Homestead Plan

The past few months we have spent a lot of time planning our homestead. Our primary reference has been The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan (thanks to Ed Caro for suggesting this book). This is a great general reference for homesteading. It includes chapters on planning, vegetable gardens, fruits and nuts, poultry, meat and dairy, grains, and even "food from the wild" (like mushrooms and honey). This book is a great starting point, but you will need more specialized books to really be successful.

One of our primary concerns has been space. Our lot is about half an acre, and our house takes up a large portion of that. Subtract off a driveway, a garage, a patio, and some lawn space and that doesn't leave much room to work with! The Backyard Homestead's subtitle, though, is "Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre!," so hopefully we will be able to make it work (with some clever planning).

It is really important to us to have a large (and usable) lawn. We are within walking distance of the schoolyards, and there is a large open space behind our lot that belongs to the church next door, so we can sacrifice some of our yard space to the garden. We also want a nice comfortable space in the shady part of our backyard for relaxation (with maybe some nice groundcover and a water feature!). This leaves us about a quarter of our lot to work with.

So, what is our plan?  Here is a schematic (created with Google SketchUp):

Let me walk you through the plan.  The street is along the bottom of the picture, and is to the south of the house (the gray object in the center).  You can see the sidewalk along the bottom and the slate walkways to the house.  The reddish area is the future driveway (probably stamped concrete!). The brown areas around the house will be our porches.  All of the trees on the property are in the picture, and you can see the potential landscaping close to the house.

The lawn will be in the southwest corner of the lot. We think it will be large enough for our needs. Just north of the lawn (near the garden) are two peach trees (yes, peaches can grow this far north).  Then comes the garden (about 36 ft by 28 ft). North of the garden (and my favorite idea) are four plots of wheat. If we are successful growing wheat, these four plots should provide enough bread for a year!

The northwest corner of the lot presents some problems. Due to our large (and beautiful) maple tree, it is rather shady in this location. Hopefully, though, there will be enough sun for chickens, and maybe one day even pigs! We could also have honey bees in this area, and we can tap the maples for syrup.

That pretty much covers the main features of the homestead. Other things in our plan include a two-car garage with an attached workshop area, a "serenity area" for relaxation, a stone patio for entertaining, and a firewood storage area. Last year, we purchased a high-efficiency wood stove that we use to heat the house. The stove's rating is 80,000 BTU/hr, which is enough to heat the entire house in the winter. With the stove, we use between six and eight cords per year, which will be stored in this covered and ventilated area.

This is our ultimate plan. In order for our homestead to provide most of our food, we will need to do a lot of preserving work (canning, pickling, drying, etc.). Because of this, we are going to work our way up to the full homestead. Over the next week or so I plan to post on our plan for this year and our progress so far. Stay tuned, and remember, comments are always welcome.