I see a lot of folks starting homesteads on previously farmed or cleared
land, but not as often in an already healthy forest ecosystem. My family is working on developing a 14 acre property of mostly forested land on a southern slope with flat spots on the top of the hill. We are in the Kentucky hills and are blown away by the beauty of our forest. We fortunately don't have many issues with invasive plants or overgrowth, other than in some small areas. For the most part, our forest is very healthy and we want to preserve its natural ecology in the best way we can.
I would love to hear input on having livestock in a situation like this, what types you may recommend and how to potentially graze them throughout the forest. We already have
chickens and are considering making an addition of goats and pigs. We were thinking to create a paddock for the goats and pigs (separate or together???) and allow them to rotationally graze through the parts of our forest that do need some support with underbrush. Are there other animals that would be a good fit for a situation like this? We would love to have a couple cows for
milk and sheep as well, but don't want to clear our forest for pasture.
I would be interested in a silvopasture system but am still not sure about introducing grasses or other forage for the grazers..
We would like for our impact on this land to be positive and harmonious!
Any resources - videos,
books, or just thoughts would be appreciated!! Thank you all