A Sunday Morning 5-Acre Homestead Fantasy, Right Here Where I'm At

I frequently dream about buying the little chunk of the farm that our trailer is on. It is approximately 5 acres with plenty of water seeping out all over it. It is inclined to the Northeast, meaning it gets little afternoon sun and little sun when the sun is very low in the winter. I know from moving the cows through here that the pasture is of fairly low quality, especially later in the season. All that aside, though, I like to imagine the homestead I would make if I were own it.

Perimeter of property

You can see our trailer on the left side, little white thing

It is about a 5-acre chunk, sloping to the East. The middle area is fairly open, and there is about  an acre of flattish land or so in the middle. There's a nice grove in the NW corner, and a bunch of gorgeous old cedars, maples, and a spruce along the Eastern side, down by where the swamp begins. It is bordered by the swamp along the eastern line, the road along the south and west, and a perennial creek along the north. The middle is pretty sunny, so there is maybe an acre of potential planting space, but it's also the best pasture.

We would always have more than enough water here, and would swale the land to control seepage. A couple of dairy goats and their edible kids could be moved around the pasture and periodically graze the willows and alders in the swamp. We would have coppice groves for goat fodder. We could keep a pig and feed it on household excess, and extra corn. Some dual-purpose ducks and or chickens for eggs and meat. We could shoot a deer every year.

The acre of garden space would grow corn and beans and vegetables. 1/10th acre of beans and chickpeas, 3/10 acre of corn and cereals, and 1/10 acre of vegetables should be more than enough for the whole year. The remaining half-acre could be used for herbal leys for the livestock. We'd dig out the many rocks from this acre over time and stack them to make paddock walls.

Among the coppices we'd grow our fruit trees, nut trees, fruit bushes, nut bushes, and useful plants for stakes, posts, and fuelwood. We could interplant nitrogen-fixers for coppicing, such as black locust, among the fruits and nuts, with the added benefit that the goats would love the branches.

We'd have the place set up real nice with certain tent pads kept away from the animals under the cedars so we could have a summer pig roast and invite all our friends for a long weekend every year.

We could replace the trailer with a nice little wood-heated home, or a newer trailer, with a woodstove, a carport, and a shop/garage.

It would be cold and dark and damp in the winter, but in the summer we'd harness the high sun and bright mornings to grow what we needed, even if our yields were lower than they would be in the open or on a south-facing slope.