North Central Kentucky Homestead Build

My husband and I have had a long-standing dream to buy a ton of land and live in a rural setting.  I love to cook and garden, and would love to raise animals for food production. We finally pulled the trigger last year and bought ~100 acres of land about 45 minutes north of Lexington.  We've been working with an architect to design our dream home and over the last year have begun working on projects to make the land work for us while we wait for our house to be built and be able to be on the land full time.  We currently rent a house about 30 minutes away in Georgetown.


The land is basically one big long holler.  It's hilly, rocky land with a small flat bottomland area.  The hills that are cleared are heavily eroded clay, less than 30" down to bedrock at the tops.  The majority of the trees are white oak, black walnut, eastern red cedar, and shagbark hickory.  The front portion of the land is mostly cleared, with trees in some of the smaller hollers, and a medium pond (~.66 acres)in the one closest to where the house will be situated.  The back portion of the land is primarily wooded with a long drainage creek that runs all the way out to the front.  It's kind of seasonal, but we've never seen it any drier than "very muddy."  Adjacent to the drainage creek is a small (~.15 acre) pond.  

Before we bought the land, it was being used to run cattle.  This has created some issues with heavily rutted and eroded land near the ponds (there is no running water on the property at this time, so the ponds were the only water source for the cattle).  I've been working to help slow the erosion on the banks of the big pond, adding some marginal plants like blue flag iris and pickerel rushes, we took a couple of trees out that were growing on the dam, and seeded the eroded mud heavily.  It's payed off some.  Much of the dam is grassy now and the marginal plants seem to have popped back up after winter, but it can't be mowed as the rocks jutting up out of the clay are far too high and we don't have a budget for bringing an excavator in to deposit a layer of dirt on the dam.




Our first purchase for the land was a side by side.  It's been instrumental in getting around the hilly areas and checking on things.  Last fall my husband and in-laws cleared a lane around the property line (in excess of 2 miles - our property boundaries are not straight lines) so now we can get the side by side through every month or so to check the fence (we don't have animals on the land yet, but the neighbor runs cattle) and make sure everything's in order.  The land had one building on it, a collapsing tobacco barn.  It is pretty cool (and kind of creepy) but if it weren't for the trees holding it up, it would have been on the ground years ago.  A vulture family seems to have made a home in part of it.  Knowing that we'll eventually be adding additional equipment, and wanting a secure place to store it, we jumped on having a shop built.  The long term plan is to run water and power to the shop, but we needed inexpensive initially.  We are planning our dream home and want to keep as much liquidity as possible right now. Shop is 30x40, 3  12' tall doors in the front and one in the back (makes it so I can drive a tractor through without backing it into things I shouldn't.)  We should be able to put a lift in once we have power run to the shop to work on cars.



When we sold our house in the PNW, our realtor told me not to plant a garden in our raised beds, as it would look unkempt by the time the new owners took possession of the property, so I grew no garden in 2020.  When we came out here, it was nearly July and far too late to start a garden, so I focused my gardening energy on planning future gardens and learning everything I can about gardening in Kentucky.  Coming from a zone 8 sandy soil garden that receives almost zero rain every summer to a zone 6 clay soil getting inches of rain.   Also, I suspect we can grow watermelons here(!?) which is exciting to me.  This spring I mulched an area adjacent to the shop  (where they used to work cattle) and planted some tomatoes, pumpkins, squash, watermelons and canteloupe.  All things that I feel OK trying to grow without too much intervention as we're usually only at the property a few days a week.  I also turned an old cistern into an herb garden - I have walking onions, basil, sage, thyme, and mint planted in it.




Our next few projects include getting a tractor that can handle mowing the steep slopes, installing rainwater collection from the shop roof, and expanding the garden area.  We are hoping to break ground on the house later this summer, and hopefully be in by next fall.  

Future plans include:
Raised bed kitchen garden near house
Chicken tractor followed by permanent coop once I figure out where I want to put it (trying not to rush this one, but I'm antsy to get some laying hens and guineas patrolling for ticks)
A few sheep I can rotate around the property to control growth in some of the sketchier areas - and if we can harvest 1-2 each year it would be nice to have lamb in the freezer
A few pigs - I was planning on mangalitzas but a friend who has raised them said they don't make enough meat, so I may go with a manga sow and do a cross with a more standard meat producer - either way we'll start out with big pink pigs to see if managing them is in the cards
Meat chickens if I can make friends who would be willing to help with butcher day
Maybe a few dexter cattle, but bringing cattle back to the land will take some equipment we don't have and becoming OK with them doing a bit of environmental damage I don't love
A high tunnel if I can find a good site for it.

Laural, what beautiful land!  Congratulations on the purchase.

You certainly do have some ambitious dreams, but you appear to be acting on those dreams quite well.  You can certainly do a lot with 100 acres.

When I bought my land (all 9 acres), we also built our house.  And the roughly $1500 we spent on the architect was by far the best money invested.  Actually, ten times that would still have been a good investment as without him we would have made an expensive mess.  Good job on looking for the architect.

If I could have made one purchase before building the house it would have been a utility tractor.  I have one now, but they are just so useful and there were so many odd jobs to get done during and briefly after construction that having one would have been a blessing.  For my purposes, a tractor with a loader (a must-have in my opinion), a box blade and maybe a rotary cutter would have been the perfect machine.

But at any rate, again, congratulations on the land purchase.  And please, do keep us updated as this long-term project progresses.

Eric

Will do!

Our architect is amazing.  We're definitely paying him more than $1500, but our house is going to be phenomenal.  We are very happy working with him and the builder who's consulting on the design.

Yeah, we've been considering a large tractor (something powerful enough to drive a bush hog) to mow and move things around, but have recently decided to get a ventrac as it should be far safer on the steep slopes, and we can get a cheaper smaller tractor with a grapple bucket when spending has come down a bit.  Would be great to have something to grab the trees and honey locust we've been cutting down.


Yes, definitely ambitious dreams!  I have the rest of my life to make them reality.  It's fun to have so much space to think "man it would be cool to do XYZ" and then actually be able to just do that!  I inoculated a couple areas with dead ash trees to grow morels last fall.  

A couple of ideas.
- try and save the tobacco shed, since it does not need a permit to be there
- consider the use of tethered goats instead of mowing areas.
- Any cattle that get in will wreck the dams again.
- consider fencing the dams off from cattle etc
Catch water for reuse off the roof.
My signature below has a link to using rainwater.

Project looks exciting.

Thank you.  The tobacco barn is past saving.  Most of the poles have slid off of their footings, the only things keeping it up are the trees that it's leaning on.  That said, I cleared some wild grape off of a couple of the trees this winter to help keep them healthy, I fully intend to try to keep it upright as long as possible, but it's not a functional building that I'd trust livestock in.

With the predator pressure in the area, plus the need to manage them effectively, (and given we have about 40 acres that needs mowing), I don't think that tethered goats are the right match for us.  We may see about "borrowing" a couple of bucks of wethers from the neighbor once we are living out there occasionally to clear areas before we get sheep.

Thanks, I agree.  They've been really hard on the land.  In the future if we do decide to keep a few dexter cattle(they are supposed to be a bit less destructive due to their size) they'll be kept in the more forested and wild back areas of the property where the damage they'll cause will heal itself more quickly.

We have only one dam and it's in a more accessible/trafficked portion of the property, there won't be livestock with access to it any longer.

I'm working with a friend to get a couple of IBC totes for rainwater collection from the roof of the shop for watering the garden.  That's my next project.

I am not sure any cattle actually dont damage the ground.
I have worked on dairy farms and have not seen soil compaction that causes trouble in the paddocks, but it certainly happens on paths and near water rings.
I guess its a matter of not overstocking.

John C Daley wrote:I am not sure any cattle actually dont damage the ground.
I have worked on dairy farms and have not seen soil compaction that causes trouble in the paddocks, but it certainly happens on paths and near water rings.
I guess its a matter of not overstocking.

I believe all cattle will do a certain amount of damage, however smaller cattle should theoretically be a little less hard on the land.  And they'd be going somewhere that has already taken the brunt of the damage from a decent size herd of large cattle, so likely won't cause any additional damage.

pictures worth 1000 words,
very beautiful place you have.
as far as the 40 acres that need mowing. are there any neighbors who cut and bale hay? might be a good way to get it mowed without having your own equipment and making new friends.

bruce Fine wrote:pictures worth 1000 words,
very beautiful place you have.
as far as the 40 acres that need mowing. are there any neighbors who cut and bale hay? might be a good way to get it mowed without having your own equipment and making new friends.

Thanks for the suggestion!  Unfortunately most of the land is quite hilly and also has rocks, so while it needs mowing, it's more work than it's worth to hay.  We have some flat bottomland that was used for tobacco many years ago but as the farm shifted away from that transitioned over to a hay field, so the neighbor who used to hay it before we bought it mows those few acres in exchange for what hay he is able to get from it, but it doesn't make much of a dent in the rest of the areas needing to be mowed.

That is a pretty piece of land. In fact the whole area around Lexington is nice, you might make a point to visit Daniel Boone State Forest and Natural Bridge State Park a little to the south east when you get the time. I've spent many a night living in caves down there, back in another life time.

About 45 minutes north of Lexington puts you about the same distance south of me, I'm just across the Ohio River in Indiana. As far as what you can grow there I'd say just about anything except maybe some of those Andean crops that they grow in the PNW.

You mentioned raised beds, in your neighborhood you should have Black Locust as well as Honey Locust. Black Locust logs, if you have them of decent size make great raised beds as well as posts, building supplies and of course firewood. Black Locust flowers are also generally abundant in the spring and are delicious battered and fried similar to morel mushrooms, in fact I almost like them better than morels and they are much easier to find.

When you get settled in you can drop me a note if you want as I have a pretty good supply of vegetable seeds that I've been growing by landrace technique. The way you describe your soil is very similar to mine as is our climate, so they should be pretty well adapted.

I see some kind of furry black and white critter in than one photo. Boarder Collie or English Shepard perhaps?

Mark Reed wrote:That is a pretty piece of land. In fact the whole area around Lexington is nice, you might make a point to visit Daniel Boone State Forest and Natural Bridge State Park a little to the south east when you get the time. I've spent many a night living in caves down there, back in another life time.

About 45 minutes north of Lexington puts you about the same distance south of me, I'm just across the Ohio River in Indiana. As far as what you can grow there I'd say just about anything except maybe some of those Andean crops that they grow in the PNW.

You mentioned raised beds, in your neighborhood you should have Black Locust as well as Honey Locust. Black Locust logs, if you have them of decent size make great raised beds as well as posts, building supplies and of course firewood. Black Locust flowers are also generally abundant in the spring and are delicious battered and fried similar to morel mushrooms, in fact I almost like them better than morels and they are much easier to find.

When you get settled in you can drop me a note if you want as I have a pretty good supply of vegetable seeds that I've been growing by landrace technique. The way you describe your soil is very similar to mine as is our climate, so they should be pretty well adapted.

I see some kind of furry black and white critter in than one photo. Boarder Collie or English Shepard perhaps?

Thanks!  We really love it out there!  I checked out parts of Daniel Boone and saw Princess Arch and Chimney Rock last autumn, but Natural Bridge is definitely on the list!  

Out of curiosity, what Andean crops are generally grown in the PNW?  I didn't get too ambitious in terms of growing weirdsies in the suburbs, mostly just stuff we knew we liked to eat already.

We have a TON of honey locust, but I haven't seen a single black locust on the property. We had raised beds made primarily out of corrugated metal roofing in our old garden, I'll probably build more of those, I'm working out ways to make them using less wood than before, because you know, lumber prices.  I'll have to keep an eye out for black locust though, the flowers sound awesome.  I did set a couple areas with morel spawn last fall, hopefully I'll have some morels in the next few years.  

Some landrace varieties would be rad.  Right now I'm just throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks, which is kind of a fun way to garden it turns out!

Yes!  That's Cirilla.  Best the vet figures, she's a border collie sighthound mix.  We haven't done a DNA test yet, but she runs like a greyhound and tries herding everything that moves.  

A few small garden updates - My garden has gone crazy and I'm loving it.  My pumpkins and tomatoes and butternut squash have made so much progress.  I even harvested my very first okra pod yesterday.  


We've been getting a lot of rain mixed in with the hot weather, which the plants have been loving, but having nearly a week of days in the mid 80s without any precipitation has reminded me once again that I really need to get my rainwater catchment situation figured out sooner rather than later.  Being able to turn a soaker hose on in the garden versus hauling water from our rental house just to water things would make a difference in ease of management.  

Well first, an update on this geodesic dome trellis situation - I harvested probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 butternut squash from this sucker.  It was absurd.  


I've made some solid progress on coming up with a 2 year plan and beginning to implement some of my longer term planning and infrastructure.  I met with both our ag and horticultural extension agents to discuss plans and what mistakes they believed I would be making.  The horticultural agent also helped me pick a site for our future orchard and I did soil tests at the kitchen garden locations as well as where I want to put the orchard, so now I know I have some direction in terms of amending the soil.  I've covered a ~200 sq ft area with black woven landscape fabric and then clear plastic to kill off as many weeds as possible.  We have had a lot of bindweed, spiny amaranth, burdock, jimsonweed, and a few other weeds that I haven't IDed yet that are popping up in disturbed areas as well as through the wood chips (I obviously didn't put a thick enough layer down, I'm fixing that by topdressing with the remainder of my pile now, and will get more delivered once I have my raised beds set up.

We've had our cottage site cleared and graded, and unearthed an old storm shelter (which I'm thrilled about) that needs some cleanup and a new door, but should do fine to protect us from tornados should the need arise.  We have plans that are close to final and should be meeting with the builder this week to get our permit drawings to apply for building permits and then get the foundation poured.



We had a big pile of mostly topsoil that was scraped off the site where the shop was built, and it had grown 8' tall weeds over the summer.  I cut those weeds down, picked the construction garbage out of the pile, and used some fence boards that I had pulled down from around the garden area to build an extremely janky low effort raised bed for asparagus.  My main goal in this is to just get the asparagus in the grown and growing.  I expect I'll want to change its location in the future (even now I'm realizing that it's a perfect place to park a livestock trailer), but this is a free way to get the bed going and have a dedicated area for asparagus.  I built the bed, shoveled the dirt around in it, covered it with the contents of my little compost bin I've been hauling our food scraps and saturated wood pellet cat litter to, and then threw a layer of cardboard and wood chips down to rot over the winter.  


The plastic covered garden area is the future site of my berry patch and tomato trellis area.  I'll be cutting down a few small trees that have either died or are crowded or look bad and using them as a tall trellis framework to hang ropes to wrap tomato leaders around.  The berries will go in 2x10x1' tall raised garden beds made mostly of corrugated metal roofing material, with a wooden frame.  This is to keep things tidy as well as keep the berries contained.  All of the plastic will get pulled and saved for the next area that I want to reclaim.  

I ordered some bare root dwarf apple trees at the recommendation of the horticultural agent, both because of the ease of harvest, and the areas higher up on our hills have such shallow topsoil that I'm not likely to gain much from planting larger rootstock.  I also ordered 10 thornless blackberries, 10 thornless raspberries, 10 rhubarb crowns, and 50 asparagus crowns.  I work best under pressure so having a deadline is going to make actually ensuring that the beds are built to take our new plants much more likely.  I'll also likely order my hardy kiwis (to grow on the trellis) and maybe a Chicago hardy fig tree shortly.  

I've mostly solidified plans for livestock on the farm.  We are going to focus on a smallish herd of hair sheep initially (allow it to grow by keeping the ewe lambs) and a trailer I can tow with the UTV as a mobile chicken coop for egg layers.  I'm planning to meet with a permaculture consultant to get their opinion on what structures I need and where I should site them, and where and what species of trees to add in for a few silvopasture areas, then we are going to look into getting fencing completed so we have one large secure perimeter to prevent stray animals from getting anywhere they're not supposed to be (mostly the road, the forest, or the neighbor's land), and to reduce the pressure from predators like coyotes, though I intend to keep all livestock secured inside the perimeter with electric net fencing also.  Eventually I'd like to add a small pig operation, but I'm unsure about what breed type to go with.  I'm hugely attracted to mangalitzas, but the ability to let something like an Idaho pastured pig kick around the orchard and eat fallen fruit without killing my trees is mighty attractive too.  Either way, I have time to make that decision.

Hey there guys! Glad to see your posts and pics! I'm in Robertson county, KY, about an hour or so north/east of Lexington KY on 30 acres.

I didn't read everything you wrote, but hope to re-read it all soon...anyways I saw you mentioned something about your side by side purchase and being interested in buying a tractor. I do mechanics, veggie gardening and landscaping for a living (well I try my best lol) and am into tools and things in that realm. Starting small, I just have an ATV...but do dream of a sxs with dump bed.
Last year I did buy a new tractor though, so if you guys ever wanted to chat about that or if you are close by enough and wanted to check mine out in your decision making process let me know! I know it's a huge investment and really hard to know what machine will suit your needs, I'd go to the dealers after hours on purpose just to look at and sit on all the different models on the lot in my own time and space :)

Cole Tyler wrote:Hey there guys! Glad to see your posts and pics! I'm in Robertson county, KY, about an hour or so north/east of Lexington KY on 30 acres.

I didn't read everything you wrote, but hope to re-read it all soon...anyways I saw you mentioned something about your side by side purchase and being interested in buying a tractor. I do mechanics, veggie gardening and landscaping for a living (well I try my best lol) and am into tools and things in that realm. Starting small, I just have an ATV...but do dream of a sxs with dump bed.
Last year I did buy a new tractor though, so if you guys ever wanted to chat about that or if you are close by enough and wanted to check mine out in your decision making process let me know! I know it's a huge investment and really hard to know what machine will suit your needs, I'd go to the dealers after hours on purpose just to look at and sit on all the different models on the lot in my own time and space :)

Hey, thanks for the offer!  We are near the corners of Harrison, Grant and Scott counties, so not super far, but definitely not close either.  We have a pretty good grasp of what we'd want in a tractor, but are currently kind of pivoting - we've decided just to pay someone to come out and bush hog annually, we have a guy that did a ton of clearing for us last year for a reasonable price and says it'll go way faster this year because he's not cutting down tall brush.  What we really want is to get a little skid steer to start handling minor earthworks projects and whatnot.  Our friend's dad does earthworks and LOVES equipment auctions so I'll probably have him take me sometime when we finally decide to pull the trigger.

We've actually ordered a new SxS, a little electric polaris ranger.  Our Havoc has a spooled rear end and tears up the ground so badly, and electric seems like it'll be far simpler in terms of maintenance, so I'll be ready to get rid of the Havoc if our little ranger ever arrives.

I got the first bit of our orchard in.  We have 8 apple trees and 3 European pear trees.  Each tree is in a hole that's been broadforked, then dug in with alfalfa pellets, blood and bone meal, trimmed, tubed, mulched with cardboard and wood chips, and I've buried a couple of gallons of winecap inoculated wood chips in the mulch at the base of each of the trees.  

I ordered dwarf trees at the recommendation of my local extension agent, but with an eye for the future, and if these do not thrive and I find that I'd be better off with full-sized trees, I spaced everything at 30 feet apart.  This gives us plenty of room now to drive through, run animals between the trees, etc, and in the future if we replace trees with full-sized ones, we still have adequate spacing.  

Over 20 years after moving onto my present site, one of my biggest regrets is not planting full sized fruit trees.

John F Dean wrote:Over 20 years after moving onto my present site, one of my biggest regrets is not planting full sized fruit trees.

I'll consider myself lucky if one of my biggest regrets in regards to my present site is not planting full-sized fruit trees.  

Our foundation footer has been poured!  




We've also made a ton of progress in the garden.  2022 is the year of the perennial for us, and we've added 11 apple and pear trees, 50 asparagus, 10 rhubarb, 10 raspberries, 10 thornless blackberries, cartoons, artichokes, and 4 hardy kiwi vines.  We also got 48 tomatoes in the ground and 36 peppers, a handful of cucumbers, squash, etc, and planted the first patch of plants in the medicinal garden.  I also have a handful of fig cuttings that I'm planning to plant out this autumn, but they're still getting babied in my kitchen for the time being. The flower bulbs have also really come into their own.








Unsure if things will stay where I'm putting them, but I want to at least get things growing and can adjust at a later date as my needs and desires for the area change.  

I always read your entries, I enjoy them.
Why do spooler diffs cause the wheels to spin on the mobile unit?
Do you foundations extend further into the ground?
What are the walls of the home being built from?
Thanks

John C Daley wrote:I always read your entries, I enjoy them.
Why do spooler diffs cause the wheels to spin on the mobile unit?
Do you foundations extend further into the ground?
What are the walls of the home being built from?
Thanks

Spooler diffs - is this in regards to the conversation about the spooled rear axle on our green side by side?  If so, think of a spooled rear end as a locked differential, like with an old 4wd truck.  It forces both wheels to turn at the same speed, so when going around a corner, the inside tire rotates faster than it needs to, causing the same damage burning out might cause, you can see evidence of this in the background of the photo of the raised bed that I posted yesterday.  There's a torn up area of bare dirt on the inside of the turn, and the outside looks fine.  The rest of the "road" through the garden where turns aren't being made is in fine shape.  

Foundations - The poured area is the foundation footer, so this is the wide area that will support the actual poured ribbon foundation walls, which will be about 4 feet tall (so we'll have a ~4' crawl space under the house).  You can see the excavated area around the foundation footers.  After the actual foundation walls are poured, we will build drainage in around the outside of the foundation and then grade up to near the top of the foundation walls.  Then once construction is completed, we'll have the whole site regraded to make it so the house looks like it belongs on the site, and then I can put some focus into landscaping around the house.

Walls - The house will be "stick built" using common modern construction methods with tight air sealing.  The back portion of the house will be standard walls, but our living room/kitchen volume will have 2 walls that are made up almost entirely of storefront glass.  Here's a photo of the model the architect made to help make some sense of it.