005 Our Plan

Our property is rather odd in that it is triangle shaped and has an average downward slope of 12 degrees from front to back.  There currently are no earthworks to control water runoff, and there is a storm drain in the street at the front right corner of the property that dumps precipitation out near the swimming pool.  We are on the North side of a hill, which receives more shade and further complicates our ability to grow some of the crops and trees that we desire.  The red area is a permanent easement of the Columbia Gas Pipeline, on which we are not allowed to build any permanent structure.
 
The picture to the right is of a 3D model that I created to depict how we want to utilize our property.  It is beneficial to helping us plan the order in which changes must be made so that no effort is wasted, duplicated, or done prematurely.  The area behind the barn, located at the center of the property, is yet to be developed.  Our plan is to divide the area up into equal sections, or paddocks.  A paddock system will effectively increase the property size as rotational grazing allows unused sections to recover more quickly.  The areas with ponds are currently forested and the areas behind them were clear-cut and graded by the pipeline as a temporary easement. 
 
The goal is to be able to manage chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, peafowl, and goats on the property in a paddock system and utilize the barn for raising quail and rabbits.  We will do everything we can to minimize feed costs and waste, such as planting an orchard, planting edible forage within the paddocks, growing some of our own crops more abundantly as supplemental intake for the animals, sprouting grains as fodder, and composting.  We also plan to keep bees on the property to provide a natural source of sweetener and to help with pollinating.  The ultimate goal is to create an ecosystem where the individual parts work together in symbiosis for our benefit; basically, to make a thriving micro-farm.

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