Planning a Homestead

There’s a lot that goes in to planning a homestead from scratch. While we’ve seen a lot of books on homesteading skills, especially old-fashioned ones, I haven’t found many resources on really pulling this whole thing together. What I have found is some wonderful blogs about this lifestyle choice in general (and have even made some new pen pal type friends through these blogs) and some blogs that are more specific, such as about chickens or bees.

This past weekend, we tried to find a general plumbing resource book to have on hand as we lay out our homestead, but no such book seems to exist. They were several choices for new and repairing existing plumbing once you get inside the house. But we’re not there yet. I’m taking lots of photos as we go. Maybe we’ll have to write our own darn book. I have to say, I’ve always dreamed of writing a book, but I never would have thought it would be about plumbing a homestead.  🙂

Now granted, in planning a homestead, there is no one size fits all. Lots of things factor into your homestead’s layout – location, climate, size, topography, geology, access to resources, etc. What kind of house will you have? Where will the garden go? What kinds of out buildings are you going to have? Where will you plant trees?  What kind of animals are you going to raise? The list of questions goes on and on.

We have just over 10 acres, but a portion of it is considered flood plain. So, while that does put limitations on our suitable building area, we still have plenty of room to work with. At first, we chose a site closer to the road, and then wondered if it was too close. It’s around 300 feet from the road and the house we live in now is 20 feet from the road … isn’t it interesting how your perspective changes?

Then as we worked the land, we started considering a spot farther back. It is flatter and has no drainage issues, but then you have to consider that you have to pull utilities that much farther, build a driveway that much longer, etc. From that location, it’s much more open and closer to the only neighbors we can really see (more about them later). Again, it’s a matter of perspective. We can look out a window now and straight into the neighbor’s house if we wanted to (eeeek). And we didn’t want our new neighbors to feel that way – walk out their back door and “Whoa! There’s the neighbors!”