Here’s a rough drawing I made for our little half acre homestead. It shows where I plan to put the raised bed garden, the first Hugelkultur bed, a few small terraced beds, the greenhouse and chicken coop and – of course – the fruit and nut trees, bushes, herbs, bee hives and flowers. Whew. Click to enlarge.
Two major problems with this plan are 1) trying to find enough space between all the rocks to dig sufficient holes for the bigger items and, 2) estimating how much sun certain areas will get. I know there’s a mathematical way to determine how much sun your location will get but I don’t do math. I do guesswork. I do a prayer and a promise. Hey, it’s only the food we need to survive, right? Why not just take a huge chance?
Actually, we did at least observe the property during different times of day on two separate homestead-hunting trips to the mountains. We figured it might be just barely doable by cutting down twelve trees and numerous saplings on our little half acre.
I know for a fact that there will be a fair amount of sun where the power company cut a bunch of saplings (and left them in a tangled mess on the ground) that were growing under the power lines. That’s about the only spot where I am certain I can get stuff to grow. The rest? Well, stay tuned and we’ll see!
The circled numbers on the drawing represent the items to be planted. The numbers after the item represent the totals being planted of each. Two existing items on the property are the walnut tree and the witch hazel (I think?) tree. It doesn’t show on the drawing but there are also three mature butternut trees on the neighbor’s property to the west. While the canopy is partially on our land, the actual trees exist on the neighbor’s land.
