Scale Drawing of My Microholding (pre-extension)
Since I’m still in the early days of posting on microholding, I thought it would be worth going through my own plot here in Alton, Hampshire. On the right, I’ve added a scale image. In total it’s just under 1/10th of an acre, including our semi-detached house (the bit in white with the black grid)
At the bottom of this image is the pavement and the road – it’s a bus route and is generally pretty busy, especially with kids driving to the nearby college. The grey area at the bottom is the driveway, which is currently the home of two caravans. It’s embarrassing, but it’s no worse than the horsebox or boat or piles of building materials that used to clog up the driveway. There’s never room to park a car on it!
The brown strip to the left is the vegetable patch (roughly 3m x 9m). During the winter it becomes the pig sty – more on that some other time.
The green area is the garden and, bearing in mind I have four children, I need as much lawn for them to play on as possible, especially since we now have a trampoline, swings and an above-grown swimming pool.
Down the side of the house (ignoring the conservatory) was where I used to keep goats and rabbits (more on them later too), and in front of the grey area in the top right – which is basically a large concrete slab – there used to be a flower bed, but this is now home to my three hens.
On the concrete slab itself, I built a block outbuilding, roughly 3m x 6m. It has a flat roof, which leaked A LOT this year and has only just been repaired, but it is up there that I keep my two beehives.
On the lefthand side of the garden I have a plum tree, a pear tree and an apple tree, and also a log store.
That’s it.
That’s what I have to work with. There’s no room for a cow in this scenario, or a horse. There’s no room for wheat or barley crops. And since I built an extension to the right of the house for my two older boys, there’s no room for goats anymore either. But it’s still plenty of space to run a microholding – quite large in fact.
This year, I will be keeping the following livestock on this plot:
- Chickens
- Bees
- Pigs
And I will be making the following:
- Wine
- Beer
- Elderflower Champagne (already well under way)
- Candles
- Soap
I intended to post about all these things as the year progresses, but I think I’ll start my next post with a series on goats. Why? Because they were my favourite and I wish I still had room to keep some.
