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Starting a homestead in a healthy forest ecosystem

 
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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
 
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Location: southern Illinois, USA
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Especially if the property is newly acquired, I would recommend doing as little as possible on it for as long as you can, up to a full year.  This time is to be devoted to observation and learning.  This is partly because in a "healthy forest ecosystem" as you describe it, there are potentially many things that are not obvious from a glance or even a single thorough survey.   Many rare and valuable plants and fungi are ephemeral...they only appear above ground for a short season and are otherwise invisible.  More than once I have gone onto a site for a design consultation and happened to come upon rare plants right in a spot being envisioned for construction or other destructive development such as a garden area.  If I had gone even a couple of weeks earlier or later, the plants would not have been apparent.   The other thing you will be able to determine is what part of the property is the "least" rich in species or rarities...this will likely be where the youngest trees are or where there has already been some kind of disturbance event.   This may be the best place to site a dwelling or other intervention.  You will also have to consider the inevitable impact of access roads, etc. which will be more if your chosen areas to develop are further into the property than near the road....which might change the decision.  Yeah, it's complicated.  Mollison wrote "stay out of the bush" for this reason (as well as wildfire issues in many climates).  Permaculture really shines in the rehabilitation of already degraded lands, and it's also in many ways easier there, since hardly any attempt at following permaculture ethics and principles can go far in making it worse than it already is or would be without humans being added to the species mix.  Just remember, we humans are the ultimate invasive species, and to make our impact decidedly beneficial to a particular landscape is our ultimate challenge in homestead scale work.
 
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Location: Abingdon, VA
goat forest garden bee
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We have been homesteading in SW Virginia, on a mostly wooded, mountain slope, and we've had to address the same questions.
We have dairy goats, chickens, and meat rabbits.
Feel free to dialogue via email: david.mitchell.inbox@gmail.com
In brief, our goats love to eat bark, and they would probably kill all the trees if we let them roam free.
The chickens love the forest and forage for bugs under leaves, etc. They get too far away sometimes, and we typically lose them to predators (fox, hawk, bear) from time to time.
The rabbits we have in portable "rabbit tractors" and they mow the grass in our orchard, and fertilize along the way.
I'm not sure about other livestock.
We've kind of followed a reverse permaculture path, since we are starting with forest and working backward to open up areas for undergrowth and different layers. We keep propagating a variety of edibles and spreading them throughout. The deer are a constant battle though.
 
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Location: Sri Lanka
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Goats and pigs are great for forested areas.
Goats will manage brush, and pigs can clear undergrowth.
 
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