Before We Break Ground: Defining Our Vision, Values and Goals
004. Cooper’s 4-Part Visioning Process
With our dreamland on lock, and our adrenaline levels falling after intense negotiations, we were ready to start making a plan. The first step: a four-part process that Cooper uses with his clients.
After securing his Generalist certification at age 10 (adorable, right?), Cooper went on to design and obtain a degree in Food Systems Design. He spent a decade directing, problem-solving and innovating at an agricultural non-profit until a few years ago when he started a land management consultancy. This big bag of tricks is über convenient as we endeavor into our homestead journey.
And you get to reap too! Because I batted my eyes and my husband agreed to share his secret sauce when it comes to embarking on such a massive and honorable task as stewarding a plot of ground.
In this post, I'm going to tell you exactly the approach we took to crafting a vision for our homestead.
We started by imagining, individually, our lives ten years from now. What they looked like and more importantly, how we felt in them. I journaled, Cooper thought. "Ten years from now" I wrote, "It is 2035. We have a kid or two, cats chickens and ducks..."
We didn't share these mental pictures with each other, but held them in our minds as anchors that would guide our thinking as we went into the visioning process, which started with a list.
Part One: A List of Words
Innovation, adaptability, wildlife, resilience, self-reliance, ecosystem balance. We went down the list, discussing each concept and its important to us. The goal was to rate each concept on a 1-5 scale to help us make plans and decisions based on our core priorities and values. You can think of 1 as Not Important, 2 as A Little Important, and so on.
Not everything can be a 5. Cooper and I didn't rate everything the same — in which case we would find an average or median we felt good about — but for the most part we were close in our estimations of what matters most to us.
Two great things came out of this exercise.
First, the discussion and the honesty that an effective evaluation requires. It's easy to say that wildlife is Extremely Important and merits a 5. But when you talk that through—the implications of truly prioritizing wildlife—how do you justify building a house? Putting up fences? Everything has a cost.
Committing to any kind of prioritization forces an honesty that will hopefully keep us from fooling ourselves.
Secondly, we came out of the exercise with guidance: values clearly prioritized, from #1 to the the last. This list will help remind us of what's important as we start making decisions about where to put things, how much money to spend on this project vs. that one, how much time and energy to invest in different aspects of our homestead.
Our Values, Prioritized
Here’s how we ranked different values in our land planning process, from most to least important. The more filled dots, the higher the priority.
1. Food Production ●●●●● 2. Ecosystem Health ●●●● 3. Landscape Aesthetics ●●●● 4. Non-chemical solutions ●●●● 5. Self Sufficiency ●●●● 6. Resilience ●●●◐ 7. Adaptability ●●●◐ 8. Innovation ●●●◐ 9. Structure Aesthetics ●●●◐ 10. Wildlife Friendliness ●●● 11. Diversity ●●● 12. Waste Efficiency ●●● 13. Animal Welfare ●●● 14. Water Efficiency ●●◐ 15. Human Culture ●●◐ 16. Cost Effectiveness ●●◐ 17. Soil Health ●● 18. Noxious Weed Management ●● 19. Philanthropy ●● 20. Community Involvement ●● 21. Accessibility ●● 22. Education ●● 23. Permanence ●◐
A quick aside—
Someone less open to critical thinking than a Dest to Dirt reader like you might look at this list and say: OMG, you don’t care about saving water? That’s so embarrassing for you.
They might start composing a strongly worded tweet right here and now. Guess this girl’s never heard of climate change! This blog is giving 'I skimmed a podcast and now I’m designing ecosystems'. She’s literally what’s wrong with the world.
(Damn, hypothetical judgy person, that’s cold.)
Trade-offs are real. Not everything can come first. Adaptability or Permanence? Cost Effectiveness Vs. Aesthetic?. Some of these scored lower even though they matter to us, because we feel they’ll be attended to as byproducts of other priorities or our regular practices and don’t need our specific focus. We also happen to have points of view on things, like noxious weeds and philanthropy, that are unconventional.
There’s a dialogue to be had around each one. They’re ideas that deserve more critical thinking than snap judgment or green-washed hot take entails. In future posts, I’ll dig into these concepts. But for now, let’s keep this vision process rolling.
Part Two: Forming a Vision Statement
With a better grasp of our shared values, we formed a few paragraphs to encapsulate our Vision, what we aimed to bring to life.
We started with another list of words —a brain dump, any words that came to mind— categorizing as we went by intuiting what would be grouped together, letting the categories come organically out of the words we dumped onto the page.
This list would come in handy again and again throughout the process as we made our way from the abstract Vision to the more concrete Goals and Programs — but more on that in a bit.
Through discussion about both these intuitive elements as well as the priorities we identified in Part One, we pieced it all together into more cohesive sentences that might capture our intentions for the place.
In forming these actual sentences, we didn’t want to force any particular structure right away. (You can see the original below alongside the version I word-smithed weeks later.) Rather, our general aim was to describe the future that we both see in our minds, and capture some sense of Why, that would both help guide us in the coming years, and that could communicate to others, our community, what it is we are working towards. What it is we want to bring to life.
Our Homestead Vision (Refined)
When people connect—to each other and to the land—something essential is restored. Engagement inspires playfulness, enjoyment, creativity, and authenticity.
We envision a diverse, regenerative, food-producing ecosystem supported by intentional systems at every level—from aquifer to canopy— where humans connect with a complete diet by growing, harvesting, preserving, and preparing food; where agricultural practices are rooted in logic, reverence, efficiency, and love.
Sustenance shapes lifestyle—and that rhythm of life, in turn, creates sustenance.
We envision a space that encourages creativity, play, and rest, reminding us to experience joyful activities and to prioritize quality time—life’s most precious resource.
Here, learning, observation, inventiveness, reflection, and integrity anchor daily life. We aim to cultivate a legacy in which humans are not separate from nature, but intricately and inseparably part of it.
Part Three: Goals
Bringing our ideas from birds-eye to more tactical, we then crafted our main goals of the property.
What is it we're actually going to do in order to bring our vision for the property to life? This is where the more tangible items on our Braindump List came into play.
Our Homestead Goals (Refined)
Cultivate an efficient and resilient farm through regenerative practices to produce diverse and delicious food that supports a complete human diet.
Practice food storage, processing, preparation, and culinary art as a means to explore flavor and sustenance, further deepening our relationship with food.
Enable fun, quality time, and reflection through games, movement, making, and refuge.
Create a comfortable, safe, and inspired home for our family with carefully planned spaces that feel dynamic, open, and inviting.
Integrate structures and landscaping to create a diversity of environments—temperatures and textures—that offer retreat and foster wellness in body and mind.
Build visually aesthetic, practical, and multifunctional environments—designed for adaptability and longevity—where a human-centered ecosystem supports an abundance of life.
Part Four: Programs
Finally, we listed the most tangible elements, the "programs" as Cooper calls them, that would make up our goals. We categorized these similarly to the buckets that were organically forming throughout this visioning process: Landscape, Infrastructure/Non-Living Structures, Animals, and Activities.
To put a bow on it all, we rated these programs as well in an attempt to prioritize the many projects we knew we wanted to take on (that we know we can't take on all at once).
It feels good to have a shared vision starting to come to life on paper. The next phase in the design process is mapping out how these goals and programs will come about in space: where the greenhouses will go if we decide to move them, where the house might be built, how the flood irrigation will flow. This will be iterative as we begin to observe, measure and learn from the land as winter becomes spring, as we get our hands in the dirt...
TLDR;
Ten Years Out – We each imagined our future selves and used those visions as mental anchors. Cooper thought; I journaled. Chickens and ducks were involved.
Word List – We rated core values like adaptability and ecosystem balance to get aligned and make trade-offs real—not everything can be a 5.
Vision Statement – A giant braindump turned into something cohesive: the kind of life we’re trying to build, not just what we want on the land.
Goals & Programs – We translated ideas into action, organizing priorities across Landscape, Infrastructure, Animals, and Activities.
What’s Next – With a clear foundation in place, it’s time to map it out—where the house, greenhouses, and fences will go as we start to shape space with intention.
