Land advice - my permaculture dream

[dreamin]

Hi everyone, I'm new-ish here!

I am looking for a little advice. My husband and I are looking at a property and we would like to raise chickens for eggs commercially. We'd like to keep it small - a paddock rotation system with 50 chooks to the acre. We'd like to start with just one acre to begin with to see how it goes and eventually get up to 10 acres (or perhaps more, we're flexible) and sell the eggs. I understand this won't bring in a lot of money, but our needs are small!

The property is 100 acres, mostly beautiful bushland but with some cleared land (about 8-10 acres?) and some land that could be cleared a bit (an area with pine trees that should be removed anyway) that would probably be another 10 or more acres too. The land is high and rocky and is on a couple of slopes, but not enough to cause erosion or anything. It's not too bad. At the bottom of both slopes is a large dam.

I would love to incorporate permaculture into the chookyard design - human food and chook food planted in the runs. I am hoping for almost a food forest, as well as the happiest chooks there ever were!

So, that's the plan, and I guess what I'm asking is what kind of land should I be looking for, and could this be it? The rocks aren't small, they're large, and the soil between them is beautiful and red, and I'll be improving it with lots of chook manure and compost as well. Other than chooks, our main goal will be growing yummy apples and pears, and vegetables.

Oh, and the land is in the Southern Tablelands of NSW. I imagine that's considered a temperate climate, similar to where I am currently located (country Victoria).

Thank you!

[eco4560]

Have you considered approaching Geoff Lawton? I know he has in the past looked at properties for people and given an opinion about how suitable it is for what you have planned. It would be for a fee, but it could save you a lot of money compared with making the wrong decision.