We love the idea of a small farm, but have accepted it is
not in our near future. We have fun dreaming about it and I try to still
provide life-lessons that are learned on a farm without the farm to my young
boys. That’s part of the reason I would want a farm. It’s for the life-lessons.
But those life lessons need to be learned right now at the age they are at. The
boys tell us how they’d love to raise chickens, goats, cows, and horses. So, we
have told them that we will help them get a farm to have when they are older
and our grandkids can grow up on one. By the time we save the money to
do it, they will be grown.
Mr. JCrew is the best, because when the kids and I start
dreaming, he starts planning on how to make it happen. But sometimes I have to
tell him it is okay to dream and we don’t have to make it a reality. But he
wanted to pursue it and told me to start looking for land. And I actually
already knew of a pretty good space. It was a lot I would see every day on my
way to taking the boys to school. It was 7 acres and flat. But they wanted too
much money for it (in my opinion).
I actually liked the land so much, that I started planning
it. I knew the dream of a farm was not going to pan out, but I really like to
design, so I was going to put a couple design options out there and write a
post about it and tell all of my local friends that if they were interested, it
was available and I’d help design it for you! But as soon as I was about to
post about it, the land sold! Seriously, that day. I was shocked. They got
their asking price. And I was eager to start seeing the progress. But no
progress has been made. I assume they are designing right now or getting
permits.
I am going to share with you my thoughts on the space that I
designed, just as something to help my friends that are thinking of building.
The first things I always am doing is gathering ideas. I use
Pinterest and Houzz to save pictures of things I like. Even if I don’t like the
entire picture, if there is a small element I like, I save the picture and
write down the piece that I like about it. I then have those saved pictures to
reflect on and draw from when designing.
Sometimes it may not even be an object in the picture that I
like, but the “view” or atmosphere it creates.
That’s how I started with the land. I knew what view I
wanted to create as you pulled into the driveway. I actually gathered this view
from a childhood friend’s farm entrance. With where this lot of land was, all
the other houses could be seen from the road. I didn’t want the house to be
seen unless you actually came further onto the property. And that it really
didn’t open up until you were right in front of the house. Almost like the
forest just opened up into a field.
Now, all my design work is in this fancy program called,
“PowerPoint.” HA! I used it when I created the landscape plan for my current
house.
I didn’t want the driveway to be straight. I always liked
the driveways that wind around. So, I made the driveway go straight, but once
the forest opened up, the driveway curved in front of the house and then around
to the garage.
Going back to the start of the property and the driveway, I
took note to give space for a mail delivery person to be able to pull off the
road to deliver mail. This also gives space for a visitor to pull over. I was
undecided on a gate at the beginning of the driveway, but if there was a gate,
this gave enough space for someone to wait for the gate to open. And I made the
mouth of the driveway wider at the road entrance. I take note and notice bad
ideas others do and try not to repeat them. There is a house across the street
from this lot that has all these concrete/brick pillars right at the road and a
narrow driveway entrance. That means someone has to come to an almost complete
stop before they turn into the driveway. And good luck to the UPS man or moving
truck having to make a wide turn on a busy road to get in the driveway. Didn’t
want to create that hazard.
I also wanted the house to be as far from the road as possible.
That is always my goal. The space in front of the house could be ornamental or
it could be used for the farm. I designed pastures in my plan.
There is a science to farm space planning, and I don’t have
it mastered or know it all, but I had fun researching. I didn’t get it perfect
nor is it really correct, but it was a start.
Fence planning was interesting. I made sure that the pastures had gates
between each other but also to the common area. And I made sure the house was
fenced off from the future animals. But I didn’t want a square fence around the
house.
And I also made a fenced in backyard so we could have a
traditional back yard. Trying to mix urban and country. It could then appeal to
all.
The orange blob on the design is a pole barn. Nothing fancy,
but shelter for the animals and supplies.
I made a parking pad before the barn for visitors. This is
mainly in case whoever owned the land wanted to hire workers, it was for them.
Or, it was for those that had horse trailers to park. Giving options.
The green rectangle on the plan was the garden shed. When I
was designing all of this, it took me just a couple days, but it was right when an
episode of Fixer Upper aired and it was the episode with her garden. It was the
dream garden! So when you see this plan, think of her garden and know that was
what I was modeling.
Towards the top of the garden is a blue rectangle. This
rectangle is the chicken run and the yellow box next to it is the chicken coup.
The fence line around the garden would also have a chicken
run around it like Joanna had. But the Blue rectangle gave the chickens more
space.
The garden beds would be raised rectangle in shape.
I used the same shape as our current house, because I was
planning on building the same exact thing. But I decided to plant trees to
create privacy from the neighbors. Lots of trees at the street line and trees
around the driveway and parking pad.
In the driveway near the house, I kept it wide like we
currently have. I love the space and would want to keep it. However, I added a
painted basketball court. I think the boys would really love it. I was torn on
putting the court right outside the driveway or on the parking pad by the barn,
but I thought it would get more use right outside the garage.
The two pastures in the front of the house is not the only
place the animals would be restricted to. If you look, you can see that the
garden is fenced off, the house is fenced off and the driveway is fenced off,
so the animals would actually have free reign of the entire space. But I do
know that just like vegetable gardening, you want to rotate the animals
periodically. Those pastures could be untouched and when the animals eat
everything outside the pasture, they could be brought into the pasture where
there was fresh vegetation and it would give time to the other pastures to
recover and grow new vegetation.
During this design I also looked up chicken coup designs and
goat barns. There are some really cool designs out there.
I honestly really like creating spaces and giving thought to
it. This was something fun to do. Thanks for letting me share it with you!
