The best-known permaculture demonstration site on the planet

The beautiful thing about permaculture is that you can make almost any location work.

If you’re forced to make the best of it, you can even grow in the desert or close to the Arctic Circle.

That doesn’t, however, mean that it wouldn’t be easier if you were on a site with a better climate, more water, better soil, better-growing conditions, etc.

For sure, life would be easier, but you could make it work if you had to because in permaculture, we design around whatever limitations we are offered.

Now it’s hard to quantify just how much easier, profitable, and less challenging it would be if you had a site that you don’t have to actively fight against.

But let me give you a sense of this – let’s analyze a farm I admire and make educated estimates from there.

Case Study: Melliodora

Melliodora is a 2-acre homestead in a small rural township of Hepburn Springs, Australia. It’s run by David Holmgren, the permaculture co-originator, and his wife, Su Dennet.

Today this is one of the best-documented and widely known permaculture demonstration sites on the planet.

When I look at David Holmgren’s permaculture farm Melliodora, I immediately see three aspects that shout “Bingo!” to me:

Aspect #1: Location

David’s farm is located in Hepburn Springs, a small Australian country town that’s an hour’s drive northwest of Melbourne.

It is in rural surroundings, in the midst of a small, convenient, rural township, far enough from Melbourne that its influence is mostly unnoticeable yet close enough to experience all the benefits a metropolis like that has to offer.

This kind of location is ideal because this urban-rural fringe is an edge where the resources of both the city and the country are accessible.

When choosing where to live, David wanted to be close to customers for his consulting business and desired a like-minded community. Thus a small rural town within an hour’s drive of his target market with a “back to the land” type of community was ideal.

This location has paid huge dividends over the years as the farm matured. In the beginning, David had the ease of accessing customers, goods, and services required for setting up the farm. This allowed him to bring in the income and get everything up and running much faster than an isolated farmstead.

And today, as David focuses on other things, the farm has a massive pool of people nearby and is accessible for anyone who wants to come there and volunteer, receive farm tours, or be provided an invaluable education in the form of PDCs and workshops.

Aspect #2. Water availability

Australia is the driest inhabited continent in the world, so the water was of primary concern for a small rural property such as Melliodora.

David approached this problem with foresight; he looked for properties where he could harvest as much water as possible.

He deliberately chose a property with a gully (marked with a red arrow) running through it as he knew it would be suitable for dam construction. The ingenious thing about all of this is that the total catchment of that gully is about 40 hectares; that’s some 80 acres, which yields 50 megaliters in the runoff.

The catchment is also partially urbanized, so the total water yield is higher than expected due to more concrete, roofs, and asphalt that act as hard surface runoff areas.

Today, David catches this water runoff in two dams in the gully, which flows through the property, and to fill up the dams, he only needs to intercept a small proportion of the total seasonal catchment runoff.

He’s water-secured no matter what.

While much of southeastern Australia experiences prolonged droughts from time to time, which have devastating consequences for farming, David can avoid this due to his on-site water resource.

The dam water he collects is pumped into header tanks at the top of the property to irrigate the gardens and orchards as well as reserve water for firefighting purposes. The annual house and garden use are around 200 kiloliters (52834 gallons), while the dam supplies 500 kiloliters (132086 gallons) – so there’s plenty to go around.

According to David, the dam systems save around $400 per annum after fuel costs compared to the town water supply. And since the town’s water rates have steadily risen, the savings will only increase. So that’s at least $10,000 (more likely $25,000 when you adjust for inflation) over the last 25 years the farm was in existence.

David doesn’t suffer regular crop losses due to drought conditions, as other farms do.

The loss of annual harvest could be debilitating for a farm that’s not drought-proof. Their loss would depend on the size of land under production and many other factors, but for a single year, that number could be anywhere from 10k to 70k.

David doesn’t suffer those kinds of losses, so in a sense, that’s “savings.”

Aspect #3 Terrain shape

The third thing that I find very favorable in the case of David’s farm is the terrain shape. On average, the landscape is neither too flat nor too steep, with a slope of around 7%.

This is ideal as it’s not too steep, and it makes the property easy to use and access, and the setup and construction of infrastructure convenient.

But on the other hand, it’s not so level as to lose out on the opportunity to use the slope for gravity-fed water systems, utilizing contours to harvest water, building dams by intercepting water flows…

When you work with steep slopes, everything is harder and costlier, but with no slopes, you have an inherent negative opportunity cost. Some degree of slope is very desirable, so again this requires foresight.

Another thing about the terrain is its orientation towards the northwest, and since the farm is in the Southern Hemisphere, this is close to ideal. With this aspect, the farm’s off-grid solar system receives plenty of sun – and so do the plants in the gardens and orchards!

He can catch and store that energy in both solar-powered batteries and, indeed, the fruits, nuts, and vegetables he produces.

Choosing the right type of land in the right place is the biggest lever you can pull on your permaculture journey

Overall, these three elements are a testament to how smart choices about where to settle and what to look for in land can make for significant savings in setup and operation costs and ensure that your farm has sufficient water and the ability to sustain itself financially.

All of this was by design, and these factors have definitely contributed to Melliodora being one of the most widely known permaculture demonstration sites on the planet.

When you choose the right type of land in the right place, everything falls into place much more easily – the site enhances what you want to do.

However, you have to have the foresight to look for things that will make this possible.

In my Finding Land course, I’ll give you a comprehensive list of features you should look for in properties, including what to avoid, so that you can find the right type of land in the right place, as David did.

I’ll also give you frameworks for assessments and guides with tools on how to perform each.

The enrolment with a special 25% discount is open for 6 more days.

Click here to find out more about the Finding Land course.

-William

How much land do you need? (free calculator)

by papprentice Leave a Comment

Most of my subscribers plan on purchasing some land to improve and farm in the future, maybe even set up a food forest – but often, it’s just a pipedream at the moment.

What’s holding them back?

“I can’t afford to buy land yet. Realistically it will be X years before I can get the finances in place, and I am ready to move.”

Yes, buying land might just be a pipedream right now.

It might be a year or two, or five, until you get your ducks in a row and can start searching for land for real, but here is the thing: you can never be too prepared or too early for a project of this size.

You should think about your plans, how much land you’ll need, and where to relocate, all before you start looking at individual properties. You can do this ahead of time without having money in the bank for the dream property.

And by learning in advance what makes a good property from a permaculture perspective, you’ll be prepared and able to run out of the gate as soon as the opportunities present themselves.

Here is the very first thing you should do:

Figure out how much land you actually need to buy.

(Hint: You don’t need as much land as you think!)

Let’s calculate it together:

Step 1. Decide on your intended lifestyle and the overall use of the property. (5 min)

Which of these best describes what you plan to do on your land: homesteading, farmsteading, or farming?

Homesteading

The core theme of homesteading is self-reliance – producing food, medicine, energy, resources, etc., to support your family.

The goal is to be as self-reliant as possible, not dependent on the “grid” public utilities, and, as a homesteader, you strive to utilize the land and its resources for that purpose.

In practice, this means that you grow and preserve your fruit and veggies, raise your own meat and preserve it and that you produce your own power through the use of renewable technologies; solar, wind, and water.

You cut and store wood for heating, grow grains, cut hay for your animals… and so on. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll do all these things, but that you take your self-reliance seriously, and it is a job in itself.

When operating a homestead, you might have a surplus of your products and sell them, but you are not trying to run a business on the land. Your income comes from somewhere else, and you live off the land.

Farming

In farming, the core theme is generating money by selling farm products, i.e., making a living off the farm, whether that’s livestock, fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, or other raw materials you grow on the land.

The goal is to create a sustainable income for yourself by utilizing your land. The farm is a business, and you run it that way, creating sales and marketing, most likely having employees, working with apprentices, lowering your inputs and labor costs, and maximizing efficiency and profits.

You can opt-in for different types of farms. For example, you could specialize in specific domains, focus only on vegetable production in a market garden setting, or raise animals such as cattle or perennial crops in a permaculture orchard model. Or you could have a diverse farm based on agroforestry principles and run all aforementioned enterprises together.

The options are numerous, but the point is you depend on your income from farming to pay your bills – although, in reality, you might still have an off-farm job to make ends meet.

Farmsteading

In farmsteading, the core theme is homesteading and stacking some commercial enterprise into your home site. So the goal is, like in homesteading, to be self-reliant by providing for your family’s needs, but you also strive to profit from certain operations on your land.

As in farming, you would run your commercial enterprises as a business, keep separate accounts for home and farm, conduct sales and marketing, and have professional equipment that maximizes efficiency in the production process.

However, given that farming is not all you do, and being self-reliant is a job in itself, you would tend to focus on a specific type of production – whether that’s, for example, pastured pork, high-turnaround vegetables, microgreens, goat milk products, a nursery, or anything else that the market needs. And then, as time and circumstances allow, you might start and stack other enterprises.

Your main income source might be a job off the farm, but the farm “side job” is making you a profit, and eventually, it might become a full-time job as with farming.

Action item: choose one category that best describes what you plan to do on your land and make a note of it.

Step 2. Map out the types of permaculture systems you’ll have on your land. (10 min)

Once you know the overall theme, we can start defining the systems you’ll have on your land. Each of us has different needs, wants, skills and preferences, so the types of systems we’ll have on our land will be different and unique to our context.

To simplify things, here is a table where we’ll split these systems into five categories and outline the most common components for each.

Use this table to define the types of systems you want on your land.

For example, for an off-grid homestead:

From the infrastructure column, you might want a house, outbuilding, and energy-generating infrastructure.
From personal food production, you’ll want perennial food production (home orchard or food forest), annual vegetables (home garden), and small livestock.
You won’t have any income-generating activities that require scale and specialization.
Still, you’ll want wooded areas for raw material for fuel and heating,
And you might want wildlands for privacy and as a buffer from any neighbors who might be spraying.

For an agroforestry farm:

You’ll want a house and larger outbuildings for any tools and machines you might have.
Personal food production won’t be that important as you’ll have a surplus from the main farm production systems. You might have only a small annual garden, and
You’ll be big on systems that generate an income for you; tree crops, silvopasture, biofuels, field crops, and so on.
Given the size and diversity of your living systems, you won’t need any wildlands or wooded areas for materials and fuel.

Action item: pick and choose components from these categories that will apply to your situation and context. Tick the relevant boxes on the ‘Land Plan’ sheet of the Land Size Calculator.

Step 3. Calculate how much land you actually need for your dream based on the overall land use and permaculture systems you selected in steps 1 and 2 (20 min)

Now, let’s crunch some numbers and get a good guess of the acreage you’ll need for everything you want to do.

Note that this calculus assumes that the land you’ll be looking at is average. It has average soil, an average growing climate, average water availability, enough light for things to grow…

Going beyond the average would need some adjusting of the numbers. For example, you would need less land to achieve the same goals in a tropical rainforest biome and more in a desert or tundra.

With that, I suggest you watch this video, which details the land size requirements for various systems outlined in Step 2. You can watch it at a 2x speed to save time.

Below the video, I will create a quick summary of the main points discussed, and you’ll then enter the relevant data into my Land Size Calculator, which will compute everything for you.

(10 min) Watch this video at 2x speed:

Video |Transcript | Slides

Infrastructure

-> Housing, outbuildings, and access points such as driveways and parking.

General space recommendation: the whole infrastructure envelope with your house, outbuildings, and access points can be from an 0.25 acres to up to 2 acres of space, with the average infrastructure space requirement being around 0.5 an acre.

-> Off-grid energy infrastructure

Does not need any particular space requirements. It can be fitted on a roof or ground space that the above-mentioned infrastructure components are already taking up.

Personal Food (and medicine) production

-> Veggie production

General space recommendation: 0.25 – 0.5 of an acre is enough space to produce enough veggies for a family of four.

-> Personal production of fruit and nuts, including medicinals – food forest

General space recommendation: 0.25 of an acre to 1 acre is enough space for this type of production.

Livestock

-> Free-range chickens (and other poultry)

General space recommendation: each chicken needs at most 100 square feet or 10 square meters of space. If you want a flock of 20 chickens to get all the eggs you need plus some meat for the freezer, you’ll need 2000 square feet or 185 square meters of space. This amount of space can be provided by the 0.25-acre to a 1-acre food forest that’s already supplying you with fruits and nuts.

Bigger livestock – sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle

General space recommendation: You’ll need to find the carrying capacity of the region you plan to search for land via the local extension office. And based on that, make guesstimates on how much pasture land you’ll need for the particular type of livestock you plan on having. Some rough estimates on the space needs of various animals for parts of the world with more or less average growing conditions can be seen in the table below.

Income-generating activities

Note: these are mostly based on the inputs from Richard Perkins’ Regenerative Agriculture book.

-> Nursery

General space recommendation: If you want to run a nursery as a profitable enterprise, you can do it on as little as 3000 square feet or some 300 square meters. Count that you’ll need between 0.1 and 0.25 of an acre at most.

-> Market Garden

General space recommendation: If you want to grow veggies for the market, you can do this profitably on as little as 0.5 an acre, with 2 acres being the maximum amount of land manageable as a single person’s full-time job.

-> Pastured broilers

General space recommendation: To raise chickens this way, you would need 1 acre of pasture per 500 birds. Joel Salatin and Richard Perkins recommend that you need some 5 acres of land to make a decent profit on these operations.

-> Pastured layers

General space recommendation: To raise chickens this way and turn a decent profit, you would need twice as much space as pastured broilers, some 10 acres of land.

-> Pastured or forest-raised pigs

General space recommendation: The recommended stocking rates are some 10 – 20 pigs per acre for pasture-raised or half of that for raising pigs in the forest. This translates to 10 – 15 acres of land for this type of operation.

-> Permaculture orchard

General space recommendation: For a permaculture orchard enterprise, you might need at least five acres of land. To make this scale profitable, you would need to emulate the Stefan Sobkowiak sales and marketing model.

-> Agroforestry crops

General space recommendation: To gain economies of scale for growing fruit and nuts beyond the permaculture-orchard type of operation, you’ll want to consider some 20 –100 acres planted under tree crops to turn a decent profit.

-> Pastured dairy

General space recommendation: The minimum amount of land for what Richard Perkins calls pastured micro-dairy is some 60 acres, which assumes having some 45 animals. On the upper end, a full-size dairy operation with more animals can require twice as much land size.

-> Pastured beef

General space recommendation: According to Richard, you’ll need some 135 acres of land to ensure a decent return on your investment. And this number can be much bigger, depending on the number of animals in the herd you’ll be raising.

-> Pasture-raised sheep

General space recommendation: You’ll need a similar amount of land as beef, possibly even slightly more. The recommendation is some 150 acres of land at minimum to make this enterprise profitable.

Action item: Use these recommendations listed above and write down your estimated space requirements on the ‘Land Calculator’ sheet in the Land Size Calculator.

When you’re done, you’ll see a screen like this with the final number (as well as a breakdown of the size requirements for each permaculture system):

P.S. Here’s what subscriber John had to say about the Land Size Calculator: “excellent mainframe info, very concise. I really appreciate your thorough organization of these considerations.”

In conclusion…

Ok, so I hope this answers your question about how much land you might need for your future permaculture farm, homestead, or farmstead.

Everything you see on this page is premium material extracted from my Finding Land course, which helps you avoid “fatal flaws” and find the right land for your permaculture property.

If you are interested, you can find out more about the course here.

Talk to you again real soon!

-William

Relocation Guide: How to find a like-minded permaculture community in changing times

by papprentice Leave a Comment

Imagine living in an area where permaculture farms and homesteads are the norm.

…Where most of your neighbors are like-minded regenerative land stewards with whom you can share resources and trade produce.

…Where you can have a bonfire and invite people from the community to roast marshmallow roots, have a drink, and discuss permaculture and regenerative agriculture.

…Where the local culture and events are centered around organic food, regenerative action, and community self-reliance….

In the permaculture and regenerative-living world, many people dream about moving to a place like this. But unfortunately, in reality, these types of communities are few and far between.

In practice, when relocating to a new area, most of us are in a sense destined to join some random community that usually has no real understanding of the same ideals, and where there aren’t many like-minded folks around, if any.

The truth is, without giving the community aspect the serious forethought it deserves, we get what we get, and, more often than not, we completely lose out on the concept of a like-minded community.

To me, that is simply unacceptable for the type of world that lies ahead of us.

As we advance into the post-pandemic, energy descent, climate chaos world, the community will be one of the most essential elements of resilience and self-reliant living. Not just for the social aspect, or coming together to overcome various emergencies, but also from the perspective of survival.

As society further bifurcates into the people following the program, as David Holmgren describes it, and those living outside the system, the permies on the margins will need the support of like-minded folks more than ever to continue living as they used to before the pandemic.

So, in this post, I want to give you the evaluation tools and frameworks to help you consider different localities from a permaculture community perspective BEFORE you decide to move there and start your farm, homestead, or farmstead.

This way, you’ll maximize your chances of finding a place that’s best aligned with your values and which has the most like-minded folks with whom you can build your community.

Okay, so let’s begin!

Finding a like-minded permaculture community

There are two things you’ll need to evaluate when considering whether or not the locality is a good fit from a permaculture community perspective:

1. Are there any like-minded folks (permies) around?

2. What’s the local culture like?

This sort of assessment is crucial if you want to avoid putting yourself in a situation where you’re the newcomer-outsider, doing things differently and trying to force your ways on everyone else. That’s a sure-fire way to find yourself ostracized from the community fairly quickly.

The good thing is, both these aspects are straightforward to assess without any special skills. So let me outline what you need to do.

EXCLUSIVE FREE RESOURCE: download a complementary permaculture community evaluation checklist with online resources and actionable advice on finding a like-minded permaculture community.

Are there any likeminded people around?

*Image source: https://nimrobinspermaculture.co.uk/*

Okay, so first you’ll need to find out if there are any permies in the area.

I say permies, but here I’m using it as a catch-all phrase for different subcultures within the movement: regenerative farmers, homesteaders, permaculture-oriented intentional communities, agorists…

The more people like this you can find in the area, the higher the chances will be that there is already a community of compatible folks and a social infrastructure supporting it.

You can do this type of research online relatively easily by looking at various online directories with conveniently mapped locations of the community groups and individual projects.

Note however, that, in these directories, you’ll only find the ones who registered and wanted to be listed publicly. Many groups and individuals are probably flying under the radar, whether deliberately or not, but we’ll have to work with what we have available.

There are a few different websites I recommend checking out and seeing if there is anyone around.

Community groups (permaculture-oriented intentional communities)

On Foundation for Intentional Community and Global Ecovillage Network websites, you can find the locations of intentional communities and ecovillages centered around permaculture, sustainability, regenerative living…

Although you might not necessarily want to join one, it’s a good sign if there are any in the area. Being close to such a community creates all kinds of opportunities for networking, trade, exchange of knowledge…

Individual permaculture projects

On the Permaculture Global website, you’ll find what’s probably the most comprehensive list of individual permaculture projects worldwide. Use it to reveal if there are any permaculture farmers, homesteaders, or education sites in the area.

Also, you can use the people tab, to find out if there are any perma culture practitioners, teachers, or consultants in the area with whom you could potentially connect.

Regenerative farms

On the Regeneration International website, you’ll find a fantastic map of regenerative farms around the world. It’s the most comprehensive one that I was able to find online.

Use it to find out if there are any regenerative land stewards in the area.

Freedom cells

For any freedom-loving permies out there, who are becoming increasingly marginalized, I recommend looking at the Freedom Cell Network website.

There, you’ll find locations of groups (freedom cells) and individual members worldwide who are already organizing themselves for life outside the system. Use the maps to determine if there are any like-minded individuals in the area.

Note: you’ll have to register first to be able to access the maps.

All right, so that’s the first part of the evaluation – looking to see if there is anyone around. If you were able to locate any permies in the area then that’s already a good indicator that the location is better than average from a permaculture community standpoint.

Still, it doesn’t tell you much about how the area breathes day to day. It might be that these folks are outliers in a community that doesn’t place much value on permaculture, self-reliance, sustainability, resilience.

So you’ll need to look at the second part of the community assessment…

For an actionable summary of this post, check out the complementary permaculture community evaluation checklist with step-by-step instructions and links to online resources. Click here to get your evaluation checklist

What’s the local culture like?

In the second part of the evaluation, you’ll want to look more closely at the local culture of the locality. Your goal here is to get a feel for the area and the way the people generally live.

The closer this general way of life gets to showing signs of community self-reliance, environmentalism, entrepreneurship, preparedness – or whatever else you value – the better you’ll fit in and build your community network.

In reality, it might take years for the area to sink into your consciousness; to know how it lives and breathes. But there are specific things you can research and observe to quickly find out if the area is a good fit or not.

There are four things I recommend assessing:

Are people already living regenerative and self-reliant lives?

If you were to visit the area or drive down the road, would you find people engaged in homesteading or farming activities?

Do they have gardens and orchards or keep livestock? Do they cut firewood, produce their electricity, harvest water, etc.? Are there, for example, chickens wandering around in the front yard, and nobody seems to care? Hint: that’s a very good sign!

Is the landscape cultivated, and in what way; what’s growing and how is it growing?

If the area is right, many folks will be doing lots of the same activities you wish to do. And if they do, that’s the best way to ensure you’ll fit in!

Is there a farmers’ market in the area?

The size and health of the local farmers’ market will tell you a great deal about how people in the area think about their food and self-reliance in general. In turn, it will be a good indicator of whether the local culture is something you’re looking for.

In the local farmers’ market, you’ll have local producers, farmers, organic growers, etc. Not to mention like-minded folks looking for fresh produce. It is, in a sense, a central hub buzzing with the right types of activities, and it would be very disappointing if it weren’t in the area.

You can look online to find out whether or not there is one, and, if there is, you’ll definitely want to visit to get a feel for the ‘buzz’.

Are there any agricultural tools and supplies shops in the area?

If you were to drive around or visit the area, would you find any ‘agricultural’ tools and supplies shops? For example, are there seed shops, feed shops, irrigation supplies, etc.?

In most cases, some of these shops will be present, which is good as it indicates that there is market demand. However, you might want to go into one of them to see what kind of inventory they keep.

This will tell you a lot about local agricultural practices and what kind of homesteading is taking place in the area. For example, if you find gardening no-till tools like broadforks, or specific organic amendments, or inoculates, and green manures, it’s probably a desirable area!

Are there any local permaculture/resilience/ self -reliance events?

*Image source: https://stonesthrowcommunity.wordpress.com/*

Lastly, try to discover if there are any local events related to permaculture/resilience or other similar causes or interests. These could be workshops, training opportunities, convergences, classes on miscellaneous relevant subjects: food, plant identification, survival, permaculture, organic agriculture…

Even festivals or similar types of gatherings on causes you find relevant can be useful indicators that the local culture might be what you’re looking for.

These events probably won’t be frequent, but they mean that people are interested in things you find important, and there is a demand.

Search websites like Meetup.com, Facebook events pages, and Eventbrite to see what type of events are listed for the locality you’re interested in.

Okay, once you’ve performed this sort of an assessment of local culture, you’ll know, from a very specific perspective, the actual degree of ‘permaculture-sness’ (yes, I have just invented the word) that truly exists in the community.

If the local culture is suitable, and there are already some like-minded folks in the area, you’ve found a place that’s highly desirable from a permaculture community perspective.

Assuming that it ticks the other necessary boxes like being safe, having good access to services, a robust local economy, and an acceptable type of local governance, you’ve found yourself an excellent place to live.

Now you need to find yourself the right type of property within the area! But more on that in future posts…

NEXT STEPS

In closing, make sure that you download the permaculture community evaluation checklist that has all the relevant resources we talked about here and actionable advice on conducting this type of assessment.

Sign up, and I’ll also add you to my email list, where I’ll share other vital considerations you should be aware of when looking for land.

EXCLUSIVE FREE RESOURCE: Click here to get your Permaculture Community Evaluation Checklist

How to perform a remote property assessment in 10 minutes (slope)

by papprentice Leave a Comment

If you are looking for land then you’ll know that, from a permaculture perspective, there are many factors that you need to consider.

One of these factors, which ranks pretty high on the scale of importance, is the slope of the land.

For permaculture purposes, a sloped terrain is very desirable, as it creates a lot of opportunities in terms of water retention systems, gravity potential, topographic protection, variety of microclimates…

This is not to say that a flat terrain is necessarily something to avoid. A flat landscape is more efficient for farming, and overall everything is easier to set up. However, it definitely misses out on the abovementioned diversity of opportunities.

In an ideal world, you would want to find a property that has the best of both worlds – some flat terrain and some slopes of different aspects and steepness. That’s the best possible option for a permaculture site.

In reality however, unless you are looking at bigger and more rural properties, this might be hard to find. In most cases the terrain will be much less complex, having one general slope type (aspect and steepness).

In that situation the ideal is a gently sloping terrain, up to 10% grade. In going beyond 10%, you could be doing yourself more harm than good.

A steep slope like that will make everything harder; you’ll have less arable land, and it will be more challenging to cultivate with machinery, you’ll have difficulty moving around your property, and overall everything will be harder to install.

The difficulty factor increases as you move closer to a 20% grade, and once you get over 20%, the general recommendation is just to leave the slope under permanent vegetation and don’t touch it at all.

Of course, you could make it work in a steep terrain – people have been living on and cultivating steep slopes for ages – but from a permaculture perspective where we are trying to make our lives easier by being smarter than ordinary folks, it’s not what we should be striving for.

EXCLUSIVE FREE RESOURCE: download a complementary property assessment guide with step-by-step instructions on remote slope assessment via Google Earth.

How to evaluate a slope – Google Earth Elevation Profile hack

Okay, so now that I have made the case for having a slope on your future property, and outlined a slope range to look for, let’s see how you would evaluate the property for this factor.

There are two ways you could do this; remotely using topographical maps and online tools, and on-site, with surveyor tools (a smartphone would suffice in today’s world).

Checking everything in person is great. However, for getting the general feel for the slope and being able to quickly eliminate the property if it’s too steep (or too flat), there is no need to arrange inspections, take a day off, and drive to visit the land yourself.

Instead, all you need is the Google Earth desktop application and 10 minutes of your time.

Here’s how

Step 1. Open Google Earth and locate the property in question

First, use the Google Earth search function and enter the address of the property. Once you hit the search button, it will automatically take you to it, giving you a bird’s eye view of the location.

Step 2. Zoom in and find the slope

Next, you’ll have to zoom in and move around to get a feel for the terrain shape and slope orientation. This way, you’ll see what’s the best direction to slice through it using the measurement tool (hold the Shift key, click and drag to rotate and tilt the view).

You’ll want to position the “camera” so it faces directly up or down the slope.

Step 3. Draw a straight line with a ruler

Now, click the ‘Ruler’ tool on the Google Earth toolbar (1) and switch to path tab (2).

Draw a straight line across the property going downwards or upwards the slope (3)

Step 4. Show elevation profile

Then, check the ’show elevation profile’ option to show the elevation profile of the path you just drew. The Google Earth will now generate a slope outline throughout the whole length of the path.

Step 5. Assess the slope

Now that you have the elevation profile of the slope you can assess the slope.

Hold your mouse over the elevation profile, it will show a red arrow on the map marking the location, and also display the height above sea level and gradient at that point.

Look at the ‘avg slope’ value to reveal the steepness of the slope.

Note: In some cases, the elevation profile is too short to show the value of the average slope. In that case use the formula (Rise ÷ Run) x 100 to get the slope value. For example, elevation gain/loss (rise) might be 15 m and distance 200 m, 15/200 * 100 = 7.5%

If the slope is unreasonably steep or the terrain is too flat for you, then it has failed your test, and you don’t even have to investigate any further!

***

See, that wasn’t that hard, and you’ve gathered some important permaculture intel.

In about 10 minutes, you can have an answer to whether the land is something you are looking for – without the trouble of meeting anyone at the location or even driving there in the first place.

Google Earth is a great tool for conducting remote property assessments like I just did here for the slope.

You can check out the activity in the neighborhood, determine distances and radiuses, and analyze water harvesting and storage potential, slope aspects, infrastructure placement and orientation of buildings, and much more besides.

In future posts, I’ll outline more practical tutorials about each of these remote assessments. For now, make sure that you download the step-by-step guide on remote slope assessment attached down below.

Good luck with your land hunt,

-William

EXCLUSIVE FREE RESOURCE: Click here to get your property assessment assessment guide