Seth Fes

No.  Any outbuildings will not have windows that go through the wall.  The sheep hut will be on the north pasture wall, and there will be a mushroom growing hut on the south east portion of the wall.  The rest will be just sheds for tools or other various functions.

I have communicated and shown potential plans to the neighbors on the east and west side of the home.  The external perimeter wall will have some plants to garnish the perimeter, but nothing that would allow vermin or raccoons to easily scale the wall.  Since we are in the middle of the block it won't obscure any ones view more than the house would, if it were built in line with the rest of blocks homes.   We have been as open and transparent as possible with the intent of why we want that style.  Security and containment are big reasons for us.  For the southern court, there will only be one point of ingress/egress and that is through the house.  This area will be used for free ranging our children, but also with the structure of the house and veranda like perimeter, it will be used for water collection.  There are a few other containment and security issues for me,  for the sheep, chickens, ducks and other animals we are allowed, I want increased potential protection from neighborhood dogs and pests.  Functionally it provides some fun things to try for water management.  I chose that style of layout (siheyuan) but have been trying to optimize self-sufficiency within the quadrants.  For water distribution and retaining, I have been studying polder's and terracing.  With proper implementation, we could keep the pasture and anything grown in the southern court watered with minimal use of pumps or our seasonal reservoir water supply. The southern border of the house is graded about 10 inches lower (over 330 ft) than the northern border, so that will provide a little assistance in the flow.  When I talked to the neighbors, one of my major points is that we want to keep our kids crap out of other peoples lawns.  That is a nice selling point for them since there have been quite a few issues with that in the past from other neighbors.  Honestly though, I like walls.  No wall can ever compensate for us teaching our kids how to respect others and the tools/toys they have, but I still like those boundaries.  To get a bit nerdy, I always think of a cell wall, it is there for organization and function, but selective permeability is needed to have it thrive in relationship to it's neighbors.  And on that note, I let anyone I talk to know that the wall isn't there to keep people out, and when I build it, I will be inviting people in as often as it is appropriate.  

Another reason I chose that style is because of replication and exchangeable parts.  We will be experimenting on what we can produce in town, what works for my wife (homemaker) and my schedule, what we actually end up using and can utilize in a routine, what works with/for the kids, etc.  About 5-10 years after the initial in-town set up is done, we will be doing it on a larger scale out in the country on 10 acres.  It will have the same perimeter wall, but the guts of it will change based on our experience.  By that time our children will be mostly in the age of 10-15 and about ready to start with more intensive work at home.  

We plan on utilizing the perimeter wall veranda and house roofing for water collection.  We have considered putting an attached greenhouse on the south side of the house, with a small orchard in the southern area (placed according to shade issues).  We share about 45'x100 ft of garden space to the north of the top yellow wall.  It is shared with my parents and will not be affected by the northern wall height.  

Gilbert that sounds about dead on.  We are considered to be in a desert.  Though the mountains aren't close enough to directly change our winter light exposure.  We live at about 4,551′ elevation in town.  I attached a little image of what the property is shaped like.  The bottom outline in brown is the perimeter wall for the southern part of the property.  It will be about 9' tall and possibly a veranda like border around the inside (pending on shade effects).  The orange wall is just the southern pasture fence.  The yellow wall is the pasture border, and it's height will depend on how we build the outbuildings into it and what that does to the shade on the pasture.  Top of the picture is north, bottom is south.  A The image in the upper third fourth of the picture is the 30x60 (interior) ft home we are planning.  There will be a shed connecting from the west part of the house to the parallel portion of the perimeter wall, to store tool's for caring for the pasture and front area.  The perimeter walls will be about 1.25 ft thick and made out of pumice crete with a plaster finish.

Thank you very much.  That is a great amount of help to start.  We are in southern Idaho about 13 miles north of the Utah border.  We have an optimal placement for the home being a passive solar design.  I went over the sun exposure via google maps for a few years, and except for exceptionally cloudy days we get about 6-7 hours of sunlight during the darkest part of the winter.

Building for my home starts spring 2017.  My wife and I are starting to plan out for tree's and our garden.  We have a 99x330 ft lot in the rural community we live in.  We are building a 9ft perimeter wall around the property and organizing the buildings in a style similar to a siheuan/quadrangle.  With that type of height for the wall, should we be concerned about a potential microclimate?  Has anyone worked with anything similar and know of any benefits/detriments to having that type of perimeter set up? We live in a 6a to 5b hardiness zone.  

Angelica, there is a pumice product http://www.hesspumice.com/pumice-pages/pumice-uses/pumice-pozzolan.html pozzolan, that can be added to the concrete to improve it. I live in the town that houses production of the Limestrong and other Pozz products.