I have the book the Have More Plan which made me start thinking. Then it got to reality and I saw the amount of time wasted in having to walk so far. So we are changing our layout. Would you all be willing to share your homestead layout ideas? I don't know if this would work well here (with out pictures) but I thought it might give us all some ideas! Lynn

-- Lynn (johnnypfc@yahoo.com), June 30, 2001

Answers

Ken Kearn's "The Owner Built Homestead" addresses this issue pretty thoroughly. It's out of print but frequently shows up on The Advanced Book Exchange, or try to get it via interlibrary loan.

-- Sojourner (notime4@summer.spam), June 30, 2001.

The farmhouse in the middle of the place, with the pastures going in a horseshoe around it. Lots of paddocks with individual shelters going out away from the center. Then drive the cushman around the horseshoe on the outside of the pastures, open the doors on the shelters, and put in the feed. And water tanks that catch the water from the roofs of the shelters. Gates big enough to get a bush hog in them. Then all the animals will be up by the house at night, like ours are. We still need to fence off 3 more fence lines and build more shelters, we only have 4 pastures now, and we want 7.

-- Cindy in KY (solidrockranch@msn.com), July 01, 2001.

Lynn, alot depends on how much land you have and what are you thinking of having (garden,herbs,fruit trees,chickens,cows,etc.)

At my place everything is layed out to the most visted to the least visted. The house does not have to be always in the center, the main thing is to start from your house and worked outwards. Like draw a circle around your house giving yourself room for the gardens and stuff,then draw a bigger circle which would be where you want your small animals,etc. and so on and so on until the end of your property. If you can't grow things all over your property for whatever reason then another way is to start at the house and draw two lines from the middle going backwards in a V shape in the direction you want to put things and then divide the V into sections or zones same as the circles.

You will want your veg's/herb garden/greenhouse close to house for right from the garden picking,plus they are the most visted sites on a homestead,then you could set your chickens/rabbits out past that with your fruit /nut trees coming after that and then moving into the other areas of stuff (woodlot,cows,grain raising.etc.)

hope this helps & if you need more info e-mail me if you want.

-- TomK (tjk@cac.net), July 01, 2001.

Our property is square and our house (home "acre", if you will) is located in one corner. Upwind from us are our barns. Between the barns and the house are the garage, bunkhouse, hen house, poultry run, rabbit hutch (now empty,) vegetable gardens, and the water tank. Between those buildings and our house are fruit trees and lawn. We have a service road on the other side of our garage which leads to the barns so we can have hay delivered, etc. Around the barns are the pastures, cross-fenced, with gates that make the shortest distances for moving the sheep, etc.

The barns and poultry yard have adjacencies and gates which make it easy to move manure and compost from the sources to where it will be used. Since that is my least favorite work to do, we took care to plan it with short distances, tractor-sized gates, etc. I guess I would recommend thinking about that mostly, as well as your water distribution. Anything that needs to be transported needs some careful thought, otherwise you will be doing more work than you need.

If the house hadn't already been built where it is, we might have considered having it in the middle of the property. However, we only have 5 acres anyway, so this works out okay. Plus, aesthetically, it looks nice from the road.

Good luck to you!

-- sheepish (the_original_sheepish@hotmail.com), July 01, 2001.

Keep in mind that there may be things more important than efficiency. Keeping all the morning chores close together and all the evening chores close together will provide much of the benefit of keeping daily tasks close to the house, even if they are not by the house. I mean if you can feed the pigs on the same trip you feed the chickens you can put them father from the house and keep the noise and smells a bit farther away.

You might not work in the orchard every day like the animal pens, but it's a more pleasant place for a front yard than the barn yard might be, and if it's on the south side of the house it will provide shade in the summer.

Take advantage of existing conditions where you can. I just moved my rabbit pens farther from the house. I'll have to walk a bit more twice a day, but they are more comfortable back in the shade of some trees. It would be a shame to cut down the trees to plant something else and build more of a shed for the rabbits close at hand like one might do strictly for walking efficiency.

Don't get stuck on any particular plan or idea, but for any layout you come up with do the chores in your head for each season and guess what loads you will be carrying. In some cases it might be better putting things farther away and using a truck or cart rather than keeping things to where you can carry them by hand. Don't forget to plan vehicle access to every place that could possibly need it some day in the future.

While you're planning the layout, might as well plan the crops too. If you space the trees in the orchard a bit farther apart than normally recommended, your yield per acre will be less, but your yield per tree and per hour worked will both be higher. You will also be able to grow more things under the trees and get two (or more) crops from the same land. Planting, for example, orchard grass under the trees and letting animals graze it until picking time will give less grass than a clean pasture might, but the total fruit crop + pasture will be higher than if you divided the same land in half for exclusive use of each. Bramble berries and bush fruit do well between fruit trees, but generally not under them. Some annual garden crops do OK in the shade, but you can't till too deep without hurting the tree roots.

The number of possibilities are endless and the best ones are going to be very sight-specific. I hope the replies here give you lots of things to consider.

==>paul

-- paul (p@ledgewood-consulting.com), July 01, 2001.

If you've got the choice put your orchard on a North or East facing slope. If you put them on a South facing slope they will warm up quickly in the spring - so quickly that they will come into bud earlier, putting them at risk for spring frost damage. By putting them on a N or E facing slope you are delaying the time they will bud out and greatly decrease your risks of bud damage or blossom drop due to a late frost or cold snap.

-- Sojourner (notime4@summer.spam), July 01, 2001.

Lynn, I would say that drainage is very important when placing barns, sheds, pens and gardens, especially the house and septic and well. If you have wind, keep upwind of the bad smells associated with wet pig pens etc. I envy anyone getting to plan the placement of all of this, most of us just fall into what the last guy left. Maureen

-- Maureen Stevenson (maureen@mtaonline.net), July 01, 2001.

Lynn,

You said it would be difficult to do this without pictures. There are a number of picture hosting sites available on the web and I believe most if not all are free. You could even scan in diagrams if you chose. I hope this helps.

-- Gary in Indiana (gk6854@aol.com), July 02, 2001.

Hi Lynn,

Access to water for the livestock and gardens is a key component to layout. Second is ease of feeding livestock. We have ours layed out in a circular fashion so we can drive the truck around and feed off the back. Also, plan backup contingencies for weather and emergencies like your power being out for days etc. We have a hay shed close up to the house that we convert to an animal shelter when the weather gets bad (we feed the hay out of that first in the winter so its empty then put up some cattle panel around it for a pen).

-- Stacia in OK (OneClassyCowgirl@aol.com), July 02, 2001.

Lynn, I've written this a few times, with a few things left out, and a few added in. Last time, I decided to keep a copy of it, so I could just copy and paste. Glad I did. Here it is; hope it helps:

For temperate climates:

Design your house as much as possible with all the rooms you spend a lot of time in along the south wall, and spaces like stairways, laundry garage, etc. along the north side.

Put nearly all your windows on the south wall

Design the house so that the east west axis is about half again as long as the north south axis. This will maximize solar gain in winter, while minimizing it in winter.

Leave as many trees as possible around east, west and north sides of house. These (especially the east and west) will provide good shading in the summer, but not block the solar gain in the winter, because of where the sun rises and sets in different seasons.

If there's not adequate shading on east and west, build extra large overhangs on east and west roofs for summer shade.

Make sure you have enough windows (I also recommend a whole house fan) to cool off the house at night. Close windows and drapes after house cools down to keep house cool in summer.

Consider an attached greenhouse along the south side of house. This will help heat house when it's sunny, and will provide a tempered space along this side of house, helping to keep your heating bills low, even at night and during inclement weather. Waste heat from the house will help keep greenhouse warm, too. (I've only ever had to heat my greenhouse a total of two hours in three and a half years, because of this phenomenon)

Make sure you have plenty of ventilation in your attic, for keeping house cool in summer.

Install a heat exchanger gizmo to recover 50-80% of the energy used to heat the water you use in your shower (and possibly other areas)

Build, or buy, a solar water heater--big energy saver.

Install a wood heater, if you have a source of wood. For emergency power, it can't be beat (make sure it does not require electricity to run, though, as some, e.g. pellet stoves, do.)

Design your landscaping and install underground sprinklers before doing finish grading. Install automatic sprinler system-one little accident (like forgetting to turn off the water overnight) can waste as much water as you would otherwise use the rest of the irrigation season. It also allows you to use water all the time in a more efficient way, thus saving your water bills, or you aquifer.

If you are using a slab floor, consider installing pipes in the slab through which all your irrigation water passes, to cool off the slab in the summer.

Install an air inlet for the wood heater under the floor, which puts fresh air right next to the heater. This will avoid cold drafts coming around doors and windows.

Consider installing a "geothermal" (ground source) heat pump. They are as much as 400% efficient!

Evaluate the solar potential of your building site. Avoid building in a frost pocket (I did this on one house, and there was a temperature differential of as much as 28 degrees between my house site and my mailbox, which was 180 feet away)

Consider earth sheltering; while it's nice to cover the walls and the roof, you can cover only the walls, avoiding a lot of expense, and still have a very significant effect on heating and cooling. My house stays so cool, even though it's only earth sheltered downstairs; we have only used the air con about five hours per summer.

Evaluate the overhangs on your south wall, for shading in summer and solar gain in winter.

Try to place water heater as close as possible to the points of use. Consider a small, separate water heater for very distant points of use.

Buy, borrow, or check out from the library, THE PASSIVE SOLAR ENERGY BOOK, by Edward Mazria. Read it; it's got lots of other good suggestions, energy charts, solar charts, etc. Published by Rodale Press, surprisingly enough.

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), July 03, 2001.

Jeez, i thought you were talking about the HOUSE!

Here's a suggestion for outside: plant things you like to eat a lot right next to the house, like in the flower gardens. We always have a couple or five tomato plants there, as well as hot peppers, cilantro, and basil. Yum

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), July 03, 2001.