Prepping for the Property Walk
New members to my local community group asked me to come over to their property and do a property walk – give an assessment and a plan for adding a food forest and regenerative practices to their unused pastures. In typical fashion, we turned it into a “Not an Expert but we are still going to GSD” workshop (similar to Thriving the Future Podcast Episode 25, encouraging them to invite some friends as well.
This also lines up with my side hustle goal for this year to add property walks and permaculture design skills to my income producing skillset.
Prepping for the Property Walk
I had never been to their land before, so I used the address and performed some initial prep work. Come along with me and I will show you the permaculture design steps that I use to prep for a Property Walk.
First I pulled up their property in Google Maps:
The area near the house is farmed. There are pastures to the North that are partially grown in with Osage Orange, Black Locust, and other trees.
Goals:
- They want to add a food forest (nut and fruit trees and shrubs) to the pasture between the house and the pond to the North.
- They want to add paddocks to the other pastures to the North of the pond.
- They want to add some trees around the pond.
How to Generate a Contour Map of your Homestead Property
Step 1 is to generate a contour map of the land.
I use the Contour Map Creator that Will Horvath at Permaculture Apprentice told me about. Will was on Thriving the Future podcast Ep. 93 – How to Avoid Permaculture Type 1 errors
(This is the kind of steps you learn in Will’s Permaculture Farm Design Course).
Steps:
Enter the address.
- Drop pins at the NW corner and SE corner of the plot of land. Adjust as necessary.
- Change the Units to Feet.
- Change the Level Interval to 2 Feet.
Click Get Data and it will bring in the GPS coordinates and draw the contours.
Focusing on the main area, I see that it slopes down to the North and Northeast into a gully area. They want to have the food forest north of the pasture fence, north of the barn.
They originally wanted apple trees, but that would not be recommended for this area, being the top of the hill and slightly on the north face, with no windbreak. The last five years we have had three late frosts, and consistent early blooming before traditional last frost date.
Last year I had apples on only one side of the tree, and many of my friends with no windbreak lost their entire apple crop. This year, the pears and peaches bloomed early and were lost as well.
How to Generate a Soil Map of your Homestead Property
I want as much info as possible before I go over to their place for a property walk. I know that this area has mostly clay soil. The soil type and the slop will determine whether to create swales and mounds, or to use a guild instead.
For a Soil Map, I use the USDA Soil Survey site.
Once there, click the WSS Start button.
Click the down arrow next to Address and enter the address.
When the address comes up on the map, then click the AOI (Area of Interest) button and draw a rectangle around the property.
Next, click the Soil Map tab at the top. This will show the Soil Map and the Legend.
You can now click on the soil types in the Legend and it will give you more detail.
Soil Type 7501 is the more flat pasture area. This tells you a lot of info. I am mostly concerned with the Typical profile – what kind of soil it is: clay loam down to 6-9″ and then clay. It tells you how much it will drain – it will mostly run off.
The slope is 4 to 8 percent, which may be too much for swales.
Let’s look at the other soil type:
Soil Type 4752 is the hillside area and the gully into the pond. The soil is: silty clay loam and very channery silty clay loam. Note that this is not very deep and there is rock not far beneath the surface.
It also has a steep slope, which will likely not work with swales.
Wrapping up my Property Walk Prep
I provided the contour map, the soil map, and detail to the landowner as part of my analysis. This also helped me prep for the property walk.
With this I am ready to consider ahead of time what questions that I will ask on-site. I try not to make judgements ahead of time. My property walk is to observe and listen to them.
Listen, and then hear.
I didn’t provide my opinions on-site. I listened to their goals. I asked clarifying questions. I took notes. Only then afterward, after some contemplation, did I provide them with my recommended species and layout. Even though I sell trees, I didn’t grift. And in the end they asked me to grow or source the trees for them.
Opportunity
This is an example of a permaculture business or side hustle that you could do. As times get tough, people want safety. They want to grow their own food. They are called back to the land. There is enough of this need where you could do this on a local scale in your area, and likely without any or much competition.
If you live in Kansas, Western Missouri, or Southern Nebraska or Iowa, and you would like me to do a property walk on your land, Contact me at ThrivingFoodForest.com.
If you live near Tennessee or Kentucky, contact my friend Kerry Brown at Strong Roots Resources.
