Homestead Design

So my wife and I bought 2 hectare land that was infested with invasive trees (Black Wattle) and Gumtree in Port Elizabeth South Africa . Having never been rural folk and living in the city, we would love some help from anyone that is keen to help us design the homestead ito living dwellings, chicken runs, gardens and all sort of future growth. If keen, let me know.

Afikile Sikwebu wrote:So my wife and I bought 2 hectare land that was infested with invasive trees (Black Wattle) and Gumtree in Port Elizabeth South Africa . Having never been rural folk and living in the city, we would love some help from anyone that is keen to help us design the homestead ito living dwellings, chicken runs, gardens and all sort of future growth. If keen, let me know.

Welcome to an awesome site. To be perfectly honest with you, no one person here is smarter than all of us put together. I know time is always an issue, but if you take the time to really look over this site, by doing so you will get a doctorate in Homesteading. The information is vast, and the experience level deep.

I wish you the best on your new homestead.

Welcome to the forum!

Just a little insight:  Build the house first if you need a place to live. Then the rest can come later.

We were too exhausted to do anything else when we built our house.

Black wattle is a pioneer plant, its not an invasive plant for the fun of it.
It provides benefits.
They only last about 15 years
from; Benefits of Black wattle
In tougher environments where it is windy, frosty or very sunny, black wattle can be planted as a quick-growing tree among which other slower-growing and more sensitive species can be planted.
The black wattle provides protection for these other tree species, and as it ages and starts to collapse (often at around 15 years) the other trees emerge and take over.
As for all acacias, black wattle is a nitrogen-fixing plant.
This means its roots have bacteria that allow it to take nitrogen from the atmosphere and incorporate it into the plant’s structure, which also benefits the surrounding soil.
This can be a real advantage to those establishing a garden in poorer soils or heavy clays.

The black wattle can also provide excellent natural mulch both in large-scale revegetation projects and domestic gardens.
The mulch forms from the leaves and bark as they are shed, but also from the twigs and branches as the plant dies.

As for the Gum trees, do you mean Eucalypts

I like a 1,000sqft 3bedroom house.
Radiant infloor heating, powered by heat pump/boiler
You could use a ERV to lower your Air Conditioning bill
Do you plan on adding solar panels: 10kW Solar Array with a Sol-ArK 15