In the "Bible" that is John Seymour's guide to self sufficiency it contains one of my favourite pictures - The one of the five acre holding (my sister got me this picture framed for Christmas).
As our smallholding is five acres its very apt, but I don't think there has ever been a farm laid out quite like that, nor would I want mine to be. For a start I have no desire to milk something everyday so the importance of a house cow goes out the window, along with a few of his other ideas (no watermill in mine either).
The one thing I do really like is the idea of "the home acre". This is based by the house and involves labour intensive things like veg growing, an orchard, sheds, chickens, a greenhouse, etc. And this is what I want to try and create my own version of.
The orchard I've started and yesterday I marked out where the laying chicken pen is going to go, as well as the soft fruit and allotment garden. They are all near to the house (and in range of the air rifle for rabbits and pigeons), will be rabbit netted and hopefully rotovated with a tractor in the next few weeks. Below this is the orchard, mentioned in the previous post, and to the side will be the pig pen (more on this later).
Between the chicken pen and garden I plan to have my greenhouse and I'll build some compost bins hidden by the hedge. Hopefully this first field will become a very productive area!
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