When buying a new or existing homestead, you want to have as much property information as you can in order to make goals and plans. This article details how to find homestead property information like soil type, watershed, topography (high and low spots), the sun’s path across the land, and more. We also explain a design tool called The Scale of Permanence, which helps us decide which homestead projects to tackle and which we should simply allow to take their course. We’ve included a small workbook to help you take notes and make plans. This information is helpful before AND after you buy homestead land!
Realtors can be a great help in learning about the history of the land you’re looking to purchase. They know a lot about the last purchase price and other previous owner information, how to get in touch with great home inspectors, and important information like local zoning laws and community resources.
However, it’s a great idea for us to learn how to collect homestead property information on our own since most realtors don’t specialize in homesteading. In permaculture circles, this is information is called site data.
Why Gather Homestead Property Information?
Property information, or site data, that’s relevant to homesteading includes:
- Climate information like precipitation, prevailing winds, the sun’s path across the land, etc.
- Topography – what shape is the land? How many hills and valleys does it have? What’s the grade (decline/incline)? This is all part of topography.
- Water availability on the land, as well as the local watershed (how the water moves through the broader landscape).
- The native plants and animals that might be found on the property. For example, is your land mostly forested, or does it have pasture?
- Where are the smaller microclimates on the land? Places where it might be cooler, warmer, wetter, drier, etc.
- What buildings are on the land and where they’re located. This includes wells, solar panels, and even man-made elements like dams, ponds, berms, etc.
- Soil type and what the land was previously used for (ranching, forested, etc.).
To help you keep track of all the information you’ll gather, we’ve compiled a property information workbook that you can receive for free when you join our newsletter family.
Initial Gathering of Homestead Property Information Before You Buy
As you’re looking for homestead property for sale, you can do initial reconnaissance before you even attend a showing with your realtor. You can also brainstorm your own goals and plans, so you know exactly what you’re looking for in homestead land.
To help you do all that, we’ve written the following articles:
Vetting Homestead Property for Sale
Questions to Ask About Homestead Land for Sale
Let’s say you’ve found a piece of property that you’re ready to purchase or you’ve already bought you’re new homestead. Now what?
How can you start designing your future homestead if you’re not exactly sure about what’s already happening on the land? Use the following instructions to gather seasonal and site-specific property information to guide your plans.
The Scale of Permanence & Homestead Property Information
There are so many different elements that go into making a successful homestead. Many of these are things over which you have no control; they simply are what they are. Other aspects can be affected with design and some hard work.
In permaculture, all these elements taken together are called The Scale of Permanence. We make plans and designs working with the elements of our site, beginning with those that are the most difficult to change.
This list helps us design a homestead that works with nature instead of against it. We gain an accurate picture of our homestead property information in order to design our homesteads to work them smarter, instead of harder.
What is the Scale of Permanence?
At some point, I’ll write a whole article just on The Scale of Permanence because it’s such a useful tool for homestead design. However, to make things brief for today’s purposes, here’s a simple review of what this scale includes.
- The elements on the Scale of Permanence represent those factors that are part of our homestead’s environment. Some we simply can’t change – that’s where the list begins.
- As the list continues on, the items listed move from impossible to alter to more apt to be changed/improved with our hard work and good design.
- So, remember, the first item on the list, a homesteader really can’t change on their own. As you move through the list, the homesteader can have more and more effect on the elements. The last one will be almost entirely in the hands of the homesteader!
I should mention here that the first skill we really need to develop – really, really, really need to develop – is that of accurately observing our environment. This skill is so important, that it’s actually the first principle of permaculture design.
To learn more about this, please visit these articles:
A Short Introduction to Permaculture
Observe & Interact – The 1st Principle of Permaculture
Plan a Permaculture Homestead Layout
Elements on the Scale of Permanence
Let’s start with those elements over which you have very little personal control on the homestead. You can, however, identify these elements and plan to include their assets in your designs and plans.
Climate: This includes your latitude in relation to the equator which determines the sun’s path on your land, seasonal weather, plant hardiness zones, precipitation like snow and rain, the wind, and first and last frost dates.
Landform: This includes your elevation, soil and its profile (like the amount of clay and sand), where your water table lies, and slope (which includes declines or inclines). You should also consider possible toxins in the soil and the biological activity in your dirt. In other words, think about soil pollution and whether your soil has life in it like worms.
Water: This includes existing water supplies like creeks and springs, manmade water sources like wells and irrigation equipment, water collection sites on the land, water runoff, erosion from water on the land, and even how sewage moves through your land.
Moving Into Elements You Can Influence with Some Effort
Access: This includes the contour of your land and where the ridges and footpaths already exist, how off-site roads connect to your site and vehicle traffic on site. This also includes storage areas and buildings, as well as how materials move around the homestead (like firewood, compost, garden harvests, etc.)
Flora & Fauna: These include native plants and animals and their quantities, existing ecosystems like forested areas and marshy places, and natural habitats.
Microclimates: These are small areas on the homestead that have their own little ecology and climate. We have a whole article on understanding climate and microclimates and how they relate to planting zones.
Infrastructure: This includes buildings, “permanent” fixtures like pavement and power lines, fences and gates, and any system with pipes.
Elements You Can Design Yourself and/or Improve
Zones of Use: In permaculture design, we organize the homestead in zones of use. This means we determine where homestead activities take place and label these areas to design the homestead logically. These zones are determined by a lot of factors, which include property lines, the location of permanent elements like water, foot traffic on site, and influences that come onto your homestead from outside.
Soil: This includes soil structure, drainage, fertility and pH, possible toxins, and its history (how the homestead soil was used before you got there).
Aesthetics: This is how your homestead looks and even how people feel when they’re on your land. You can design welcoming, useful, beautiful outdoor spaces like gardens, outdoor kitchens and fire pits, pavilions and other gathering spaces, etc.
Remember, each homestead is different and each has their own relationship to The Scale of Permanence. Don’t worry so much about how I’ve classified them here. Learn to observe and interact with your native homestead environment and take notes – lots of notes!
You will eventually be able to use all the homestead property information you gather to create your own detailed and productive designs. Here’s a little image you can save and print to help you remember The Scale of Permanence.
(This printout is also included in your free workbook when you join our newsletter family.)
Examples of Using the Scale of Permanence
For example, if you’ve purchased a homestead at the top of a very windy hill, you won’t waste your time complaining about the constant breeze. Instead, you can plan for:
- Windbreaks for the house and garden
- Firebreaks
- Line drying
- Plants that will thrive in dry, sunny conditions
Another example is that, if we’ve already determined where the low, wet spots on our homestead are we can:
- Design rain gardens
- Plan for swales and ponds
- Use plants that love wet soils
No need to try to drain these areas and fight against the contour of the land and the persistence of water (trust me, you’ll never win that battle)! Instead of seeing a windy hill or wet soils as a liability, we can work with them as assets on the homestead.
Bill Wilson of Midwest Permaculture taught his students that, every time we gather site data, we should say,
We are so lucky! Now, let’s go figure out why we’re lucky.
Sometimes the property information we gather can seem daunting, but I encourage you (and myself) to simply gather the data and reserve judgement. Sometimes, our perceived weaknesses can become our greatest strengths.
This is the whole reason we take time to make goals and design our homesteads instead of just letting things happen willy nilly!
5 Ways to Gather Homestead Property Information
There are myriad types of data that can prove helpful when designing our homesteads, whether they’re new to us or we’ve been there for years. We’re going to explain how to gather property information in five areas:
- How to find your growing zone.
- Climate information for the year, including precipitation and temperature.
- Prevailing winds during the year.
- Contour of your homestead property, which will provide topographical lines over a map of your property.
- The sun’s path across your property.
#1 Homestead Property Information: Growing Zone
If you’re a gardener, then you’ve probably already encountered the idea of a growing zone. This refers to a USDA (if you’re in the US) determined delineation that is applied to a map according to your climate.
Which is a fancy way of saying that your growing zone is shown on a map by a color code that indicates when you can plant in your gardens according to season and temperature.
The following information is borrowed from our article: Planting Zones: Understanding Climate and Microclimate. For a more in-depth discussion on general climate information, visit that article at your earliest convenience.
The easiest way for gardeners and homesteaders to get basic temperature data in the U.S. is for them to use the Plant Hardiness Zone Map provided by the USDA. That map looks something like this:
Gardeners can determine which plants are most likely to thrive in their location by using this map to find your correct zone. The zone information is based on the average annual minimum winter temperature, divided into 10-degree F zones.
For example, if you live in central Kansas, simply click on that area of the map and an information box will pop up. This will tell you your growing zone, including your lowest winter temperature average. You can also get a downloadable version of the map to keep in your garden records.
There are other hardiness zone maps for around the world. Here are two:
#2 Homestead Property Information: Climate Information
Climate data for your homestead property is a huge umbrella, so we’re going to focus on two bits of information: precipitation and annual temperatures.
The growing zone map helps you determine which plants to put in your garden, but further temperature information can help you design a home and other buildings, place coops and barns, make decisions about water collection, and so much more.
The easiest place to go to gather this information for US residents is US Climate Data. To get started:
- Navigate to the US Climate Data website. Click on your state. I’m going to click on Kansas for this example.
- Choose the city closest to your location. I’ve chosen Great Bend, which is in central Kansas. This will bring up a page with precipitation totals for each month. You can get daily information, too, by navigating to that tab.
I usually take screenshots of this information and save it to a folder on my computer where I dump every scrap of online information I can find about the property. These files inform my eventual design.
I do this for clients and for my own homesteads. I save both the charts and the graphs.
Incidentally, you can also find your latitude and longitude, as well as some other useful information by navigating to the Geo & Map tab.
#3 Homestead Property Information: Prevailing Winds
If you live in a particularly windy area, knowing the direction and intensity of the winds from month to month is vital to smart design of the homestead. Even if you aren’t much aware of your prevailing winds, this property information is good to have when you consider:
- controlling humidity in the garden
- dry microclimates on your land
- where to put your laundry line
To find your prevailing winds, you can use wind rose data gathered by meteorologists to chart the direction and intensity of the wind in any given area. This data is gathered monthly.
I also take screenshots of this information and save it to my design file. You can look at the whole year, but I usually focus on summer and winter because the temperatures are either very hot or very cold.
Wind intensifies any temperature extreme!
There are several places online to access wind rose data but I usually go to the USDA’s website. Here’s how to find your data:
- Navigate to the USDA’s site, the section on wind rose data here. This page will pull up an explanation of what wind roses look like and how to read them. The example on this page is from Des Moines, Iowa from July. We’re going to run through this with our Kansas example just for continuity.
- Click on your state, in the case of our example, Kansas. This will bring up a list of prevailing wind collection sites/cities. Choose the one closest to your area.
- Click on the city closest to your area and several files will pop up. Look closely and you can see when the data was gathered and what type of file you can open. I usually choose the gif files because they open up directly into a new tab so I can double check the information before I download it or take a screenshot.
This information will be for the previous year.
#4 Homestead Property Information: Contour Maps
One of the most helpful maps you’ll ever generate or find is a contour map of your property. This map will reveal elevation on your property, which includes hills and valleys. It will show how steep these areas are, too.
This data helps with planning where to build a home or other buildings, how you might collect water and where, possible wild animal corridors, and so much more.
To generate a contour map of your homestead:
- Navigate to the contour map creator site. Put in the address of the homestead property you want to search. For this example, I’m going to switch gears and use a Missouri example.
- Click directly onto the map where you’d like to outline your search. You’ll click twice and each time a red marker will appear; the two marks together will form a rectangle. This will be your search area.
- Next, go down to the menu boxes at the bottom and click “Level Interval” in the center section to feet or meters, depending on what you prefer. Then put in the number of feet you’d like marked by contour lines. The smaller that number, the more lines there will be on the map, FYI.
- Hit “Get Data” in the first column and an image will appear of the land with contour lines marked and color coded for the highest (the red lines) and lowest (the blue lines) points on the property. These lines are approximate, but still helpful.
You can reset the data and change the number of feet to increase or decrease the contour lines. Areas where the lines are very close together indicates a steep pitch; broader lines indicate more even ground.
I’m very familiar with this piece of homestead property, so it makes it easier to read the map. Topographical maps aren’t too hard to interpret once you learn how but there’s NO substitute for walking the homestead land yourself. With your own feet!
This is the best way to really know the subtleties of the contours of the land.
#5 Homestead Property Information: The Sun’s Path
It can help to know how the sun travels across your homestead so that you can place gardens, orchards, and homes to best capitalize on solar energy.
- To find the sun’s path on the homestead property you’re considering, navigate to suncalc.org. Enter the address of the area you’d like to examine and click enter.
- An image will appear with an illustration of the sun’s path on the day you’re looking. You can reset the time to search a specific day and time of year.
It’s helpful to see summer and winter, especially. Summer so you can see where sunlight will fall on garden and orchards; winter so you can design your house to capture solar heat.
More In Depth Homestead Property Information
I must say that I learned about all these fabulous online tools when I took my PDC (Permaculture Design Course) through Midwest Permaculture. Bill Wilson and his team are fantastic educators and they can teach you how to create a homestead design for your land using permaculture principles and design tools.
To get more in-depth site data, I suggest you look into their Site Data & Digital Design Tool Tutorial. To get you started, they give you a link to their initial PDF tutorial for free.
Go to this link and scroll down the page to step one. You can download the first part of the tutorial on how to install Google Earth, along with their water and soil base data. These tools are so helpful for finding further water information for your property, as well as general soil information for the area.
Sometimes, this information will also include a list of native plants that can be found in the area of your property. You do have to be comfortable downloading a Google file, FYI.
If you continue on and make the modest investment for the rest of Midwest Permaculture’s tutorial, you can learn how to do a basic design of your property using PowerPoint. This is design for normal people – no design experience needed!
You can also go even further and sign up for one of their Permaculture Design Certificate courses. I highly recommend them!
Don’t forget to join our newsletter so you can access your free copy of the workbook to record a lot of this data, brainstorm plans, make goals, and sketch elements of the homestead.
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