some practice designs during land search

I offer these as food for thought for others and request input.  Did I get the keypoint right?? should I tear down the farmhouse and start from scratch? how many type one errors??  

If someone wants one of these properties and has a better use for it than I do I can give you the address, I had a sense not to throw the address right out there on the internet so purple message me.  

I've looked at about a hundred pieces at least so far on the internet, either photos or satellite images, sometimes with the contour enhancer (contourcreator.com--really helpful resource, I hope it's accurate! certainly more informative than the regular Google terrain/topography map setting.  Please consider making a donation to contourcreator.com on their Donate button!)

These are all in Vermont.  This one is 107 acres; half are in the town that has maps, the other half just extends some ways beyond that dotted line, and I haven't managed to get a hold of a map of that part yet.). Farmhouse is reasonably good condition.  Drilled well, which I would hope to replace with gravity-fed spring terrace.

Town map has weird water lines going under the whole north half of property from east-west in a meandering pattern, about through the middle of that.  I don't know what they are.  Farmhouse is on a septic.

Intents for plan:

live in balance with nature
food self-sufficiency 80%, water, fuel, electricity 100%
0 toxic footprint
fruit and nut trees for self and community
fish--trout, perch, pike, or the like
livestock: chickens, guinea fowl, sheep; eventually cowsharing arrangement 3 head at least; ducks, geese, turkeys, game quail;
starch: chestnuts, walnuts, bullrushes, sunchokes, rice, oats, buckwheat, quinoa, wheat, or similar
greens
freedom to contribute to arts and wellbeing in community, teach movement.  build community every day.

Note: it's not marked on the map or visible in satellite but I observed a slight stream through culvert under the road that then wound east along the road and then south at the part where there's a line of trees.

(no idea how this ended up in "cooking," sorry about that, and I don't know how to get it out of cooking. maybe the universe is trying to tell me something)

Its very hard to read the notes across the image, can you fix that please?

John C Daley wrote:Its very hard to read the notes across the image, can you fix that please?

Thanks John.  I'll try.  Meanwhile, did you try clicking on the image? that makes it go full-screen instead of just the smaller image, and makes it a bit more legible.  I'm using "preview" which isn't really a design software as I don't have one.

The labels say, in summary:

settling pond
keypoint and fish pond/paddy, irrigation to field
dieu pond for biodiversity
dotted line=town border but the property extends another 50 acres into the next town.

Thanks!

Not certain if you settled on a place but if you do choose Vermont, hit us up. It sounds like we have very similar goals. I can't make much comment on the models as I only have theoretical understanding at the moment. I did make use of the contour map generator though. So thanks!

Thanks Patrick!  We are taking our time with this process, but glad to hear from you in northern VT.  

Patrick Edwards wrote:Not certain if you settled on a place but if you do choose Vermont, hit us up. It sounds like we have very similar goals. I can't make much comment on the models as I only have theoretical understanding at the moment. I did make use of the contour map generator though. So thanks!

I'm echoing this comment; I have dreams and a bit of knowledge (and not much time lately, due to small children, etc) but am currently in VT and would love to connect with like-minded folks in the area. My family homestead has some cool features and a few dreams/plans that I'd love to work on with help (cob oven, hugelkultur, fruit trees, gardens, possibly a small earthbag/strawbale/cordwood/? studio with attached greenhouse & RMH w/ cob bench...whew) plus I have 5 acres in the woods of central VT on which I'd love to do even more cool permie stuff.

Please message me if any of this interests you :)

Interesting tool. I went ahead and screen-capped the preview of the contour map for my pond area and overlaid it with the Lidar image I found, an old annotated aerial shot (1940’s-50’s) and an old Topo map and have made a gif here of the results...