Would anyone like to help me design my beautiful 2.41 acre SUBTROPICAL homestead?

Hello everyone! I am so grateful! My husband and I are under contract to purchase a small home on 2.41 acres in Zone 9a Florida. At our previous house on 1/4 of an urban acre, we experimented with a few permaculture design elements and also grew annual veggies and medicinal herbs, and raised a small flock of ducks for eggs. I am not a complete newbie to permaculture, but I would still classify myself as a beginner and this will be my first time designing this large a property. I would love some wisdom and guidance from y'all, if you feel inclined.

So this 2.41 acres is a long narrow rectangle, with a little mobile home smack dab in the middle and a very large pole barn on a concrete slab. There is pasture in the front yard and pasture in the back yard, and the entire property is fenced, though I've been told the neighbors on three sides put up those three fences. There are some broken areas of fencing that my husband and I plan to sort of bridge up so that our dog can run around with us (supervised) and not escape.

Along three sides of the fence line, there is a sort of trailing oak forest--a couple big old (dying, unfortunately) trees but mostly what I'd consider young adult oaks. Tall, beautiful, strong trees (Guardians!). A few mature mulberry trees, as well! Mostly leaf litter/scrub under the tree canopy.

The pasture is dry (we are in the dry season right now, though), grass is sparse-ish, with tread softly plants (Cnidoscolus stimulosus), native scrub milkweed (Asclepias humistrata), and an Opuntia spp. cactus here and there. These plants would suggest an acidic soil, and I could see that it was very sandy.

We currently have a small flock of laying ducks, a dog, and two cats. First priority upon moving in will be to create some basic/simple animal infrastructure: First will be a duck pen close to the house. We have a small, portable duck house/coop for them now, so we will bring that with us to put in the pen, but we will be building a larger run for them after moving on to the property. There are more predators at the new property than we've dealt with in urban settings, so we have to make secure enclosures. We will also need to put up some fencing for our dog--she is not used to so much land and she's a beagle, so her nose could get her in trouble if she runs the entire 2.41 acres.

That will be it for animal infrastructure initially (though we do want more animals in the future, namely meat rabbits, dairy goats, and a couple pigs per year), because the next big construction project will be adding an addition to the mobile home. My husband and FIL (who is a licensed contractor) will be obtaining the permits and constructing the addition, while I begin working on constructing the annual gardens.

The home is on its own well, but there is no irrigation on the property. Building the addition to the mobile home takes priority over irrigation, so I'll be gardening close to home for a while (with the help of a good few 100 ft hoses). There is plenty of organic matter on the property, mostly along the fence lines under the oak trees, but it will take some time to clear the brush, chip the wood, and compost it. I don't know which makes more sense for this property during this time of year: marking off garden beds and trucking in cardboard and compost to make instant no-dig beds; or do an initial till and dig the beds, and amend the soil and plant directly into that; OR tarp over the grass/weeds, let the summer heat kill all the plants, then take the tarp off in the fall and till the dead grass/weeds into the soil and plant cool season crops then.

And though I will plant pigeon pea everywhere for biomass (it didn't need much care at my last property, just water), I'm not going to even THINK about planting any other perennials until I've observed the property through all four seasons and then have a greater understanding of where the water flows, where the sun casts shade throughout the year, and where different plants will thrive.

I'd love some initial thoughts from you all, and I might keep updating this post throughout the next year or so as I continue designing the property...maybe it will be helpful for others to read. Also, over the next couple days, I'm going to try to figure out how to turn a pdf of the property survey into a design sketch and upload it here so you all can see the topography and how the sun travels over the property, etc.

I am so excited! I've been working on manifesting this property for pretty much my whole life and I am so grateful that our Great Spirit has deemed me worthy to care for this beautiful patch of Earth. <3

Thank you for reading and for your thoughts!

Welcome to the forum and congratulations for the new property.

To me, once the fencing is secure, the duck pen erected, then it sounds like your hands will be full of building an addition to the home.

My suggestion would be to have a small kitchen garden to get you started.  Everything else can wait probably until year two.

Your property sounds lovely and again congratulations.  

Welcome Missy, it sounds like a great adventure ahead of you. In addition to a kitchen garden, I am very glad to have built a few nursery beds for perennials early on at my place. To make transplanting easier, I put some atop bedrock and also built an air pruned bed off the ground. It has been very helpful for healing in transplants, cuttings, seeds and any other planting stock one comes across somewhere easily cared for until the right season for planting in their forever home.

Why extend the mobile home, instead of building a more effective small home?

Ben Zumeta wrote:Welcome Missy, it sounds like a great adventure ahead of you. In addition to a kitchen garden, I am very glad to have built a few nursery beds for perennials early on at my place. To make transplanting easier, I put some atop bedrock and also built an air pruned bed off the ground. It has been very helpful for healing in transplants, cuttings, seeds and any other planting stock one comes across somewhere easily cared for until the right season for planting in their forever home.

This is wonderful advice! Thank you for sharing--I'm adding this to our design plan and we're going to do it! Any favorite resources for building these nursery beds and air pruned beds? I have some permaculture and gardening books that I can search through, and I will youtube it, but maybe you and/or others have some tried-and-true recommendations?

Thank you again! :)

John C Daley wrote:Why extend the mobile home, instead of building a more effective small home?

We have a large family and need more space to make living more comfortable. We do have plans to build a home on the property in the future.

Anne Miller wrote:Welcome to the forum and congratulations for the new property.

To me, once the fencing is secure, the duck pen erected, then it sounds like your hands will be full of building an addition to the home.

My suggestion would be to have a small kitchen garden to get you started.  Everything else can wait probably until year two.

Your property sounds lovely and again congratulations.  

Thank you!

So far, I have the property map and the topo overlay.

How would y'all recommend I take care of the pasture until I get gardens, paddocks, and food forest installed...? We're gonna hit rainy season in this part of Florida very soon, and that grass is going to grow.

What type of pasture is there?
Do you have any fencing?
Is there a water supply?
How big is your family- water use, etc?

John C Daley wrote:What type of pasture is there?
Do you have any fencing?
Is there a water supply?
How big is your family- water use, etc?

Hi John, thank you for your reply.

I'm not sure what type of pasture there is. It looks like about 2 of the acres of the property are "pasture"--mostly sparse grass growing in acidic sand (typical Florida). I added a couple photos of the property yesterday--you can see the grassy parts of the property bordered by some old oak trees. This property is in the middle of horse country--lots of other 2+ acre plots of land and everybody's got horses or goats mowing their pastures. We're not ready for livestock other than my ducks, and they don't eat grass...so I need to figure out a way to keep the pasture from overgrowth, as our rainy season will be here in a couple months.

The entire 2.41 acres is fenced, though the fence needs to be repaired in 2 or 3 spots.

There is a well on the property, but no irrigation farther than the house. We will eventually be putting in irrigation, but this will take some time.

There are five of us in our family, not including our dog, cats, and ducks. The kiddos don't do much mowing, though. :)

Sounds nice!
Horses will compact and ruin your soil
Geese or similar may work for you.
Chicken tractors may be ideal and supply eggs
What do you mean when you speak of irrigation?
Will rainfall capture work there and reduce you reliance on the well?

John C Daley wrote:Sounds nice!
Horses will compact and ruin your soil
Geese or similar may work for you.
Chicken tractors may be ideal and supply eggs
What do you mean when you speak of irrigation?
Will rainfall capture work there and reduce you reliance on the well?

A functional rain catchment system with the capacity to hold lots and lots of water is a DREAM of mine! We have SO. MUCH. RAIN. in the summer here in this part of Florida. There are two structures on the property: the house (960 square feet) and the pole barn (700 square feet). We could catch so much water! So yes, we will be constructing a rain catchment system in the future, but it's going to take time. My husband works full time outside the home, and I homeschool, so these projects will not happen all at once, but designing them now is fun and keeps the dream vivid! :)

When I mentioned installing irrigation, I was referring to digging trenches and laying down the PVC piping to bring water from the well (which is close to the house) to the front and back of the property, so that we can water baby fruit trees and supply drinking water for our animals.

I don't plan on putting any horses on the property. In the future, there may be additional poultry, meat rabbits, beehives, a couple pigs, and eventually, dairy goats, but I tend to dream big and then go with where the Spirit leads me, so nothing is set in stone. :)

I would encourage you to install a 5000 Gal raintank, not any 'rain barrels' I read about.
\Yes its will cost a lot but will be so much more effective.
Get a small loan for the tank or add it to the loan you are getting to purchase the place.

What is the soil like for trenching?
Maybe lay poly pipe across the ground surface in the short term, or use some of the resident 'person power'.
Use large diuameter pipe, 1 inch or even 2 inch foir better flow.

Missy Marine wrote:

Ben Zumeta wrote:Welcome Missy, it sounds like a great adventure ahead of you. In addition to a kitchen garden, I am very glad to have built a few nursery beds for perennials early on at my place. To make transplanting easier, I put some atop bedrock and also built an air pruned bed off the ground. It has been very helpful for healing in transplants, cuttings, seeds and any other planting stock one comes across somewhere easily cared for until the right season for planting in their forever home.

This is wonderful advice! Thank you for sharing--I'm adding this to our design plan and we're going to do it! Any favorite resources for building these nursery beds and air pruned beds? I have some permaculture and gardening books that I can search through, and I will youtube it, but maybe you and/or others have some tried-and-true recommendations?

Thank you again! :)

Akiva Silver has some great resources on tree propagation:
https://www.7thgenerationdesign.com/air-prune-beds/

Hello! What a joy to find this post again to see how far we've come! Things have changed so much. We now have a 100'x50' garden plot in the back yard with a western block containing eight 4'x50' hand-dug (by me!) beds and an eastern block containing the other eight 4'x50' beds. The beds run east to west down slope, so that the monsoon rains we get in the summer will flow in the paths and (hopefully!) not wash away our soil amendments and compost. My husband and FIL installed irrigation piping from the well to the back and front ends of the property, and then set up 12 wobblers total (6 in the west block, 6 in the east block) in our first garden plot. We have found we don't have enough pressure from our residential well to run all the sprinklers at the same time. We have plans to install an agricultural well, as well as rain catchment systems, in the near future.

Right now (nearing the end of our summer), the western plot is under sunnhemp and cowpea cover crop and we just chopped the cover crop down in the eastern block, getting ready for fall transplants. We also have two beds full of red noodle pole beans and sweet potatoes. We are harvesting more pole beans than we can use every day! Oh, and the sunflowers! Oh my goodness, we grew ProCut single stem sunflowers and all they needed was the occasional drink of water to keep them growing strong through our blazing hot summer!

My husband built two Suscovich-style chicken tractors (with some modifications, like hardware cloth all over the tractor and on the bottom to keep predators out) and we love them. We have to get creative during the most freezing nights in the winter because the tractors are not really weather proof, but they work for us for now. We have been breeding our own Muscovy ducks (we eat the [violent, pain-in-the-arse] drakes and keep the lovely females for eggs) and our own chickens, which are American Bresse + Ameraucana crosses--we call them Bressecaunas lol. We eat eggs every day and feed the extra eggs to our two dogs, one of which is an Anatolian Shepherd with a huge appetite. We have plans to build a more permanent, weather-proof hen house soon.

I currently have another 100'x50' plot covered with a silage tarp in the back yard, behind the first garden plot. When the weather cools late in the fall, we will uncover, rent a tiller for a one-time till, recover with the tarp and occultate for another month, then remove the tarp, measure out the beds, broadfork the beds, and then dig out the paths/shape the beds. The plan is for this plot to go completely under caterpillar tunnels, as soon as we can either afford them or get approved for the NRCS grant (which we haven't applied for yet).

While digging out that second garden plot, we will move the silage tarp to the pasture in the front yard. That will be our final 100'x50' plot. I have plans for that plot to become a  sunflower (in the summer and early fall) and strawberry (in the winter and spring) plot. In the two backyard plots, I will grow food to feed our family of 5, along with select veggies and cut flowers for the farmers market and hopefully a farm membership/CSA program.

I do have a small orchard in the front yard right now, closer to the house. There is no irrigation there, only a hose, so unfortunately, the orchard got neglected over the hot and dry early summer, so my little trees are in need of some love. My plan is to station several other small food forest guilds throughout and bordering the property, but irrigation and/or rain catchment systems have to go in first because nothing survives on this hot and dry property without water (except the cacti and other spiny weeds!)--though we hope to transform the entire property into a SPONGE as time goes on, so that when it DOES rain, we can keep and manage as much of the water as possible.

I never thought I'd be a market gardener (perennials were and remain my first love!) and now I'm applying for my local twice-monthly farmers market, which starts in October. I will be selling sunflowers/zinnias/cosmos bouquets, whatever extra warm-season produce I have (tomatoes, sweet peppers, eggplant, okra, cucumbers, zucchini, basil, etc.), and my handmade herbal-infused soaps and salves. I'll transition to cool-weather produce and flowers in the winter. One day, we might also offer eggs and honey at the market, but we also might just produce those items for personal use and stick to selling produce and flowers.

I have dreams that my neighbors will win the lottery and retire to a gorgeous tropical island, so that we can one day purchase more property in this neighborhood and expand the farm. We'd like our children to have the opportunity to build close by so that we can help them with their own children/farms/lives one day.

Every day on this property is an adventure. I was wrong about the fence when I created this thread last year. There is no fence along the back edge of the property, and the fence on the entire north side of the property is not functional. A few months ago, a deer ate one of my young mulberry trees, and a neighborhood dog keeps coming into our yard from the back side of the property, trying to attack our poultry. There are also coyotes on the trail cam. Fencing is now a huge priority for us. We are currently trying to decide if we should get a loan to get a fencing company to properly fence the entire property. I don't need a fancy fence to keep the deer out...I need a secure fence to keep my dogs in, so the dogs can run around the entire property and scare predators away. We were going to build the fence ourselves, but my husband works full time away from home and I have young children that I'm homeschooling, so I no longer think that's a reasonable option.

I will try to come back now and again and include some photos. If anyone has any advice for me, or even just encouragement, please share.

Thank you so much for the update.

Yes, you have come a long ways.  Though I bet there is still more to do.

I feel it would be best not to try to fence the entire property until you need more space for farm animals.

Fence to keep you dogs in and the other dogs, deer and predators out.

Deer will jump almost any fence unless it might be 10 feet.  I have seen them jump an 8 ft fence easily.

One forum member created a zig zag fence:

https://permies.com/t/4775/West-facing-slope

Here are some other suggesti8ons:

https://permies.com/t/242509/Junk-pole-fencing-questions