RE: Homesteading Vision: The Dream
Would love to expand my 10 acre homestead to 50 acres. I noticed you left out one thing that would really make a difference for you. Worm farm. We do a small business worm farm and it helps bring in a little income but it really helps producing top quality castings for us to use in our green house along with my favorite quality worm tea. After pasture rotation with the animals I walk out and toss some soak corn and sun flower seeds into the old padlocks. One a week I come out and spray, with a backpack sprayer, worm tea. By time 6 weeks of rotation has happened the corn and sunflowers are almost chest high and produce a nice amount of feed stock for our livestock going back into the padlock. Just something to think about that will help you out kind of like the bees etc. We also farm mealworms for our chickens, hogs and in your case fish. Both are super simple and easy to do with high production. Good luck on your permaculture.
Worms are something I would like to try at some point. So much to do!
I like the idea of growing forage plants like you outlined, reminds be of Sepp Holzer. What sort of animals are you running through those paddocks?
We run a bull and 2 cows with small goat herds and then bring in the hogs. Some padlocks are just for hogs but some are a rotation. I use pallets to build pens for my hogs inside the padlocks. We have started to run high tensile electric that I have been learning the last two years. I have 3 cattle around a dozen goats in smaller herds from boer kiko mixes to a few nubians. We also do chickens and meat rabbits with various breeds and 7 adult breeder hogs with several medium to small at any given time. Livestock amounts change with seasons and with my appetite.