Farm Layout

Curious people have been asking me what my farm layout looks like. 

This is a rough drawing. It's 20 acres, more or less. And it's a simple rectangle. As you can see, it's far longer than it is wide. The residential area is nicely off the road, giving us a bit of privacy. The house sits not quite centrally located in the front 2/3 of the farm where most of the actual farming work goes on. The back 1/3 is heavily wooded. 

The amount of land devoted to residential use is 1/4 to 1/2 acre. I've never measured it exactly. That leaves 19 1/2+ acres for farm use. Most of that is pasture of one type or another. The back 1/3 that is wooded gets used for light grazing, but it's quite poor quality pasture. It's an area I haven't done any improvement on yet. 

The land has some interesting features. It's not entirely flat. The front section (major garden area, orchard, etc) is a flat pahoehoe lava field topped with soil. To go from this area to the residential area and secret garden, the driveway climbs up an a-a lava flow. The house is perched on the edge of the a-a flow overlooking the dry riverbed and pahoehoe lava field below. These lava flows are old enough that everything is topped with soil and are well treed. Everything is green. Going back the property from the house, the land gently undulates until you get to the woods on the back 1/3. There you find a pretty ravine cutting to the center of those woods. It would be a neat location for a second house. Imagine sitting on your lanai overlooking a tropical ravine full of lush growth with blooming gingers, fern trees, bananas, and red ohia trees. Is that a dinosaur I see poking it's head up behind that fern tree? It's so lovely and tropical back there that I could easily imagine being in another era. 

So that's it.