May 28, 2016 The Dream Refined 4

Having been able to walk around the property unobstructed and to be able to see things in relationship to other things, we are able to begin thinking about how things fit together a bit better.

The original plan was predicated on the place being fairly small, so the strawberries took up a bunch of space, while chickens and dogs took up much less.There were only four orchards, but much of the original layout has persisted even if the scale has changed over time.

This was the first plan.
The "Stepping Stone Farm".

The first thing we noticed is that the plan we had was for a much smaller place. So we added some things to the second plan. The problem we were solving was the excess of land that probably couldn't be farmed. We decided to do gardens early on, but they were left out of the first plan because the place appeared too small.

This was the second plan.
It appeared we might even make a buck on it if we were lucky.

Once we had cleared some of the brush we thought this plan deserved a great deal more stuff.

So I designed something a bit more elaborate . . . We added a gypsy caravan bed and breakfast, a large chicken operation, and many more botanical gardens along with a man made stream.

This is the third plan.
Everything was larger, and there were a great many more businesses.

  In the third plan the scale was resolved (each yellow line is ten feet from the next) and we could see that the place was pretty large. Large enough to support a pure farming business model. So we were no longer looking at merely building a farm to carry the wedding venue, we were going to have a bunch of planting to do. After clearing the land this is what we think the basic farm should look like:

This is the current plan, phase one.
Included are the businesses which are farming related.
The parts which we will put in during phase two are much more about hospitality.

As we clear and clean more, we assume that the plan will change. But each change, each Tractor Day, each baby step, leads into the next.