Our clients at Big Barn Farm had taken a Permaculture Design Course from us and were in the process of designing their property. As an abandoned ostrich farm it had a lot of tall chain link fences, a 9000 square foot barn, and the infrastructure to raise large birds. Therefore, they called us for assistance in figuring out how to make the best use of the complex infrastructure they already had and to come up with some basic design ideas.
We started by helping the folks at Big Barn Farm work toward coming up with a common vision.
From there we took the information we had gathered and walked around the property with them and
began to identify ways in which the existing infrastructure could help them to achieve their
vision. We then spent some time looking at energy flows on the property and provided the client
with some clearly identified zones for different activities, some issues that they needed to
think more about, and a variety of recommendations on where to go from here. 
One of the most interesting aspects of this design was the ostrich farm infrastructure. Since the client wanted to have a market stand and potential intern residences in the future we recommended retrofitting several of the ostrich sheds to become small straw bale dwellings. Another interesting component of this design was dealing with energy flows. We came up with a preliminary fencing plan to remove only the fences that inhibited flow into and out of critical areas. We also worked quite a bit with access to come up with two options for how to improve access to the important parts of the property. |
