What can you do with an acre of land? (lots of pics)

[Laura Workman]

There's another thread here: http://homesteadingtoday.com/showthread.php?t=174986 that I didn't want to slow down with lots of pictures, so I'm starting this new thread.

Seems there are some naysayers on that thread indicating that a 1.4-acre piece of land was just too small to have a horse and do much else. Or even too small to just have a horse. I respectfully beg to differ, and since it's such a nice day here, I went and took some pictures to back up my argument. We have 1.24 acres, with an easement across the front, so actually use a bit more than an acre. Note: we both work full time with significant commutes, so the place isn't in tip top shape. With more time, it could be a LOT more productive than it is.

Also, here in the Pacific Northwest where the sky frequently releases far more water than the ground can absorb, people who keep horses generally have what are called "sacrifice areas." These are pieces of ground where no grass is expected to grow. Many horses are kept in stables, and if they're ever turned out, it is into a small pen with no grass at all. I think my horse has it much better than those poor souls. So, for the tour:

Starting in the goat yard (with the dead trees my husband felled a couple weeks ago):



Looking down the slope toward the back of the property, on the right are the two buck pens, pretty well denuded because we had bucks AND pigs in them for a while. This was planned as both areas were impenetrable patches of blackberry brambles before we put the "clearing crew" in there.



In this shot, from the direction of the buck pens, you can clearly see where my horse, Lisa's, area is. I keep her contained with a single hot wire. There are two large maple trees in this area that provide nice shade.



A shot of that same corner of Lisa's run going up the back slope. You can see the buck pens in the background, .



Another shot, higher up the hill into a corner of Lisa's area, showing the second maple. This shot also shows my newly planted orchard of 13 dwarf and semi dwarf fruit trees planted at 12-foot spacing. And if you look closely, about dead center, you'll find my black pied Muscovy hen making her way through the sadly overused pasture grass.



Lisa's area then runs along that back fenceline at the top of the slope:



From there, her run turns a corner and heads back down the slope. (That little tree at the base of the slope on the left produces hundreds of the most delicious, juicy green-yellow-orange plums! When they're ripe, you CANNOT eat them inside the house unless you're standing over a sink to catch the drips. The one year Lisa had access to the tree, she would grab and shake the branches to make the plums fall off, then run around and scarf them up. :1pig: It was a bad plum year for us humans that year.)



Then Lisa's run goes across a footbridge and back up the other side of the "valley" toward our house. You can see it gets a bit muddy here in the winter, and basically whenever it rains.



Continued in next post . . .

[Laura Workman]

Continued from last post . . .

At the top of the slope is our little barn, with a level paddock area. Lisa is the one in the blue blanket.



If you take a right at the fork going up the hill, you wind up in the paddock area instead of next to the barn. You can just see Lisa's rear end peeking around the side of the barn in this shot.



From the paddock area, looking toward the front of the property, you can see the sizeable, and horribly overgrown, garden area.



If, instead, you go past Lisa and through the gate, you wind up in our upper back yard.



More backyard, with small apple tree and large Japanese maple (large for a Japanese maple, that is).



Looking the other direction, you come back to the goat yard (you can see the goats' swingset in the back center of this photo.



And here's the front yard (needs mowing!), looking past two cherry trees and into the overgrown garden. There are strawberries and huckleberries along the fence, and a prune tree and plum tree in the front of the garden.



I didn't take a picture of the poultry/rabbit shed (10x20 canvas carport from Costco), but it's nestled between the goat yard and the buck pens, and has its own little yard as well. The birds pretty much have the run of the backyard and pasture except for one month in the spring and one month in the fall. Everybody else stays in their own areas except for occasional outings. So you can do a lot on an acre. And yes, if you're willing to buy in feed, you CAN even keep a horse happy and healthy. You just won't be doing a lot of riding on your own property.

[Ravenlost]

That all depends on what part of the country you live in though. In Washington you get plentiful rain. Much of the country does not. And it's getting worse!

We have five horses on 13 acres of pasture in Mississippi. It isn't enough with the dry weather we've had the past two years. So hubby is busy right now getting another 20 acres fenced before summer.

You have a pretty dog. I would love to see a photo of Lisa!

[Laura Workman]

So true about dry areas! But with just an acre, it's pretty easy to irrigate. I know, because our rain quits in mid-July and doesn't start again until September or so. I bought some nice sprinklers at Lowe's and mounted them on T-posts with quick connects. 150 feet of hose will water the whole place.

Here's Lisa in June, 2004, looking into the goat yard. It's grainy because I took it near dusk. She saw something interesting, maybe a strange dog in the driveway, and I thought she looked nice. I don't have more recent photos of her, alas.

Incidentally, my rabbit/chicken house is now where that dog house is in the photo.

[JasoninMN]

Wow, you really have done alot on that peice of property from the pictures you would think you have a lot more land. Looks great!

[JenL]

Wow that is great! We live on a little more than an acre, thanks for the inspiration. We want a horse in the worst way but didn't know if we had enough room.

[HaysFarm]

I think its great you have done alot with the room you have.
Down here in florida, it's common to see people that have and ac of land and have a horse and more on and ac. It really depends on where you live.

[sisterpine]

Oky, first off I want to know how your garden can be so over grown when we still have snow where ours will be?!!! And secondly...just how much rain do you get annually? We get 12-14 inches and I doubt we have enough grass on our 40 acres to keep one horse without extra feed (course it is mostly sloped and full of pine trees). You have a pretty place, and it is SOOO green! About this time of year I forget what green even looks like LOL. Sis

[Wayne02]

Looks good to me, I often think we "homesteaders" get a little to wrapped up in how much acreage we think we need. I've come to realize that the quality of the land is more important than the quantity.

Is that really in Lynwood??? Hard to believe there is anything like that left there.

Wayne

[Rocky Fields]

Hey.

You're not doing that horse any favors. He needs an acre or two by himself to graze and stretch his legs.

RF

[cozyhollow-gal]

Hi Laura, I sure enjoyed your post and pictures. It is an inspiration for me and some others. I hope to be getting myself an Acre or more in the near future. I will remember your pics and post when the time comes. And by the way..your Lisa is lovely too. Thanks ever so much. Patsy

[suburbanite]

I love arab horses.

You know if you tore all that garbage out of there you could cram about 16 McMansions on that spot and make a fortune.

:P

[Jillis]

Beautiful horse! You've done a lot with what you've got.
Are those goats Nigies?

[moore_farm]

Down in my area you can get away with raising 20 goats on 1 acres.
The slide in some chickens for eggs and meat
Raise 2 feeder pigs for the house
A nice garden and a small orchard on that .4
Buy to two feeder calves from the sale and you are set for the year.

[Pink_Carnation]

So much depends on the quality/quirks of the land. Most of my yard would be destroyed by a horse in the winter because of the ground saturation but I don't have to water in the summer to keep everything green. I don't have animals except dogs right now so I don't know how the others would do.

[saramark]

Our little 1 acre of half swamp in a small subdivision of mostly mobile homes is doing the best it ever has. We have 10 laying hens with 7 more ready to lay in August or so. We have about 85 meat birds that will be here til early July, then another 100 ASAP as we have market to sell. I really want a pig or two, but I got lazy this spring and tied up with work and chickens, along with a back injury left me without improvements in the back yard for the pig pen, so that will wait til next year. Our home is also being worked on when I have time, but you know a carpenter's house is the last one finished, so thus, we should do the house before the barn, I guess.

Weather is the largest contributing factor to what we raise. Winter chores can be mighty tough, depending on the winter we have, so I raise meat birds and will do a pig which can be done in 6 months. The only year round inhabitants are the layers and the rabbit, and or course the humanoids.

mark

[Laura Workman]

Thanks for all the nice compliments!

Originally Posted by sisterpine

Oky, first off I want to know how your garden can be so over grown when we still have snow where ours will be?!!! And secondly...just how much rain do you get annually? We get 12-14 inches and I doubt we have enough grass on our 40 acres to keep one horse without extra feed (course it is mostly sloped and full of pine trees). You have a pretty place, and it is SOOO green! About this time of year I forget what green even looks like LOL. Sis

We get around 40 inches of rain per year. Unfortunately, it's not all nicely spread out. In the winter, it frequently rains so much that the ground cannot absorb it. You walk across the lawn and it squishes as you step. A horse on such ground, of course, would turn it into a morasse in short order, so around here, we keep horses through the rainy season on "sacrifice areas" that are not meant to grow grass. Lisa's area is a designated sacrifice area. When the grass goes crazy, and the ground is firm because it hasn't rained for a couple days, Lisa gets to foray into the lush bits for grazing. About mid-July, the rain stops. You might get a couple rains through the rest of July and August. Grass dies unless it's watered, which is easy enough when you're only talking about an acre. Spring and Fall are nice, though.

Originally Posted by Wayne02

Looks good to me, I often think we "homesteaders" get a little to wrapped up in how much acreage we think we need. I've come to realize that the quality of the land is more important than the quantity.

Is that really in Lynwood??? Hard to believe there is anything like that left there.

Wayne

Yup, it's really Lynnwood. Since we moved here in 2003, they've put up two large apartment complexes a quarter mile away, and the elbow-to-elbow single family residences have been going in nonstop. We have a tiny little oasis.

Originally Posted by Rocky Fields

Hey.

You're not doing that horse any favors. He needs an acre or two by himself to graze and stretch his legs.

RF

Well, it's true that Lisa can't get up to top speed in her area because the runs between corners are only between 60 and 150 feet long (a square acre is 208 feet per side). Personally, I think she's doing MUCH better than the huge majority of horses around here that are stabled. If they're lucky, they have an attached paddock. The biggest ones I've seen are about 100 feet by 15 feet and have no trees. Lisa has 3 to 4 times that area with a couple nice shade trees. The not-so-lucky stabled horses are in a 12 x 12 stall 24/7, and with a consciencious owner, they get turned out each day into a 60 x 120 arena or a 50 x 100 paddock to buck and snort for 20 minutes or so. NONE get to hit the gas and run top speed, and none get to graze. Somehow they survive. So when you compare Lisa's situation with that of most of the horses in our area, I AM doing her a favor.

There are a very few ideal (and extremely expensive) boarding situations where the horses share huge pastures with compatible herd mates during the day and are stalled at night so they can eat individually prepared rations without competition. Those situations are very nice, but they are FAR from necessary for keeping a horse happy, healthy and well-balanced.

Originally Posted by suburbanite

I love arab horses.

You know if you tore all that garbage out of there you could cram about 16 McMansions on that spot and make a fortune.

:P

So true!!! We've had developers approaching us practically since we bought the place, but it has enough value to us that they'd have to pay much more than market value to inspire us to move. So far that hasn't happened.

Originally Posted by Jillis

Beautiful horse! You've done a lot with what you've got.
Are those goats Nigies?

The goats in the pic with Lisa are a Nigerian buck, two Mini Oberhasli bucklings, and a Mini-Mancha buckling. I now keep Mini Manchas exclusively, except for my one retired Oberhasli doe.

Originally Posted by Pink_Carnation

So much depends on the quality/quirks of the land. Most of my yard would be destroyed by a horse in the winter because of the ground saturation but I don't have to water in the summer to keep everything green. I don't have animals except dogs right now so I don't know how the others would do.

The first year we were here, we gave Lisa the run of the pasture. Summer was fine, but the winter combination of saturated ground, dormant grass, and Lisa's constant nibbling of any tiny green thing that dared to poke its head above the dirt did kill every grass plant or dandelion in the pasture by December of that year. I set up Lisa's perimeter run January first, cooped the poultry and reseeded in early March, and by late April had a lovely, green backyard again. By July, Lisa was able to graze without pulling up the new grass roots.