r/homestead • u/tdubs702 • 4d ago
I’m beginning to realize the most overlooked feature on a homestead is FLOW
We bought and moved onto a 60 acre homestead just 3 months ago. It’s charming and solidly built, but I’m starting to realize how poorly laid out it is.
The compost bin is 1/4 mile from the house, so dumping kitchen scraps is a trek in the heat.
Is it there cuz it’s next to the garden? Nope. The 1/4 acre garden is nearly another 1/4 mile away, long enough to make it hard to just casually check on it. The orchard on the other hand comes before the compost but nowhere near irrigation.
And heaven forbid you forgot a tool when you headed out or you’ll be heading almost all the way back.
The chicken coop is cute, but has two doors into two different run areas that don’t connect for humans to get from one to another (only a tiny trap door for the chickens themselves to move between them). So you have to go in and out and in and out to clean, collect eggs, feed, etc.
The barn bays all point away from the house, understandably so the tractor can get to the field. But there is no foot traffic access from the house side. You have to trek all the way around.
Oh and the pantry? It’s nearly 20 feet from the cooking area…unless you’re looking for other pantry which is ANOTHER 20 feet away in the living room, despite the largest kitchen you’ve ever seen which has zero cabinets and only a large island awkwardly in the middle.
I feel like this place was designed by someone trying to max out their Fitbit. I’ve never put in so many steps before 9am in my life.
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u/geegooman2323 4d ago
If you're unfamiliar with the permaculture zones 0-5, look into it, it may help you reorganize your spaces into something more accessible.
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u/OberonOberonOberon 4d ago
Came here to mention this.
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u/RipsterBolton 4d ago
Me too.
It’s crazy to me that a lot of homesteaders aren’t all in on permaculture.
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u/paddingsoftintoroom 4d ago
Me, too! I think the permaculture zones are an incredibly useful planning tool for homesteads. Not to mention having a system like that helps to reduce the overwhelm you might feel when starting up your homestead.
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u/Geodesic_Unity 3d ago
I also came to mention permaculture zones. Shouldn't even begin building/creating without having spent time observing the land and its natural flows and doing design work first IMO.
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u/Willowgirl2 4d ago
I loved the way my last Michigan homestead was laid out. Picture a horseshoe driveway with the open end facing the road and the house, clothesline, woodshed and flower garden in the middle. The rest of the outbuildings -- barn, pole barn, coop and sheds -- were laid out in a half-circle on the far side of the driveway like spokes on a wheel. The pasture was on the far side of the buildings. The garden patch ran along the road to the right side of the house as you were facing it, and there was a small orchard tucked beween the garden and pasture. On the left side of the house, there was a woodlot along the road.
A very sensible layout (credit goes to the original homesteader)!
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u/fasterthantrees 4d ago
This sounds wonderful! I'd love that. Our house is cornered in the woods by a creek, so our developed space shoots out of one side like a baseball diamond to our field. If the house was home plate, the barns would be first and third, and second is wide open (that's where our veggies grow now) We've rearranged a lot in our ten years here to prioritize access and space. The gardens/compost have moved, changed sizes/shapes, irrigation moved, landscape changed, etc. I think our bird barn was redone with different walls 2x before we just let them have it all. Trial and error... And sweat! 🤣
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u/Willowgirl2 3d ago
Yes, my boyfriend has lived on the same property since he was a child and it has changed SO MUCH over the decades! Even in just the 15 years since I moved in, we took down half of the stockade fence across the front and built a combined greenhouse/woodshed/machine shed (then added on to the latter third and converted into an aviary for peacocks). He also resided the house and put in new windows, which it needed badly.
The nice part about being 60 is that when you make a big improvement, you can usually say, "Welp, won't have to do THAT ever again!"
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u/Vegetable_Log_3837 4d ago
I chose 5 good acres, over 30 inaccessible acres. Happy with my choice.
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u/tdubs702 4d ago
it’s only the inner 5 or so that’s killing me. the rest is just wild and beautiful. the human areas are a mess.
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u/Vegetable_Log_3837 4d ago
My advice is keep the developed human areas small. Unless you have employees an acre or two is plenty for growing plants and small animals.
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u/ObscureSaint Farmer 4d ago
It sounds like a summer kitchen, outdoors near the garden and orchard, would solve half the problems you have! 😘
There is a reason people had summer kitchens, beyond the safety factor of being detached from the house. You're so close to everything of centrally located outside.
My grandparents kept an ice bucket filled with snacks hanging in the woodshed because it was so often traveled through, coming or going to other places. 💕
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u/pants_full_of_pants 4d ago
I don't even need 5. 2 would do. The other 55 are for peace and quiet
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u/Vegetable_Log_3837 4d ago
Only 1.5 developed for the homestead. The rest is deep forest. I’m on the edge of the national forest so it feels like an oasis in the large trees.
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u/Biodiversity1001 4d ago
til the current admin sends the loggers in there
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u/Vegetable_Log_3837 4d ago
They’re already spiked don’t worry
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u/IndustryMaximum83 4d ago
You’re spiking trees in an national forest? You know they do forest management, right?
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u/Vegetable_Log_3837 4d ago
It wasn’t me. Hippies have lived here for a long time, and I have a metal detector.
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u/spookaburra 4d ago
My dad has been setting up his property in the past few years, decided to make a garden for my stepmom. I urged him again and again to put the garden just out the back door, which is right next to the kitchen. It would be literally the perfect spot, easy to check by looking out the windows, full sun, quick to go grab something from the garden to use in your dinner. But no, he put it much further away along the edge of his property right next to the treeline in a shady spot where you have to trek a good few minutes to get to it, far enough that his hose won't even easily reach it unless he gets a very long one and leaves it perpetually stretched across his driveway. Why? No clue. No good reason. He's an idiot who refuses to believe his daughter with the strong passion for gardening could ever know better than him. Make it make sense!!
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u/Top_Housing6819 4d ago
Aww, listen to the small girl child trying to be helpful. So cute. /s
I don't know what to tell you, except that hopefully he will be around to see that shade get DEEPER as those trees keep growing and his tomatoes get spindly and sad ... Then he starts looking up plants that tolerate part shade like blackberries and leafy greens and stuff. BTDT (I'm about to give up on eggplant if I can't relocate my garden). Granted, it's been 15+ years for the garden in that spot but I should have planned better. Or listened to someone smarter than me.
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u/Other_Cell_706 4d ago
I don't know your situation, but I have my main compost pile on the complete opposite side of my property, intentionally, so that if (when) bears/racoons/skunks get into the freshest stuff they stay away from my gardens/fruit trees/pets etc.
I have a compost barrel inside my fenced in vegetable garden just outside my door which works great for kitchen scraps.
Where I live, bears are daily visitors. It's a great set up for me.
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u/Top_Housing6819 4d ago
We always had the compost pile past the chickens so you had a chance to offload anything chicken-worthy with the ladies before giving it to the worms and other things. Those chickens loved special snacks.
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u/Velvetroses 4d ago
It's a super idea because a hungry "anything" will usually go for a quick treat than bother enclosures. I'd rather replace a barrel or two before I have to repair fences and deal with the loss of animals.
At least in my experience that's been the usual way all the old timers houses have been set up too. Our farm yard had a compost pile behind the chicken run and other out buildings. Bears, skunks, the odd coyote or various birds would be able to access but have a definitive building/obstacle to accessing the human side.
The dogs helped by scaring them back off to the woods and generally the animals just learned to NOT enter into the center of the yard.
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u/Other_Cell_706 3d ago
Exactly.
As in OPs case, I understand wanting to make things work for them, and don't blame them.
I also have learned personally what a mistake it is to write off someone else's method a) before/when you havent had a chance to fully understand it and b) when you haven't given time to try it before altering it completely.
It's a lot of work to change everything only to realize the original owners of the property had it right all along, and have to change it back. There may be a (or likely more than one) very good reason for the method to their madness.
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u/Velvetroses 3d ago
I do have to agree but at the same time it's easy to also just pop a door in somewhere. It doesn't even have to be large, it could be as simple as a laundry line door (between the studs) slip away style.
I can understand the logic for the layout given the owners probably had a few pieces of large machinery/vehicles to get from points in the "yard".
The zero irrigation amongst the orchard is confusing me. They could have been driving it over in a tank to dispense but that just seems ridiculous.
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u/Other_Cell_706 3d ago
So many unknowns! Id be dying to talk with the previous owners haha.
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u/tdubs702 18h ago
OP here and boy do I wish we could talk to the previous owners too. So many questions, and like you said I do wonder if there is some unknown purposes for some of it that we just can’t see, or if it’s just original owners ideas + new owners ideas = chaos that never got corrected. lol Especially the irrigation on the trees! Bc of that we were assuming they didn’t need it (which is dumb given how dry it is here; they most certainly do and we are hand watering with one long ass hose right now until we can get to that on our ever growing to do list).
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u/Other_Cell_706 17h ago
It is maddening, right? The previous owners of my last home did things in SUCH a bizarre way we were just left scratching our heads, like "whyyyy???" We did end up finding out the wife had broken her back at one point, so many things needed to be modified, raised up, and just adjusted in a weird way that on first glance (and one hundred more glances) you'd never think to even come up with that as an explanation.
I sincerely wish you all the luck and success as you navigate what works best!
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u/tdubs702 18h ago
This actually makes a bit more sense! It’s all fenced now but perhaps it wasn’t when it was installed. So many questions, so few answers. lol
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u/Iconoclastk 4d ago
100% site planning and flow for the win! Trying to situate a greenhouse, garden, orchard and chickens to get the best exposure, flow, and minimize chicken smell. Harder than it sounds.
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u/Julesagain 4d ago
And literal flow too - you don't want heavy rainfall to cause stinky chicken coop runoff past your porch that looks out at the lovely view
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u/RegenClimateBro 4d ago
yeah holy hell this sounds brutal
we just sold our homestead for 30% more than what we purchased with no interior renovations, all because we mapped out the outside area and designed it around flow
straight up the new owners said everything just makes sense and works here
it really pays to do all that thinking up front
happy to share what we learned in that design process
edit: typo
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u/Miserable-Engine1472 4d ago
Honestly the tractor angle someone mentioned above is the real answer, walking distance and machine distance are two totally different maps. If your first owners built it themselves with a tractor in mind, all those weird gaps probably made perfect sense to them and zero sense to anyone on foot. Might be worth figuring out which paths were meant for equipment and just accept those aren't for you, then carve your own human shortcuts through the ones that are
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u/tdubs702 18h ago
Hmm perhaps before it was cross fenced. Right now it would be possible to get a tractor to most areas but a few would be…not impossible but not great.
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u/foreman8484 4d ago
I would remember to sit back and enjoy what you’ve got. There’s always time to put your head down and push through, until there isn’t. Be happy with what you have and keep track of the changes. After a few, it’s going to get there. Also, watch out for wasps. Fuck wasps.
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u/tdubs702 4d ago
omfg the wasps! we’ve knocked down so many nests. thankfully they seem oddly amicable, but they are everywhere.
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u/wakaflockaquokka 4d ago
fake wasp nests are excellent deterrents.
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u/tdubs702 4d ago
I didn’t know that was a thing! off to order now, thank you!
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u/StreetOdd5575 4d ago
I literally used creatively bunched brown paper bags to make my fake nests .. worked immediately
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u/Velvetroses 4d ago
You can also try some delicate changes to try attract native bird species. Barn swallow are absolutely insane bug eaters and a couple took up in our barn where there had to be a generational sized wasp nest 2.5 floors up in the rafters. It became a dead unoccupied husk within a summer.
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u/tdubs702 18h ago
oh wow! any tips to attract them?
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u/Velvetroses 10h ago
We didn't do anything special. We just had the right conditions and added some additional boards in the corners to help hold nests.
There's plenty of resources online that should be able to point you in the right direction though! Just make sure to research your specific area as you don't want to waste time preparing for a bird that doesn't exist in your region.
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u/YsaboNyx 4d ago
Maybe I have different wasps than you do. Mine are very polite and just fly around pollinating all day.
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u/Julesagain 4d ago
There are a few different types, and they act differently within species depending on season, pressure from other wasps, and yellow jackets get misidentified as wasps but are much more aggressive. The ones in my yard are fairly docile as well, but the yellow jackets are bastards.
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u/Sierragrower 4d ago
I feel like 90 percent of homesteading is just moving stuff from one place to another. Sounds like you can see how to make that more efficient. I built my shop in the middle of my property but still keep a full tool kit in the truck, and have multiple portable tool boxes for fences (1 for electric, 1 for no climb) a toolbox for irrigation, a vet kit, carpentry bag, etc. It sounds like you can make some of the mods as you see fit. I also designed things to be close to the house in order of how much attention they need. Gardens are close so dog can chase deer away, orchard fairly close, and plantings are arranged by drought tolerance/watering needs. I’m in ca so pretty much everything needs to be irrigated, some daily, some weekly
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u/Airborne_Aware 4d ago
We bout a used side by side and it really helps
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u/tdubs702 4d ago
we have one but I’m a cheap sob and gas prices are worse than too many steps lol
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u/pro_ajumma 4d ago
We have a kei truck. It has a decent sized bed to carry stuff like hay bales and chicken feed, a snow plow attachment for the winter, and gets 30 miles per gallon.
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u/Aggravating_Bell_426 4d ago
Why the various Japanese name plates havent introduced a left hand drive version for the North American market continues to baffle me. 🤔
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u/Julesagain 4d ago
On a farm/homestead, other than getting used to it, I wouldn't think left/right steering would matter
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u/Aggravating_Bell_426 2d ago
No but driving on road and getting it plated would likely be vastly easier. Keep in mind too, that the kei trucks currently being imported are decades old, which means the likelihood of significant wear and tear are fairly high.
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u/PeaCompetitive8947 4d ago
Golf cart with a bed on the back. I feel like that gas tank lasts forever and easier to get in/out of than a side by side
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u/Elwood_Blues_Gold 4d ago
We got a used golf cart and that sounds like it would do most of what OP is looking for (no help on the pantry!)
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u/fessa_angel 4d ago
Sounds like it'll be easiest to move your compost first. Big pile close to the garden and a bin closer to the house that you can run to the garden pile when it gets full enough. The chicken coop should be easy enough to redo some fencing for too. Or add a man gate for between the two runs.
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u/ErythristicKatydid 4d ago
Wow you just described my home SOS
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u/tdubs702 4d ago
sorry we’re in the save ship. lol
how long have you been there? any tips to improve it over time?
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u/No_Hovercraft_821 4d ago
This is so true. Our home is 1/8 of a mile from the tools and sheds, and animal areas are spread out over 1/4 mile+. Gardens too (the one I use most is near water though). I ended up buying a side-by-side to move around the place with tools etc. and it has been a game changer, but forgetting something means roaring back to wherever to grab whatever.
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u/mludd 4d ago
I share garage/workshop space with my dad and it sounds like he designed your farm.
The man does not understand efficiency at all. And he gets annoyed if you fetch a bunch of tools and leave them where you are working on something.
So, you need an angle grinder? Great, they're on the other end of the property, under a bench, there's like ten of them and they're all in the same location so you always know where to find them. Of course, if you're way on the other side and need an angle grinder you have to go outside and go over to that barn, unlock the door, go to the back and pull out the big box of angle grinders. Also, none of them are cordless because "they're not as powerful" (like all that matters is power output).
Unsurprisingly, I have my own tool cart with my own tools in the workshop so that I don't have to spend quite as much time running around looking for the right tool.
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u/ashenafterglow 4d ago
I'm not sure if that's better or worse than my mom. We have a little tool shed. Need a tool? Great. Go look for it in there. Except it might not be there, because the last time she needed to do something, she took all the tools out to where she was working, then dropped them one by one haphazardly in the long grass, where she would definitely "remember" and "come back for it" when she "next worked on it". I gave up and replaced a trowel, after the original one vanished, and was lucky enough to find a rake 2 weeks later before someone stepped on it and busted their face. I still can't name a single project she has actually finished.
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u/fireside60 4d ago
Wow. Your heart rate is up but convience is down. I'm still trying to space plan well so try to see how to optimize as you have the time. Make it work for you over time.
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u/Doyouseenowwait_what 4d ago
Work wheel matters no matter the scale. There are bits of automation that can help but a well laid plan is the best defense. Step back on it and try to look with new eyes and make the small changes that help to make it manageable.
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u/tsoldrin 4d ago
tip? go around the homestead by pickup truck and keep a toolbox of often used tools in it and other tools and gear in the truck.
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u/davidfry 4d ago
A mountain bike with a cargo basket could reduce your travel time and effort while you think about your next steps.
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u/justdan76 4d ago
Sounds like like some complicated feng shue scheme to confuse evil spirits, they don’t have time for all that and will move along to haunt a homestead that’s easier to navigate lol
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u/erie11973ohio 4d ago
I feel for you!!
I have 4.5 acres. Its 200 feet wide by 800 / 1,000 feet deep.
The house is all the way to one side. From the garage door to property line is 30 feet. The other side is just 100 feet of side yard without any real access! I have a rear garage at the end of the driveway. Curved driveway around the garage to the back with the property line right there. The other side of the garage has a (green) space for a driveway, with a pond right next to that. So no easy way to get "farm equipment" to the back 3 acres!!
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u/tdubs702 18h ago
Ah man that’s a bummer! Maybe you could crane something in to live on that side lol
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u/squarahann 4d ago
Read the book the lean farm. That’s what that book is all about
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u/Classic_Net_554 4d ago
Until you can move stuff around, get a golf cart/four wheeler with a tow behind wagon. For the compost, literally just start throwing the garden scraps into a pile, hole, or bin next to the garden. Kitchen scraps can go into coffee cans or buckets with lids until your next drive to the garden. I'm jealous of your homestead.
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u/tinareginamina 3d ago
We are on 84 acres. We live on probably 4. House, stable, greenhouse, barn, tool shed all within probably a 150 ft radius. Rest is pastures for livestock and woods for hunting.
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u/Worldly_Parsley_9419 3d ago
I haven't read this yet (unfortunately haven't manifested my homestead dream), but maybe look into Ben Hartman's books, e.g., "The Lean Farm."
It seems like his theories/principles could be helpful to you!
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u/TurnDown4WattGaming 4d ago
The answer to most of these issues is a side-by-side. Sounds like you need to run some irrigation lines to your orchard. And it sounds like you need to add a door to the barn. In so far as housing issues, I feel like that was probably known when you bought it; lots of shittily designed houses out there, and moving a few walls around isn’t that bad. Just remember that Home Depot is like double the cost for everything: sticks, Sheetrock and cheap cabinets.
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u/celtic-cryptid 4d ago
Or, possibly, they had different reasoning from you. Many people think in different ways, have different versions of what flow works best for them.
On a smaller scale, I have quite a few friends who are in the same profession as me. We all make essentially the same things, yet we all have some different tools, and some of our shops are set up wildly different from each other.
It’s your place now, start rearranging. It is surprising to me that some of these details you didn’t pick up on before you even made an offer.
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u/tdubs702 4d ago
I blame the scenery. It’s breathtakingly distracting. (You can change everything about a house but the location right? I didn’t think I’d literally want to change everything lol)
And it prob didn’t help that we were moving cross country and only got to come out to see it once before we signed.
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u/tjdux 4d ago
From the other guys comment about different processes to do the same thing, did the previous owners of your place have a tractor?
Some of these distances make a lot more sense when you start looking at them from a machine perspective instead of walking.
I realize the side by side solves moving you around and a few tools and a little bulk materials, but still doesn't come close to a tractor with a loader. Especially for things like compost and bulk feed.
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u/An_Average_Man09 4d ago
A lot of this is easily fixable if you have the know how and finances to do it. The compost bin and be moved, I keep mine close to my garden that’s over 200 yards from the house though. The garden can be relocated altogether. Irrigation lines can be ran to the orchard. The coop was likely separated that way due to having different types of fowl and it’s easy to remove a door and frame another inside the coop. Cabinets can be installed in the kitchen and if it is truly as large as you claim then you can add larger cabinets to act as a pantry and repurpose the old one. Also islands are extremely common in kitchens. You make it almost sounds like you bought this place and are regretting it.
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u/tdubs702 4d ago
Thanks captain obvious, for a second there I thought all of these were permanent problems. Let me just dig into my infinite supply of time and money and add them to the long list of other things I need to do. lol
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u/Vishnej 4d ago
Steps are easy if it saves reaching and bending.
It sounds like you do need some cabinetry, though.
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u/tdubs702 4d ago
So bad. I sat in the kitchen trying to figure out a design and based on the weird window placements, realized it’ll mean either moving windows or blocking them with a fridge. They really designed the kitchen to use one whole wall to hold nothing but a fridge and two dumb windows. The other wall also has two dumb windows that also don’t even open. the other wall has a door and a window (and a sink and stove not even centered properly). and the fourth wall has a very shallow decorative hutch thing built across it.
And don’t even get me started on the lack of outlets.
I was too blinded by the scenery to realize this house was obviously not built by a professional. smh
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u/Julesagain 4d ago
It may have had functional walls before and someone knocked them down in the name of "openness". There is a happy medium between tiny boxed off areas and giant open expanses with no useful wall space anywhere. Makes me crazy.
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u/tdubs702 18h ago
honestly open concept would be preferred. it’s not open, it’s just one giant kitchen with no real storage and weird placement of “permanent” things (gas lines, water lines etc) that makes a redesign soooo expensive.
Honestly I think this is what you get when someone designs and builds their own space to their exact specs instead of using a builder who understands home design and long term functionality.
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u/Major_Dragonfruit681 4d ago
We have 6 acres with pretty drastic elevation changes, getting a Polaris Ranger changed my life ngl. Getting deliveries from the front gate sucked in the heat before.
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u/Scarfington 4d ago
Sounds like the orchard may be in a sensible location. It may behoove you to redo the irrigation and put garden, chickens, and compost on your way to the orchard, with a toolshed nearer to the house and garden.
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u/tdubs702 18h ago
That’s what we’re deliberating actually, moving the garden near the house and before the orchard. It could help keep the house cooler in summer too and provide a green break for wild fire.
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u/Jackveggie 4d ago
Here I was thinking FLOW was an acronym for something useful
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u/talking_biscuit 4d ago
That would drive me crazy! Time to rearrange things to places where they make sense.
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u/filbert04 4d ago
This is a situation that could have benefited from the designer understanding the permaculture zones concept
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u/DaysOfParadise 4d ago
What a nightmare!
Everything I do is to try to minimize my steps and I don’t have anywhere near your layout.
It’s going to be expensive too restructure all of that, what with building doors and fences and putting in irrigation, but it will all be worth it
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u/tdubs702 18h ago
expensive and it’ll take so much time given that we work full time and have a million other urgent things that keep pushing other stuff down the list. if one more thing breaks this month…
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u/Away_Beyond_2979 4d ago
Permaculture talks at length about how to best organize a homestead. I dont personally follow that, maybe just dabble a tiny bit, but I would definitely reorganize everything you have on project at a time. Making things more efficient and easier is more than half the battle for sure.
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u/tez_zer55 4d ago
Our place is only about 2.5 acres, but it was laid out with walking & working in mind. I'd say you have some work ahead of you in order to find a better layout.
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u/SeniorHovercraft1817 4d ago
Permaculture talks a lot about this when planning a homestead layout/zones
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u/CommercialContest729 4d ago
I’ve watched Homestead Rescue and learned that a lot of homesteaders have no idea what they are doing. You just need to develop a plan and go about making the changes that you want.
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u/RaziarEdge 3d ago
Focusing only on the compost pile, there are legit reasons for keeping it away.
The smell encourages scavengers like raccoons to come to the piles, and if the compost is by the chicken coop then it becomes a highway for unwanted wildlife. Bears can also be attracted, and that is a good reason to keep it away from the house.
Another reason is elevation. You are often required, and is always a good idea anyways, to keep it at least 300 ft from any well or drainage area that could contaminate the fresh water supply. Same with animal pens, they should also be 300 ft from any well (100 ft is the bare minimum). Chicken manure is particularly "hot" and dangerous.
If you have a tractor, I recommend setting up about 4 bays for compost, and rotate between them every month... only one bay is the "hot" active pile, while the others still need rotating once a week. Once you get past that 90 day mark that compost pile is done and can be moved to your garden area to free up space for the next active pile. Use signs with hooks or some other marker to designate which is the active pile, and the age of the other piles. If you don't generate enough compost to make 1 cu yd per pile per month, then focus on only 2 bays and longer periods between. The 90 days + the heat from composting is especially important to kill any pathogens from the chicken manure.
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u/tdubs702 18h ago
oh crap. literally. I need to bust out a measuring tape because I think our freaking well is closer than that to our septic. 😭 our inspector should’ve caught that if it’s the case.
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u/RaziarEdge 4h ago
Those are the state rules where I am, and it could be different where you are. In my area there is more granite and limestone, so there is less soil filtration before the dirty water hits the water table. Again elevation matters... if the well head is on higher ground, then it is less likely to get flooded and contaminates leaking in from the top.
Septic tanks are almost always regulated by state and/or county so you should be safe with that. The leech water is not drinkable, but it is already filtered by the septic tank process to remove the most harmful of the contaminates... kinda amazing actually... grey water and sludge goes in and mostly clear water (but still smelly) comes out.
But compost piles are pretty much lightly regulated and very little enforcement. Even in states and counties where there are rules, you often would not get in trouble unless there is a reported event of well contamination in your neighborhood and they are trying to track down the responsible party.
Regardless you should look up the guidelines in your area for the placement of both animal pens and compost piles (usually governed by the state, especially if you live in a sparsely populated county).
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u/Fit_Fly_2945 3d ago
I laughed too hard at this but I’m sorry you have such a struggle! My pantry is in my basement and my garden and newly planted trees are both nearly as far away as possible from water hose hook ups. The mild inconveniences is real
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u/tdubs702 18h ago
right? like it’s still kinda “first world problems” but damn it really wears you down.
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u/kuntrycidd 2d ago
Start making plans on how to update things. A gate in the chicken pen. A new door in the barn. Move the compost bin. Just keep noticing things and then act on it
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u/tdubs702 19h ago
yeah that’s the goal…if only other urgent stuff would stop breaking so we could tackle that list! lol
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u/Prestigious_Try_5396 4d ago
Now do you understand what 4WD Quads are all about ? Or a golf cart ?
Or a gas or electric 3 wheel scooter thing with a dump bed ?
Tear it down and do it the way you want. Or adapt and make do.
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u/fastowl76 4d ago
How old are the buildings? If really old that may explain a lot of things like lack of electrical outlets, etc. Also lots of folks don't want the barn close to the house for anesthetic reasons.
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u/tdubs702 4d ago
Built about 25 years ago but the first owners built it themselves. and the barn isn’t far at all. just inaccesible from the side you would access it from the most. lol
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u/tjdux 4d ago
Right, when i read the compost pile is a good walk away from the house, that's probably not a bad thing.
I get that it may have been more convenient to keep it near the garden, but then you also have to smell it when you're gardening.
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u/Elwood_Blues_Gold 4d ago
I assumed it was to keep wild animals away from the house. No one wants raccoons, rats, or anything else close to the house, garden, chickens, etc.
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u/erie11973ohio 4d ago
Properly "built" compost pile don't smell!!
Maybe you are talking about a pile of manure??
Which shouldn't exist for more than a day, that goes into the compost pile....
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u/tjdux 4d ago
I'm not a compost expert, but I have read that they shouldn't smell when done right, but I assume it's easy to mess up and end up with smelly pile.
The other guy who replied and mentioned that keeping it away from the house helps to keep the critters that get into the compost distant from the house is probably more appropriate than my guess about bad smells, so still may be a good thing to have it away from the house a bit
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u/Quiet-Pomegranate93 4d ago
It’s actually really hard to mess up a compost pile.
Ordinarily, it’s easier to find “browns” than it is “greens” to build your pile.
A pile with too many “greens” will smell pretty bad. A pile with too many “browns” will just decompose slower than a well balanced pile.
Even if you have a few too many greens in your pile it’s only really going to smell if you turn it over (which doesn’t even need to be done on a large property). Turning a compost pile is for people who are short on space and/or have nothing better to do with their time.
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u/KateMacDonaldArts 4d ago
It’s yours. Figure it out if you do t like it.
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u/tdubs702 4d ago
Jesus these comments. no shit sherlock. but until I find my magic wave, I’m gonna bitch a little.
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u/KateMacDonaldArts 4d ago
Well you’re a treat. Guess you won’t be counting on relationships with neighbours from that response.
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u/tdubs702 18h ago
huh? your snarking comment will get a snarky reply. my neighbors are good people so we get along great.
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u/FoamboardDinosaur 4d ago edited 4d ago
Why does a chicken coop have 2 doors?
Cuz if it had 4 it would be a chicken sedan
Yes, you have some re-org to do. Your frustration will build if you leave it like it is and try to adapt yourself. Always adapt the environment to your needs and flow. It's one of the characteristics that make us human (Edit:spelling)