farm design

hi all
i just bought 50 acres and am getting ready to do a master plan/farm design.  i am in new york zone 6a.  i have read Ben Faulk's book multiple times and watched hours and hours of Jeff Lawton... any other planning specific books or DVDs you all like?

HI Victoria.

If you tell us all a little about the general direction that you want your farm to take, then it might help others to make suggestions.  What about Falk and Lawton do you like, or more specifically, what are you tending to consider for your space based on what you have learned from them?  A little more information about your plans or about what inspires you will allow people to be more helpful towards your end goals.

If you ever expect to have droughts, I recommend Brad Lancaster's Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, especially Volume 2 https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/ , as well as  Water for Every Farm by PA Yeomans.  I wish I had had these books when we first started working on our place.  I would have saved years of wasted effort.

I've also enjoyed The Bio-integrated Farm by Shawn Jadrnicek, which shows how to combine green-houses, water features, and other devices to fully utilize resources on the farm.

Roberto pokachinni wrote:HI Victoria.

If you tell us all a little about the general direction that you want your farm to take, then it might help others to make suggestions.  What about Falk and Lawton do you like, or more specifically, what are you tending to consider for your space based on what you have learned from them?  A little more information about your plans or about what inspires you will allow people to be more helpful towards your end goals.

SURE! :)
our neighbors in the catskills are permies/homesteaders/small farming and have totally inspired us.  I love the idea of restoring the land and growing our own food.  I hope have an orchard, some livestock (goats for milk/cheese, chickens and pigs) and a veg garden.  I have already planted a fruit and nut orchard on the land we have now and the trees are growing very well... so hopefully I can do it again.  
whenever our neighbors 'process' chickens, ducks, pigs I always participate so I am learning how to do that (and that I can do it).  
I did have two permaculture consults on our current property and both were very frustrating... one consult the guy seemed to have done a course and gotten a certification but didn't know much more than I did.  the second consult they basically pitched me for an hour asked for $500 for the sales pitch and the finished design would be an additional $8000 which seemed insane for our tiny current acreage.  so I am a little burned on a consult.
that said I actually reached out to Ben Faulk and I may have someone from the WSRF come down to prevent me from making major costly mistakes.
we will build structures... a home, and a barn for overwintering goats.  we will do chicken tractors and most likely mobile egg layers but maybe a coup for convenience.  
the property has pasture about 1000 feet down a mountain from where we want to put the home.  right now I am thinking of having the home/garden/orchard/barn all up the hill in the forest doing silvopasture with some tractoring/grazing in the pasture when appropriate.
I have read Farming the Woods, Silvopasture, Resilient Farm and Homestead, the guide to country living...
we eventually would love to have a greenhouse and try to produce as much of our own food as possible but will not go crazy about it.
we will be retiree farmers (in 4 years) ages 52/62 so we also need to have a long term design that accounts for what we can reasonably do over the next 20 years at which point we will be 72 and 82 and likely less spry.  
how is this for a start?
thank you in advance!




 

thanks Tyler!  I just bought the Bio integrated farm and look forward to reading it!  

Awesome ideas.

I'm nearing 50 myself, so there are definitely things to consider in that regard.  I'm pretty spry, but I'm not 20 anymore; that's for sure.

A book that I recently read and found super inspirational was Miraculous Abundance.  The website for the farm in Normandy France is also very much worth checking out:  The Bec Hellouin Farm : English version  This is small-scale market farming, but many of the ideas can be adapted to smaller more home-based endeavors.

In the book they refer to all the techniques/methods/philosophies that inspired them, and why they chose them, sharing what worked and what failed.  The went with a bio-intensive microbial rich system using ferments and biochar.  

The upcoming book will give more details on their tools and methods.

As far as greenhouses, and growing under cover, I recommend 4-Season Harvest, by Eliot Coleman.

Roberto pokachinni wrote:As far as greenhouses, and growing under cover, I recommend 4-Season Harvest, by Eliot Coleman.

Anything by Coleman is excellent.

My recommendation, is to have a tiny super intensive 1acre zone 1 that even a 90yr old could manage and harvest.

With a inground greenhouse for all vegetables, mushroom, herbs, chichen, possible fish. Check out garden pool
If possible a deep 30ft wide pond for fishing,
and then a 180 fruit+hazel nut trees @ 15ft centers,
warre bee hive with once a year spring visit.

As for the house have wide hallways and doors, ramps, and other such things that will make it easy on a 90yr old.


Outside of this, when it comes to your silvo pasture, I would say, swales/earthworks.
Biochar, compost tea+mushroom slurries.

Making your swales wide enough to be used as 8ft wide road on your vehicle/golf cart.

Maximizing the amount of wildlife onsite (rodents, birds, waterfowl, fish, soil-life, deer, etc)