Melanie, great points which I will "snip divide and rearrange" for discussion:
Melonie Corder wrote: Love the idea of creating beauty in a derelict area but consider if your hard work would be protected.[/list]
[Are the neighbors on board, indifferent. Do they have kids that could potentially disrupt harmony when you leave your land unattended?
Excellent questions. Actually, for four of the five years in my little plan, protection wise, it's the little furry critters I'd be a bit more worried about -- specifically the deer population as there are no natural predators nearby. I like the question about the neighbors being on-board but I think initially I wouldn't be interacting enough to share any kind of grand design to enlist their interest... and at some point, I hope they have kids! Because I'm not doing this for me and I don't know that my two girls want to inherit Dad's pet project. So a bit of MY planning is to plant a little curiosity about what yon city slicker is up to and over time enlist said kids and parents in the bits of madness final "to launch" year of stuff that would otherwise be hellaciously expensive to complete.
With any project the first thing I do is draw it out. Then draw it with all possibilities.
Well said and started, as I have been able to do a kind of hybrid "paper grid by" taking the county's GIS system's satellite pic up to the size of an 8-1/2" sheet, then photocopying that onto PDF generated graph paper. Hard part being "no slopes" on my overhead map So I have two choices... see if there is an extant but precise enough contour map OR (my preferred choice): become my own amateur surveyor by using a small laser level that I have with a protractor base and "do-hickey head" to measure the up angles that would let me play hiker through the woods / George Washington for a weekend on the larger tract (It's just over two of the three acres, the other acre being the access points on the northwest and southwest corners up top.
If you plan to build a home there picking the site first would be important, then you can zone out from there.
Actually, that's the easy one. Given that to live here I have to be able to get in and out of my little valley in the winter, that limits a home site to the NW lot up top, with maybe a walkout basement leading to one of the paths. The other end lot becomes a bit of an access road. THAT is the part I really don't have figured at all yet. Till I draw out the slopes ...
I've always loved terraced gardens. My legs are my weak point so they aren't in my futureYou mentioned junk trees, could you use them to build up terraces hugelkultur style?
Huge agreement on the legs -- my mountain or even climbing days or at least desires are LONG past.
Followed by... a big jaw drop. I hadn't considered the usefulness of some of the larger tree cuts (say 6" and up) enough for the terrace build-ups them along the way. If not done properly and WELL ground anchored, what I'd be creating would be a "too big rain triggers one or more mud slides" mess, likely sending all my hard work to the bottom of the gully, and getting me sued! That is also why one reason I planned to put three rows of fruit and nut trees near the top anyway. Below those rows, Attaching the ground anchors to a large wood undergirding supporting the terraces might help solve many of that kind of problem stuff I was sweating right now. Fortunately, I have two semi-retired civil engineers I can brainstorm with in exchange for home cooked meals in the early go. That said, my first planned big tool is one of those ground compactors so that I can create some footpaths from which to work in the meantime, clearing out some of the brush and establishing where the terraces and paths would go.
One final point is that if 25-30% of the 2 acres doesn't end up as footpaths, it means I will have done things wrong, because I want everything except my immediate and eventual backyard to be wheelchair accessible and people interesting. So that y'all permie experts and others can teach the neighbors and kids what to put into all those raised garden beds on that crazy city dweller's converted hillside. Make an interesting spooky walk at Halloween too, right?