Our Permaculture Homestead

Hello Guys

I want to do a permaculture homestead with animals. Mostly self sufficient. With some animals. Like Chicken, sheep or goat, ducks or geese, rabbits maybe. Also maybe a horse or two
Mainly want grow green leaf veg like spinach , kale etc.. Maybe some cucumbers and squash.

The land has some pine trees spaced out and on the left side of the land there is a bit of terracing facing north. The soil is quite stony. Meaning there are alot of stones. Also the land has been abused in the past by illegal cultivating so someone has tilled the land with a tractor for several years without giving anything back so the topsoil is almost dusty sand like.

My question is about house placement and swales also maybe a small dam and pond with some fish in the future hopefully. So I need some help with the placement of things. Where to locate the animals, house, swales, dam, pond etc.. I would greatly appreciate it if you could give me some ideas. I would prefer to locate the house behind the water well.

Our land is in Kyrenia in Cyprus. Our rainfall is the most around December and January about 90 mm per month. About 400 mm a year.
There is the five finger mountain range south of our land. And the Mediterranean sea is in the North. The sea is about 1.5 KM away.

Thank you again.

Best advice I can give is start with those things that take the longest to do. Your soil sounds like it needs a lot of work, so I would start planning hugely beds where you are likely to put crops. Not sure where that is yet? You can still fell trees that aren't worth keeping and give them a little to decompose. The house should generally be in the middle of the property, but if you can't pick an obvious location, put up a yurt, or a tiny house in a likely spot. You can always move the yurt or keep the tiny house for guests

A contour map would be of great use; I would start with that, and aim to determine practical pond sites before doing any other layout, even if you're not putting in a pond right away. Is there bare soil on portions of the land? Get some nitrogen fixing/soil building plants established ASAP to keep it from blowing/washing away!

Other than that, spend time to familiarize yourself with the site, looking for sun traps, frost pockets. Start siting buildings once you have a sense of this stuff.

As far as stuff that takes the longest, if you have plans for large, slow to mature trees, like nut trees, worth getting those going ASAP.

Before building or planning I would watch Geoff Lawton's free videos. He has a few on site planning which are extremely helpful in deciding where to place access, buildings, and other features which must all be in relation to the contours of the land. I can't express strongly enough how helpful these would have been before we developed our place, but they are still helpful in trying to figure out how to improve what we have.

http://geofflawton.com/