Setting Up a Homestead
(Page 2 of 4)
March/April 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
When we moved to the country about the only layout we could find to help us was the diagram below. Even though it shows so little detail as to be of questionable help to the novice, it has two major faults. The combination barn and poultry house should be located where the berry patch is - this will be painfully evident to anyone who has had to carry 100 pound sacks of grain and 150 pound bales of hay from the end of the proposed driveway 90 feet or so to the barn. The second questionable point is that far too many trees are shown in the orchard - a family couldn't possibly eat all the apples, peaches, pears, and cherries which would total about 75 bushels when these trees were mature. Of course, you might sell the surplus, but it is difficult to make a small part-time orchard pay.
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Some Mistakes We Made
At the top of the next page is a sketch of our homestead. The things wrong with it are errors that any novice is apt to make and if we tell you about them you ought to avoid making them. First, although very pretty, there is too much lawn. Our house sits 90 feet back from the road and the front and back lawn take a good hour to mow each week. Second, our small barn is too close to our neighbor's property; there is no room for a poultry run in back of the barn - in front is our backyard play area. Third, our quarter-acre hayfield isn't large enough. Fourth, there are too many trees in our pasture - good pasture grass needs sunlight. Fifth, originally our house sat right in the middle of a woods. We believed this the best way to have trees around the house, believing it would be easy enough to clear land for garden, pasture, and crops while "only God could make a tree". However, we found it is cheaper to build your homestead on clear land and plant a couple of big trees.
Our total acreage is only about 2 1/2. Three to five acres would give us enough pasture for our livestock and enough hay . . . . we could then depend on our place to supply us with over 75% of all our food requirements and a high percentage of the roughage and grains needed to feed our livestock.
An "Ideal" Layout
At the bottom of page 8 is a cut of an "ideal" layout for a productive country home. The drawing is available in full size (about as large as the top of a bridge table). Two experts helped with this "ideal" homestead plan: Milton Wend, author of How to Live in the Country Without Farming and John H. Whitney, R.A., an architect who specializes in designing country homes.
About 40 pages of description accompany this excellent plan; all the details can't be given here, but I'd like to point out that this basic plan of the "homestead area" (the country house, garden, barn, orchard, lawn, pastures, etc.) is a good point of departure if you're interested in any of the five productive homes described on page 6.
