::future homestead dreams::

photo credit

Side note - if you missed it, we are moving.  Moving closer to my inlaws and our support system.  This will be a good thing for the kiddos but we came to this choice suddenly and kind of against our will.  My current feeling is excited, but that ranges to anxiety-fear-mania-etc.  

To distract myself from the stressors of packing, staging, cleaning, purging, and selling this farm I have been day dreaming about the next one.

What do I want from the next place?

I want a house that is at least four real bedrooms and 2.5 baths.  Emma and Lily can share when Emma visits us.  I want a once story ranch with a future bonus room over the garage.  I want a mud room that is large enough for this family.  I would happily trade a dinning room for a big mud room.  We need two living spaces.  One as a play room and one as a grownup room.  I crave a screened in porch to enjoy the outside.  I want a garage.  A real live garage where I can not get rained on.  The house itself doesn't have to be fancy.  We are dreaming of being able to build but that may hinge on how this house sells.

I would love to have some kind of pool for the kids.  Nothing crazy, but something fun.  With two little guys coming up I really want a basketball court.  This may sound extreme but I am not talking about bleachers, just a cement slab for the kids to play on.  

I want to basically repeat my current cottage garden, just a slightly different configuration.  Size wise it is just about perfect.  I want an herb garden near the house, small green house somewhere, and cold frames near by.  I have loved having a messy garden.  Somewhere out of sight that can just grow and almost never gets weeded.  The perfect place to grow things like watermelons.  I just read an article about raising winter hogs in your empty messy garden.  They eat all the weeds and fertilize the ground.  That might be something.

When it comes to animals I need a small barn, nothing like what I have.  Just somewhere to birth baby goats and stable a hurt horse when needed.  With a hayloft for storage.  Maybe - or maybe not.  I love the idea of a farm with lots of little out buildings instead of a character free big pole barn.  I also want my pasture setup to reflect rotational grazing and multiple uses.   

In an ideal world the animals situation would be:
         
Pasture and housing for - Donkey and two horses,  a few future freezer cows, several mini goats, at least one mini goat buck, a handful of sheep (look up Icelandic sheep-they are so rad), and the random creature of the year (like a lama or something)
          
I would like a chicken coop with a run, but also a chicken tractor to move around my garden to aid the soil
          
A pig pen of some sort with secure fencing as I here they are escape artists (or bull dozers since they just push everything down.)

And lets not forget those beehives that I can't wait to learn about

All my creatures are for fun, 4H, or the freezer.  The horses and goats don't need anything fancy and the freezer meat needs humanity and quality of life to be considered.  What tips or experience do you guys have with setting up a farmyard?  With home building?  With all the antics I am dreaming of?