so this is mostly for my own use so i didnt bother on making it pretty and i'm going to shit it up with a bunch of labels of sprinklers and valves in a bit anyway, but this is the general shape of the place without looking at an aerial. the driveway/vehicle paths are in gray, houses structures and fences are in black, sprinkler/irrigation lines and the pond and pool are in blue and green is to highlight areas of interest to me usually wrt growing plants. the proportions of the map are a bit off, first third of the east side is a little squished whereas the last fourth of the west side is very stretched and it's also probably too squished on the south side but it shows all the things i care about atm clearly enough so i'm not redrawing it. the house is the structure closest to the center and has a porch i wish were a little smaller coming off it to the south, there's not a fence but a wall to the south of that holds the ground level above it that gets up to 3-4 feet in places but meets ground level where it ends. this is where i've been digging up the ground and adding new soil and covering with woodchips and where we're gonna hopefully get a good amount of herbs and mushrooms from once we're set up. the structure to the north is a shed attached to another smaller house that joe's ex wifes son lives in though he's usually not around. the big fence going through the middle of the yard denotes where the pasture is at. the yard has a slope from east/northeast to west that's steep on the east side but a bit flatter in more spots on the west side. there's also a long hill in the middle of the north side of the pasture from the fence going down into a flatter part of the pasture with fewer/no trees. the northwest corner of the pasture also has a good amount of trees, mainly oaks but the section on the northside hill and the other trees that are scattered around the pasture are mostly pines. the structure in the pasture is the cowshed and there's a blue circle near it that's a valve for a movable sprinkler. the pond has a little peninsula thing that we're eventually gonna dump a bunch of compost into and probably get a bunch of trees or shrubs that like water planted in there. speaking of the compost the smaller narrower of the green boxes to the east of the pond is where we're having the compost and to the north of that is where one set of grapes are along with an irrigation line for them and you can see another set just to the west of the pond.
between the compost and the first set of grapes mentioned is an area where i'm thinking we might put a bunch of annuals , but we might even extend that to the other side of the grapes between them and the pasture and up the hill that's there esp if we can do some earthworks. to the south of the compost is an area of the lawn i'm setting aside to go long for the cows that we'll harvest probably with a scythe or something. green box in the southeast is a particularly dry part of the yard that's also pretty rocky and has some cool bushy drought/heat resistant plants there that we're looking to add to. it's above another shed/garage. in that southeast corner is also a peach tree and i'm thinking i might want to try to add a few more and maybe some other fruit trees along the southern fence line. there's a green circle by the end of the garden wall where there's a few pine trees in a circle and i think i want to expand that to be a proper circle of trees or shrubs that can provide a bit of visual cover in the middle of the yard so critters can feel safer nearer the garden. the long grass for the cows is also a way to keep more cover in the yard and i've got a few more spots i want to leave brushpiles and thickets of vining plants as well as trying to keep the southern fence as well planted as possible because there's a bit of completely overgrown area with a small stream running through it to the south of the pond. there's a bit of green on the diagonal bit of the fence to the west of the two houses where there are a number of trees growing at already and i want to get a bunch of chips down there and add more and get some understory/groundcover plants to help support them. in general joe have been trying to get a line of trees around the south and east fencelines and has a number of pines cedars and redwoods growing but there are large sections there there's a gap and i'd like to get a lot more planted and have better solutions for getting them watered by next year. the hill along the fence of the north side of the pasture is quite steep and i might try to make it a bit more stepped and have some banks running on contour to keep water up there better and possibly start planting shade tolerant trees there or something that area is shaded by some big trees and covered in brambles and i wonder if i can clean it up a bit and cultivate that area a bit better. most anything i grow there will be subject to browse from the cows but they dont eat everything,
they eat brambles but not all the time and there's other things they'll sometimes leave alone but idk how that works. the hill drops off and gets flat like the rest of the pasture around there around where the last three sprinkler lines in the westernmost part of the pasture are and i've been thinking it might be cool to try to get an orchard going all along those sprinkler lines. in addition to tree covers or whatever we use to get them started it might be cool to pile around woody debris and then sow in some tougher vining or woody plants that the cows wont totally destroy that can keep back the grass from the base of the trees and in general contribute in better more fungally dominated soils around the tree. the wooded area in the north east is quite well shaded but because it doesnt get a ton of water as it's the highest point of the property and the cows also like to hang out in there the ground is basically barren and i want to figure out if it's a good idea to do something about that. i'd definitely like to get a pond going up in the middle of the east side of the pasture and that's not terribly far from that wooded area so maybe that on it's own could help and it's possible getting more trees/clearing brambles out of the other shaded areas will make it so there's less suppression of growing things from the cows in that spot. another place for a pond is in the area above where the pasture extends a ways into the yard. it's quite dry up there and a lot of dirt from excavating the pond was brought up there so it's not being used for much else. probably a project for then they turn the water back on
