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seeking permie input

 
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I am super green in permiculture world and still working on my knowledge. I was looking to find a permiculture designer which end up being here.
Long story short, we have a 4 acres piece of wooded land in well developed neighborhood in south Texas. We have HOA that will restrict us with many things like the house size, keeping livestock, etc. As a backyard gardener my passion is about trees, multi bud grafting, bonsai ,etc. which I occasionally sell locally. Beside that we harvest a lot of vegitables, herbs, fruits from our current small back yard. I don't have any plan to be completely being self-sufficient but I like to think ahead and consider permiculture in my preliminary design.

Our property is located on the hill side with a creek on the east side which causes all sort of erosion but on the other hand we don't have any water drainage issue. We have two small stream going from west down the hill toward the creek (think about 10 Gal/m of water in summer and and more in the spring). They collect surface waters of other properties and are not shown on any map so I can imagine in some point my neighbours divert them to pervious owner property. I'll eventually test the stream water quality to see if I can use it or not. We can build a large french trench on the west border and divert the water to a pond or using other path to send it to the creek.

I like to have a local/online nursery so I need a large green house on the property. Beside that I already started to grow diffrent varieties of fruit treees with the intention of planting the majority of my lot with fruit/ nuts trees. I plan on having a large vegitable garden as well to feed my family. We also thinking about having a small pond with the intention of stocking fish for our protine source. We definitely thinking of having quite few chickens as well but it all depend on how much we can keep them quite since per HOA we only can keep one horse on the property.

I am going to attache property plan with the counter lines, creek and both srtreams as well. Our only access to the land is from the street and we want to lay the buildings as farther as possible away from creek. Pond, garden, green house and barn location is what I think would be a good place to build them but I would be glad to hear from more experienced people to see how they would plan for such a property if they want to consider permiculture in their design.


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Kaveh, welcome to the forum!

I can't help with finding a permaculture designer though I thought this thread might be of interest since you are in an HOA:

https://permies.com/t/143914/Edible-Yard-Visited

From your property plan, seems to me that the house looks too close to that blue line that I am assuming is a wet weather creek.  Dry now though it might become a river when it rains.

Also, you might contact the Soil Conservation Office in your area to advise the best placement for your pond.

If you have some specific questions the forum members might be able to help.
 
Kaveh Saeed
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Thanks for your responding Anne, Those blue line are two small streams and I plan on changing their path to slow down water velocity. But you are right, having home that much close to stram, wouldn't be a good decision.

Speaking of the pond, The west border has about 30 feet elevation compare to east side of the property and I thought about using gravity for watering. I don't know how important is that in permiculture? Using lower amounts of energy.

As you mentioned I have to get with professional about how to manage the surface waters.
 
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The first principle of Permaculture is observation (wait until you understand). If it were me I would build a triangular sunroom on the south side of the house. I would put a tall roof on it to shade maybe a third of the house roof. Every place I know of heating and cooling your house is a major part of energy use. This house orientation was once a city ordinance (in Texas) because without air conditioning air circulation was a health issue. Passive solar uses shade rather than wind to optimize cooling.
 
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