Okay, so that appears to have worked. Here is the picture of the dream, LOL! Hope to have this completed within five years, but some of it may take longer. I'm going to attach the picture, then come back and edit my comments in, so it will be a few minutes.
I am trying to use permaculture principles, by the way. Also trying to multi-purpose everything as much as possible.
Kathleen
1. The road/driveway coming in from the north is actually a public road -- it's paved all the way down to just behind my truck, and I can't gate it off. I would have much preferred to fence at the property line and put the gate there, but no can do -- the mail delivery person and the trash pickup both come clear in and turn around where I showed the pull-out on the other side of the road from the big barn, and we can't change that. So we occasionally have people pulling into our yard, looking around, and turning around and going back out. Annoying, and potentially unsafe. In a way, it's nice to have the mail coming in so close to the house, and to not have to carry the trash clear out to the property line, but I'd trade that for improved security and privacy.
2. The barns aren't currently being used for a whole lot. The smaller one has some stuff stored in it (boxes of canning jars, and some tools). Eventually I want to set part of that barn up as a workshop; the rest will probably include a pen for raising bottle kids, and some rabbit cages. The bigger barn has five bays; the upper one has some stuff stored in it, like animal cages and the lawn mower. The next bay down has a double stall which needs some junk cleaned out of it (there are several piles of junk on the property -- I need to find a place to rent a dumpster), and probably rearranged so it's two separate stalls. The middle bay has hay stored in it for the goats; I was hoping to get the hay put in the hayloft, but the guys who delivered the hay weren't up for that. Fourth bay used to be a milking parlor, eons ago when this place was part of a working dairy farm. There is a small room at the end closest to the house that was the milk room. I'm pretty sure they were still hand-milking -- there's no place for a milking machine or for a bulk tank. That whole bay needs a bunch of junk cleaned out of it, too, but eventually it will again be a milking parlor and milk room for my goats. The lower bay is open at the north side to a fenced pen, and once I've goat-proofed the fencing, my goats will go there (right now they are in one of the dog kennels to the west of the house).
3. The building next to my pickup (to the east of it) doesn't exist yet -- it will be a woodshed, and probably also hold some garden tools and so on. Behind the future woodshed, the green thing with a line through it is a partially buried root cellar/tornado shelter. I would design it so it could work as a fall-out shelter, too, though hopefully it won't ever be needed for that purpose. But we have already had tornado warnings twice in less than a year. On the other side of the pickup, that long narrow light-blue structure will be a hoophouse greenhouse -- I have seven no-climb horse panels that I'll be using to build that shortly (probably right after Christmas). I want to be able to use the greenhouse this spring.
4. The house is the next building -- as I mentioned above, it still needs some work, but it's livable as it is. Front door is on the north; the bathroom is in the little addition that sticks out on the east side, and the septic tank is just east from there. Not sure where the drain field is.
5. The structure under the trees just off the SW corner of the house is where I'd like to build a treehouse guest cottage -- basically a tiny house with a big deck. The house only has two bedrooms, really, although I have two twin beds in the attic where I sleep, and a couple of folding futon mattresses for extra grandchildren. But when my daughters come with their husbands, there's no place for them to sleep; so far, they've gotten motel rooms, and that gets expensive. The guest cottage would also make emergency housing for youngest daughter and I if anything happened to the house.
6. The little structures around the house, to the west and the south, are chicken coops and the double dog kennel (the kennel is straight west from the house). There are actually a couple more small old buildings on the south side of the back yard, but mostly they are in bad shape and need to be torn down.
7. The pond needs to be cleaned out and enlarged. I want to put the material from that into the middle for an island where we can grow bamboo without having to worry about it escaping and terrorizing the neighborhood. It's useful stuff, but I'm sure the neighbor doesn't want it in his cow pasture (which almost completely surrounds us). I also want to build a bunch more ponds on the property to catch and control runoff, for irrigating the gardens if necessary, and to be used for growing water-loving plants, and possibly for some fish or crawdads or something.
8. Going back up to the north side of the property, the darker green trees would be chestnuts, which would hopefully eventually provide some of the starchy calories in our diet. I was going to plant some other nut trees, but it appears that I can no longer eat walnuts. The lighter green trees in the goat paddock (which will have to be individually fenced so the goats don't eat them) will be mulberries. The goats may get some good from the dropped fruit, but I know that the chickens will eat it, and they may keep wild birds somewhat away from our other berries, too. Dropped fruit there won't end up on the driveway or on vehicles. The little pond in among the chestnut trees is where water already pools after we've had a lot of rain; thought we might as well take advantage of that.
9. The garden in the north-east part of the lot is for crops that need space but don't need as much daily tending -- field corn for the goats and chickens; sunflowers for oil and animal feed; winter squash (lots of it); potatoes and sweet potatoes. The ponds up by the north property line would be the catch ponds for water from the small barn. The ponds at the bottom of the garden are to catch runoff from the big barn.
10. Around the pond, I want to plant water-loving stuff like horseradish, rhubarb, asparagus, and so on. Outside that will go things like elderberries and possibly some other berries.
11. In the south-east corner go the smaller fruit trees -- apples, pears, plums, a couple of small cherries (small enough to cover to keep the birds out of them), persimmons, and so on. The pond there is to catch runoff from the cow pasture around us, as mostly it slopes up away from my place. Their larger pond is lower than mine, though, and runoff from my pond goes into theirs.
12. Just west (and uphill) from the round pond are three green rectangles -- those are actually shallow ponds to be used for growing upland rice. There's a guy growing rice in Vermont, so we ought to be able to grow short-season varieties here. The smaller green strips just west of those would be rotated as chicken pens (see the brown one) with crops that need a lot of fertilizer on the ones the chickens aren't on at the time.
13. The trees in the back yard and along the fence row on the west side of the property will mostly be left alone -- there is a big patch of young black locust next to the orchard that I plan to pollard. We'll be able to use the wood from that for firewood and for garden stakes and so on. I showed a little pond in that corner; it would be to catch runoff from the cow pasture around us. I have a little woodstove we'll be installing shortly (unless the chimney turns out to need major repairs); I'm really hoping to be able to build a rocket mass heater in the house, because it would use a lot less wood and do a better job of heating the house.
14. I guess all that's left is the garden -- part of it will be going in this coming year, the part that is inside the fenced yard. I've been mulching the sod with two layers of cardboard, which is doing a really good job of killing both grass and weeds. I need to get a bunch more cardboard -- my oldest daughter suggested stopping at the Dollar Store, and I'll do that next time we go to town. I plan to plant grapes along the fence and use the fence to trellis them. Then north of the fence will go more garden, and our berry patch.
Anyone else want to put up their landscape plan?
