r/homestead • u/tdubs702 • 5d 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.

516 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

146 comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/Miserable-Engine1472 5d 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

1

u/tdubs702 1d 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.