Gryphons Landing: Where to start

I am a planner. I'll start with that right up front so that you know what you're in for. My husband John is a doer so this usually works well for us except for when John is doing things without a plan. Lots of things get done but not necessarily how/where/when I would like them done *grin*

To ensure that both of our needs are addressed we decided to plan so that then he can do what needs to be done - perfect harmony ;)

What we really want as the basic elements of our property are:

Horse paddocks that produce enough feed to minimise the need for hay and supplemental feeding and sustain healthy, happy horses
Orchard(s) to produce fruit and nuts
Vegetable gardens to produce food from a known (and loved!) source
Chickens and ducks to help us with the gardening and to produce happy eggs
A place where we want to be :)

So having the broad brush strokes is super but we need to know more about how to achieve our Utopia. We started reading, researching and generally becoming more informed about what the details would need to be to get to where we're going. This is when I came across the concept of permaculture and decided that we needed to get a permaculture design for our acerage.

Welcome Very Edible Gardens! I found these guys by searching the web for people who produce permaculture designs and asked them to come out and give us a hand with creating our plan. On the 3rd of September Dan, Adam and Lex came for a visit and took a myriad of measurements, soil samples and our ideas and are in the process of turning all of our enthusiasm into a plan. Very exciting!

In the meantime, John has been very busy building a chicken house and straw yard from and existing shed. Here are some picutres: