Building up pasture on land that is cut down

Hey everybody, I wanted to run my plan by you fine people to see if anyone else had any suggestions or thoughts about my plan to establish pasture on my 8 acres. We should be closing on it next week and we want to have the property paid off over the next 2 year's before we build our homestead. In the mean time I want to start work establishing pasture and good soil. As of right now the property is extremely overgrown cut down, so I intend to get some goats, fence them up and then run pigs behind them and keep rotating them in paddocks through the property. I will have the pigs and goats separate, as I've seen horror stories of pig brutality on other farm animals before. Once the pigs go through I want to clean up any rocks and debris (since it's cut down I imagine there will be logs and branches and wood chips and such) and then throw out a nice diverse cover crop to get some soil building going and possibly just chop and drop it to feed to the microbiome so the soil just keeps building.

My plan for the homestead is to be diverse with gardens, orchard, a blueberry guild, herbs ranging from cullinary to medicinal, bees and honey, mushrooms, pastured broilers and layers, rabbits, goats, and maybe sheep. If I get into cows I will likely focus on smaller breeds simply because I only have the 8 acres to work with and I'm really unsure how doable cows are with that space. I do want to try and turn a profit with my homestead and sell at farmer's markets if possible but I'm going to start by focusing on getting good quality food for me and mine and then go from there.

I would appreciate any advice that could be shared and I thank you all for your time!

Welcome to Permies!

It sounds like you have quite a fun project lined up! Cheers for your purchase!

I'm not experienced with livestock of any sort, but I can anticipate some questions others will ask.

What is the topography like? Do you have slope? Is it south facing?

What is your climate zone? Average rainfall per year?

Do you know the soil type yet?

I imagine answers to these questions will encourage more answers to yours!

I like what he has to say about coppicing.Pretty much just the beginning.I mean the whole videos interesting but anyway.Also planting Chestnut.Also hazelnuts.You can use some of that wood to build somethings.Also Hugelkulturs Sepp style would be cool.Sounds like your more into grazing.Some paddock shifting would be good to implement.Last video link might be more on point for you.Fences?Fences?Fences?Our you going to live on the property with your animals?What our you going to use the animals for?Meat?Wool/Fiber?When you have livestock you can't travel very far unless you have a babysitter.They can burn a whole in your pocket quick if your buying hay/grain/slop etc.I've seen people dumpster dive or ask their local grocery for pig slop.Do you have fences in place or do you plan to herd them?Do you have a corral?Do you have a shelter for them for winter?A threesided shed is what we use.Do you have a supply of water or will you be hauling water?Predators?Our there exisiting buildings?Outhouse,outdoor kitchen is a nice place to start while camping on your land.Just trying to get you thinking not picking on you.I think what your doing is great and a step in the right direction you'll get there in no time.Hope this helps good luck on your quest.

L. Johnson wrote:Welcome to Permies!

It sounds like you have quite a fun project lined up! Cheers for your purchase!

I'm not experienced with livestock of any sort, but I can anticipate some questions others will ask.

What is the topography like? Do you have slope? Is it south facing?

What is your climate zone? Average rainfall per year?

Do you know the soil type yet?

I imagine answers to these questions will encourage more answers to yours!

I can see how the answers to the questions you asked would be helpful for everyone. I live in Midstate South Carolina so its zone 8. Very mild winters and plenty of rainfall. We get a couple inches of snow or ice maybe once every 2 to 3 years around here. The summers have the always present danger of a hurricane. The last time our area was hit majorly by a hurricane was by Hugo in 89'. Also there is the occasional tornado but they don't happen too often.

The topography of the (edit: property) is very flat so that will be nice to work with. I did a hike as far as I could get through it with my wife and kid waiting back at the car for me and it has your typical areas where loggers rutted it up. Lots of compaction and water puddling in those areas.

The property is south facing.

I haven't done any soil tests on it but around here it is very safe to say your looking at sandy soil. If there is clay I will shocked.

Ben Skiba wrote:

I like what he has to say about coppicing.Pretty much just the beginning.I mean the whole videos interesting but anyway.Also planting Chestnut.Also hazelnuts.You can use some of that wood to build somethings.Also Hugelkulturs Sepp style would be cool.Sounds like your more into grazing.Some paddock shifting would be good to implement.Last video link might be more on point for you.Fences?Fences?Fences?Our you going to live on the property with your animals?What our you going to use the animals for?Meat?Wool/Fiber?When you have livestock you can't travel very far unless you have a babysitter.They can burn a whole in your pocket quick if your buying hay/grain/slop etc.I've seen people dumpster dive or ask their local grocery for pig slop.Do you have fences in place or do you plan to herd them?Do you have a corral?Do you have a shelter for them for winter?A threesided shed is what we use.Do you have a supply of water or will you be hauling water?Predators?Our there exisiting buildings?Outhouse,outdoor kitchen is a nice place to start while camping on your land.Just trying to get you thinking not picking on you.I think what your doing is great and a step in the right direction you'll get there in no time.Hope this helps good luck on your quest.

I appreciate all the questions, that's why I posted here. To try and get this fleshed out and make sure I know what I'm getting into. Initially I will have the goats and pigs out there by themselves with me checking in on them everyday. It will likely be expensive with the gas but hey, that's the way it goes. I'll be doing the tall fencing for the goats and just running the pigs in that too. I was thinking of doing temporary fencing for this initial phase of land clearing with three sets of fencing and leap frogging them as I move through the property and sow cover crops. I was thinking 3 goats (of varying size in order to encourage the consumption of as much of the overgrowth as possible) and 3 pigs. With 3 animals in each paddock, I'm hoping I can leave them for a week and put in the labor of leap frogging the fencing on the weekends. The shelters for them will need to be mobile so I can some what easily move them from paddock to paddock. Predators we deal with are coyotes, they have become a real problem around here. Foxes too. I will need to have a well put in so to start off with I will most likely carry water for the animals in a tank. Sorry I can't answer all your questions, I'm a little busy this morning, but you have given me a lot to think about. I definitely need to have it figured out what I want to do with the grazers before I get them.