, and
chickens work for us in this situation? We currently have
chickens in a
tractor set-up, which is working pretty well for us. We are seeing our grass improve with every pass of the tractor, and we are seeing a disappearance of
hawkweed every place the
chickens have been. Cool! Now, how can we incorporate a couple of pigs and a
milk goat into this scheme without wrecking our ecosystem, while also possibly clearing some brush for us? I don't want a stinky little, muddy, compacted pig pen, or a barren goat-scape. Is it feasible to pull this off on a little more than an acre? Already, I'm hearing neighbors complaining about the POSSIBILITY that I might have pigs at some point. They are already convinced that the smell will be unbearable. This is something I think I can avoid if we manage it properly. All advice is appreciated!
