Find out what is there. Then water, grade and cover around the house and barn, in that order.
The house and barn sit on a spur, a ridge running down from higher ground, that falls southwest at 22 to 30 percent. USDA maps the soil as a thin sandy loam over soft rock, 10 to 20 inches down. Ground like that sheds water fast and is slow to green up once it is cut open. In the newest air photo the cuts made for the build still look bare. I read Bonnie's complaints as one unfinished job: the ground was shaped for the buildings and not yet for the water. So the first money buys knowledge. The next buys water, grade and cover around the house and barn. The other 37 acres get time, goats and one walking trail. I have not stood on the place. This is a desk study, and every line of it is to be checked on foot.
This month
- Fri Oct 9Call NRCS before the cutoff. NRCS is the USDA office that helps pay for conservation work on farms. Its cost-share program is called EQIP, and the cutoff for its first funding round is Friday, October 9. The directory lists the Calhoun office's district conservationist at (706) 307-7614. The state office is 706-546-2272. Ask three things. Can a place like ours apply? Can you take an application, form CPA-1200, today? When are contracts from this round usually signed? The usual papers are a deed, a tax ID, a farm number from the Farm Service Agency and form AD-1026. Sign-up runs all year, so a later application is not lost. It misses this first funding round.
- This weekLook at your tax bill. If it says Pickens, carry on. If it says Cherokee, the county offices named on these sheets change: planning, environmental health, Extension and the tax assessor. NRCS does not change; the Calhoun office serves both counties. The county line runs about 1,000 ft south of the house. If your land crosses it, both counties have a say.
- This weekLook at the barn's low side, and book the engineer. Cracks in the slab, posts out of plumb, a bulge or a fresh crack in the slope: any of these, and the engineer comes first, ahead of everything else on this page. If you see none, book the visit anyway. The barn gutters and every dig near the barn wait for that letter, and it decides whether the pens stay beside the barn.
- This weekCheck three pins, drag one. The Google Earth file now shows the well, the septic tank and the pens where your words put them, and a power-meter pin still waiting beside the house. I read your words this way: the well at the front corner of the house nearest the entrance, the septic tank at the back corner nearest the barn, the pens on the side of the barn away from the house. If I have left and right backwards, the well sits at the front corner nearest the barn, and the court side of the barn is then only about 69 ft from it. So tape it either way: 100 ft or more from the well casing to the nearest pen fence. Open each pin's properties, drag it if it is off, save the folder, and send the file back in our chat.
- This weekFind what is buried. Ask Pickens Environmental Health, 706-253-0900, for your septic permit drawing. Ask where the field and the reserve area run from the tank at the back corner of the house, how far below the field a cut must stay, and what may cross it. The trail and the level yard wait for that drawing. Pull your plat, the recorded survey drawing of your land. Book a private locator for the lines past your meter, and for the water and power that run from the house to the barn. 811, the free call-before-you-dig service, marks only the lines the utilities own. Put in an 811 request now too, so its marks are down before a blanket pin goes in.
- By Oct 31Rye and straw on every bare bank. Rake the face so seed touches soil. Spread 10-10-10 fertilizer at about 12 lb per 1,000 sq ft, then cereal rye at 4 lb, then straw at about two bales, thin enough that you still see a little soil. On anything steeper than 3 to 1, use a straw blanket with natural-fiber netting and pin it down. Work only where you can stand; the rest is a hydroseeder's job. Leave standing weeds on the slopes this winter. They are the only cover those slopes have.
- This monthAutomate the water with a hose. On the barn's spigot: a tap timer first, a vacuum breaker on the timer's outlet, then a hose to a float valve on a tub at each pen group. Have the plumber check that backflow protection, and that the spigot is frost-free, before the hose goes on. Add timed coop doors and treadle feeders. All of it is project Y2, about $1,800, and all of it moves with the pens. Sheet 6 has the details.
- Next hard rainFilm where the water goes. The road above the entrance, the entrance itself, the driveway beside the house, both roofs, the low side of the barn. Film from a porch, a window or the truck. Stay off the slopes.
- NovemberWrite to Pickens Planning, 706-253-8850, once the banks are covered. Send the table of ground work from Sheet 7 and ask in writing. Which lines need a land-disturbance permit or a state stormwater notice? Does the county keep Hidden Cove Drive, and who keeps its ditch? What does the access permit at the entrance take? Does the trench need an electrical permit, or any wall a wall permit? Does your zoning allow pigs?
Nine findings that shape the plan
The address sits in Pickens County.
The census places it there, and the Cherokee line runs about 1,000 ft south of the house. Your mail says Ball Ground, which is in Cherokee. The tax bill settles it.
The soil is thin, dry and quick to wash.
USDA maps Tallapoosa soil here: sandy loam over soft, flaky rock at 10 to 20 inches. It rates this ground very limited for lawns, roads, trenches and fence posts, poor for fill, and its erosion hazard severe. Plan on small lawns, slow digging, and cover on every cut the same week.
The water has three sources and two ways out.
On the 2019 ground about 0.8 acre of slope drained onto the yard from above. Two roofs and a gravel yard add their own. The road drops about 37 ft in the 200 ft above your entrance, and part of it sheds onto the bank above your drive. On the 2019 ground the water leaves two ways: down the swale, a shallow dip, between house and barn, and down the hollow below your entrance. Nothing gets built to catch water until that water has been followed to one of them.
The barn stands at the head of a swale.
The natural ground fell 23 to 25 ft across the barn's footprint, and the yard's runoff gathers just below it. So part of the barn likely stands on fill. An engineer looks at that slope, and at the cut above the barn, before anyone digs near either.
Flat ground is bought with wall.
On a 25 percent slope a 4 ft wall buys 16 ft of level ground. So build flats only where they earn it: one level yard by the house, and ground for pens. Do not terrace the long slope behind the house. Cover it, and cross it on one walking trail.
The driveway climbs from the road, likely with the wrong stone on it.
Clean stone of one size never locks, and more of it makes the drive worse. Pick up a handful: no dust, no lock. On the old ground your drive climbs about 18 ft from the entrance to the barn and passes about 50 ft uphill of the house. So its water and the road's meet at the entrance, and none of it may be turned out above the house, where your well stands.
The pens lean on the barn's cut and fill.
You told me the pens stand on the right side of the barn; I read that as its east side, away from the house. Your well, at the front left corner of the house, is then about 220 ft away. If so, the 100 ft rule is met. Tape it, because the other reading of left and right puts the well about 69 ft from the barn's court side. On the old ground every side of the barn slopes 24 to 29 percent. The uphill sides shed their water at the barn, and the downhill sides sit on or below its fill. So the engineer's letter decides whether the pens stay. The list is set to Stay, with about $2,800 of fixes for pens that stay. A move runs about $19,000 for tiers and rebuilt pens, and at middle prices it takes the bank's money: the bank falls $7,900 short. The rebuilt pens would also wait for the trench, which is on hold for NRCS.
The work sits near the one-acre line.
Work around the house and barn disturbs about 0.6 acre. Add the walking trail and it is about 0.9. Clear ground for a farmyard and it is about 1.3. Past one acre the county and the state both ask for a permit unless a farm exemption applies. That is one more reason to test the pens before moving them.
The back slope likely holds your septic field.
You told me the tank sits at the back right corner of the house. The field most likely lies on the slope below it. The trail line as drawn starts about 55 ft from the back corners, and about 430 of its 1,089 ft lie in the first 200 ft of slope below them. So the trail, the level yard and any digging behind the house wait for the county's drawing. Grass, cut on foot, is the right cover meanwhile.
What $100,000 reaches
The list on Sheet 4, taken in order, at the prices that sheet is set to. Projects under $10,000 are gathered into one step. Read down the running total: the line between what is paid for and what waits falls where it passes the money to spend. Rows on hold for NRCS take no money until they are released, so they carry no running total.
| Step | What | Cost | Running total | Where it lands |
|---|
The same list, priced three ways. The money stops at the first thing it cannot pay in full.
| If the bids come in | Paid for | Spent | First thing the money cannot reach | Short by |
|---|
A southwest spur, a hollow on each side, and a steep road above the entrance.
The house and barn stand on the shoulder of a spur. The cleared slope behind the house runs down its crest. The yard drains to a swale between the house and barn; these sheets call it the barn swale. A second hollow lies northwest, below the entrance, and takes the entrance's water; these sheets call it the entrance hollow. Darker brown is steeper ground.
Slope, written two ways
25 percent means the ground rises 1 ft for every 4 ft across. Builders call that 4 to 1. It is about 14 degrees. 33 percent is 3 to 1. 50 percent is 2 to 1, the steepest bank Georgia's manual lets a crew leave.
Eight words used on these sheets
- Spur
- A ridge that runs down from higher ground. Your house sits on one.
- Hollow
- A small valley between two spurs.
- Swale
- A shallow dip that carries water after rain.
- Tier
- A level step cut into a slope, wide enough to build on, with a bank below it.
- Terrace
- A level step held up by a wall.
- Erosion blanket
- Straw or coconut fiber netted into a roll and pinned to a slope.
- Crusher run
- Crushed stone with its dust left in, so it packs hard.
- Lidar
- A laser survey flown from a plane. It maps the ground under the trees.
Ground shape is USGS lidar flown in 2019, before the house and barn were built, so the yard shows as the natural hill. Water paths are computed on that ground; the cuts, fills and driveway have since changed where water runs near the buildings. Photo is October 2025. North is up. Outlines are traced from the photo. The two small boxes by the house are the gardens. The well (W), the septic tank (S) and the pens are placed from your words on October 9. The amber outline is ground held until the septic drawing arrives; Sheet 5 says why.
| Steepness in 2019 | Your yard, 1.5 ac | Back slope, 1.4 ac | Land within 1,000 ft | What it allows |
|---|
What is under the grass
| USDA soil survey | What it maps here | What it means for the work |
|---|---|---|
| Soil | Tallapoosa sandy loam, weathered from mica schist, a soft flaky rock. Flaky stones in it around the house and barn; finer down the back slope. | The same soil under every project on the list. |
| Soft rock | 10 to 20 inches down. Heavy machinery can rip it; hand tools cut it with difficulty. Hard rock is mapped more than 6 ft down. | Trenches, post holes and cuts are mostly in soft rock. A test hole shows how slowly it digs. |
| Water it holds | Under 3 inches in the top 40 inches. USDA calls that droughty. | Grass struggles in summer. Lawn belongs on brought-in topsoil, and little of it. |
| Runoff | Group D, the highest of four. | Rain runs off more than it soaks in. Carry it in pipe or on rock. Do not count on it to sink. |
| Erosion hazard | Severe on roads and trails. Very severe off them. | Cover every cut the week it is made. Rock the dips and the turns. |
| Rated very limited for | Shallow digging, local roads, septic fields, fence posts, embankments. | Price each of these toward the high end. Your septic system is likely a special design with rules of its own. |
| Rated a poor source of | Topsoil, roadfill, gravel. | Topsoil and wall stone are bought, not found. Dirt cut here makes weak fill. Strip the little topsoil there is before any cut, pile it, and spread it back. |
| Farm class | 7e | USDA's label for land suited to grass or trees, not tilling, because it erodes. |
USDA draws soil maps at coarse scale, and this ground has been cut and filled since. A test hole with the excavator is the real answer, and it costs an hour.
Three cuts through the hill, drawn to true scale
A · Behind the house. The green marks show where the walking trail on Sheet 5 crosses this line.
B · Road to house.
C · Through the barn. The dashed line is a level floor drawn for illustration.
The wider ground
The ring is 40 acres drawn around the house for scale. It is not your boundary. Thin blue lines are water paths computed from the lidar. The heavy lines are streams the USGS maps: Fourmile Creek, about 1,700 ft west of the house, and a seasonal stream past the pond. Both hollows drain to them.
How this was measured, and what it cannot show
Elevation is the USGS one-meter model from the Georgia statewide lidar flight completed in April 2019. I checked it against Cherokee County's 2023 one-foot contours, which extend north past your house. The two agree at your house site to within a foot or two. Neither shows the cut bank or the barn pad, because both flights came before the build.
Google Earth's history shows the site as forest, then house and barn standing by March 2024. So every slope number here is the natural hill. The grades as built need a drone survey, which is project K2 on the list.
Your saved Google Earth path reads 86 ft of fall in 391 ft. That is 22 percent, and it matches the lidar. The 59.3 percent on the same panel is the steepest short step along that path, not an error. It may be a real edge, such as the top of a cut or the toe of fill. Find where it falls. A bank that steep is steeper than 2 to 1.
Streams and the watershed name come from the USGS National Hydrography Dataset. Your land lies in the Fourmile Creek-Long Swamp Creek watershed. A 2014 Georgia list names the Fourmile Creek watershed in Pickens County as secondary trout water, a class of stream the state protects with wider buffers. The list is old, so confirm it with the Environmental Protection Division.
No earthwork drawn on these sheets comes within 650 ft of a stream the USGS maps. Two smaller water paths matter more. On the 2019 ground the barn swale gathers about an acre by a point 150 ft southeast of the house, 58 ft from the yard and 39 ft from the ground south of the barn. The entrance hollow gathers about an acre and a half by a point 340 ft west of the house, 52 ft from the trail's fourth turn. Whether either shows a scoured channel is something to check on foot.
Rain figures are NOAA Atlas 14 for this spot: 3.98 inches in 24 hours for the 2-year storm, 5.45 for the 10-year, 6.35 for the 25-year. Jasper averages 58.65 inches a year.
Soil facts are from the USDA soil survey of Cherokee, Gilmer and Pickens Counties, with data dated August 31, 2026, and the official description of the Tallapoosa series.
Start from the finished picture. Then build in the order the ground demands.
Write the end first. Every sentence in it is an outcome. Each outcome rests on projects, and each project rests on groundwork. Stack them, and the order of work falls out.
The finished picture
October 2028. From the porch the ground is green or mulched to the tree line, and none of it is weeds by accident. The driveway is firm under a stroller. A 25-year storm, more than six inches in a day, leaves in pipes and on rock, and nothing moves. There is one level place to sit and play. The animals live where the seven tests say they should, pigs among them. Water reaches every pen without a hose, feed lasts a week between fills, and morning chores take 15 minutes. A trail a child can walk drops from the yard behind the house to the lower field. Every job on the place has an owner and a month.
This is a draft. Rewrite it together until Bonnie would sign it. Every project on Sheet 4 should serve one of its sentences, and the table shows which.
| Outcome | Rests on | Paid for, as the list is set |
|---|
The letters and numbers are the projects on Sheet 4. The picture is the end, not the first year. This budget reaches part of it, and the table says which part.
Nine layers, bottom first
A layer is hard to change once the ones above it are built. Farm planners call this the scale of permanence. The list follows it through what each project needs first: nothing is paid for before its groundwork.
- KnowBoundary, septic, well, buried lines, true grades. Digging blind is the dearest mistake on the list.
- WaterCatch it high, carry it in pipe or on rock, and follow it to a safe way out. Water undoes every layer above it.
- AccessWhere the drive and the trail run. Their lines are fixed early. The driveway's top stone goes on after the heavy work beside it.
- ShapeBanks, tiers and the one level yard. Moving dirt after pipes and fences are in costs double.
- UtilitiesWater, power and a spare conduit, in one trench, dug once.
- PensShelters and yards, set where the grade and the water line already suit them.
- FencePosts on the final line. A fence is the most often moved thing on a new farm.
- CoverSeed, mulch and plants on every square foot. Straw or temporary seed within 14 days of baring the soil; permanent cover in its season.
- SystemsAutomatic water, feed and doors. Buried water waits for every layer below. Doors, feeders and float valves on a hose from the barn need none of them and can go in now.
Four zones, four speeds
House yard
About 1.5 acres. Seen and used every day. Finish it fully.
– of the money paid out
Barn and animal yard
Chores happen here twice a day. Build it once, in order.
– of the money paid out
Back slope
About 1.4 acres on the spur crest. Cover it and cross it. The septic field likely lies under its upper part.
– of the money paid out
The woods
The other 37 acres. Time and goats. Small money, slow work.
– of the money paid out
Five rules that do not bend
Nothing is bared that cannot be covered in 14 days.
Bare soil on this slope is where the weeds and the gullies start. Georgia's erosion manual counts the 14 days from the day the soil is disturbed, not from the day the grading ends.
Nothing is dug until the map says what is under it.
Septic field, well line, power to the barn. One cut line costs more than the locator. Every crew makes its own 811 request, three business days ahead. So do you, before a post, a pin or a ground rod goes in.
Nothing is dug near the barn until an engineer says how.
The barn likely stands partly on fill at the head of a swale, with a cut above it. A trench, a pipe run or a tank in the wrong place can take away what holds it up, or load what is already weak.
No water is caught until it has been followed to a safe way out.
A pipe, a dip or a ditch gathers water that used to spread. Follow it on paper to a stable channel on your own land before it is built. None may end above the house, on the septic field, on fill, on the road or at the boundary. The list has one stopgap that runs ahead of the plan: the barn's surface pipe, W2. It spreads the barn's roof water on the woods floor below the fill, at ends the engineer marks.
Nothing is done until its upkeep is on the calendar.
A drain nobody cleans is a gully with a delay. The job closes when the task exists.
28 projects, $167k of work, $90k to spend. The rule sets the order. You two decide at the line.
Rate each project three ways. Its score is its benefit divided by its cost points, and cost points grow by one each time the price doubles. A project is ranked together with the groundwork it still needs, so nothing cheap jumps the line by hiding its real cost. Then the money walks down the list and stops at the first thing it cannot pay in full. Rows on hold for NRCS are passed over until you release them. Move a control, or tap a row to change a rating, and the list re-ranks.
| # | Project | Layer | Crew | Cost range | Score | Status |
|---|
Money paid out, by crew
Money paid out, by zone
The three ratings
| Risk: what a year's wait costs | Daily life: how often it is seen or used | Payback: what it returns | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Damage or danger now, or everything else depends on knowing it | Every day, and Bonnie named it | Brings outside money, or pays for itself in a year |
| 4 | Likely damage within the year | Every day | Saves an hour or more every week |
| 3 | Some damage, or some work done twice | Most weeks | Saves hours every month, or feeds the family |
| 2 | Little | Now and then | Small |
| 1 | None | Never seen | None |
My ratings follow this table and your message. They are a first pass. Change any of them in its row. Each 5 for daily life is something your message says Bonnie wants or is frustrated by. One more example of how they were set: the trench and the automatic waterers rate 1 for risk, because a year's wait costs nothing, a hose from the barn carries the water meanwhile, and NRCS may pay a share if you wait.
The rule, in full
| Benefit | The weighted average of the three ratings. |
| Cost points | 1 for anything up to $500, and one more each time the cost doubles: $1,000 is 2, $4,000 is 4, $16,000 is 6. Counted on the middle of the range unless you switch it. |
| Own score | 20 times benefit, divided by cost points. |
| Package | A project plus the groundwork it still needs. Its score is 20 times its members' benefits added up, divided by their cost points added up. |
| Order | Take the best package, groundwork first. Any project the package unlocks that scores better than the package rides along behind it. Repeat with what is left. A tie goes to the lower layer, then the lower cost. |
| Funding | The money walks down the order. It pays a package whole, then each ride-along one at a time. It stops at the first thing it cannot pay. Nothing below that is paid, because a small want should not pass a large need. What would fit in the money left is marked, and the choice is yours. |
| On hold | A row marked Hold takes no money until you release it in its own row, and neither does anything that needs it. The money passes over those rows and goes on. Groundwork ranked with a held row is paid as usual. Release a row when its contract is signed, when NRCS says no in writing, or when you choose to go without. A yes with no contract is still a hold. |
Scores within a point of each other are a tie; your judgment breaks it. To break one on the list, change a rating by a point. The same rule runs in a short script, and this page's code was checked against it on 300 different settings.
What waits, and what brings it back
When it happens
This soil drains, so a dry week in winter can be worked. The limit is cover. From December through February no seed on Georgia's mountain list is in season, and straw alone holds a fresh cut until spring. So the big earthwork has two honest starts. March goes under straw and blankets and meets the spring rains. Late August is drier and opens the fall seed windows. Ask each bidder to price both.
The diamond is a decision, not a job. By the day you book the earthwork crew, the trench has a signed NRCS contract, a written no, or neither. Sheet 7 says what to do in each case.
Wall only where flat ground earns its keep. Cover the long slope and cross it on foot.
Published standards where they exist. Your ground as the 2019 lidar shows it. My own choices where neither settles the matter; Sheet 9 lists them. Lines on the map are concepts to walk, not designs.
What flat ground costs on your hill
Drawn to scale: half cut, half fill, banks at 2 to 1.
Split cut and fill
- Bank above and below
- Ground it takes up
- Dirt moved per 100 ft
- Earthwork per 100 ft
All cut, no fill
- Bank above
- Dirt moved per 100 ft
- Earthwork per 100 ft
A wall holding fill
- Wall height above ground
- Wall face per 100 ft
- Wall cost per 100 ft
Earthwork at $6 to $15 a cubic yard and boulder walls at $25 to $75 a square foot of face, from national cost guides. USDA maps soft rock 10 to 20 inches down, so the deeper part of any cut is in rock; expect the high end. That rock is soft and flaky, so do not count on it for wall stone. Small jobs are priced by the machine day, about $800 to $2,400, not by the yard.
The long slope behind the house
The slope falls 110 ft in 471 ft. To terrace it level would take about 28 walls, each 4 ft tall. Do not. Three things answer it. Cover: turn it from weeds to meadow without baring it, which is project G3 on the list. One level yard by the house, the one flat place worth a wall, which is S3. And one walking trail, T1.
A 9 percent line from below the house comes down the slope in 1,089 ft with four turns. It is drawn for feet, a cart and a wheelbarrow. Its tread, the surface you walk on, is 3 to 4 ft wide, all of it cut into the hill. It gives you a way down and a way to tend the slope. It does not hold the slope; cover does that. Build it whole or not at all, because a piece of it leads nowhere.
Concept only, drawn on the 2019 ground. Walk it with a clinometer, a pocket tool that reads slope. Move the turns to the gentlest ground you find, and check the line against the plat and the septic field before a machine comes. Patches A, B and C are the farmyard ground scored on Sheet 6.
The line, in numbers
It falls from 1,298 to 1,199 ft at about 9 percent. The ground it crosses slopes 15 to 34 percent, and all four turns sit on about 32 percent. A walking turn needs a nearly flat landing with a 5 to 10 ft radius, so each turn gets a low rock or timber wall.
The line starts about 50 ft below the house, 12 ft lower than its low corners. That first pitch from the door needs steps or a ramp, and it starts about 55 ft from the back corners of the house, where the septic tank sits. The trail's price carries an allowance for the steps. The line ends where the slope eases, about 110 ft short of the bottom of the cleared ground. Its fourth turn comes within 52 ft of the entrance hollow's water path.
It was drawn the way a crew flags a trail: step along the hill at a fixed 9 percent and turn back at the edge of a 400 ft corridor on the spur. Lidar under trees is not good to a tenth of a percent, so take the grade as about 9.
Wheels are a different job
A side-by-side is about 5 ft wide. It wants 6 to 8 ft of tread, all on firm cut ground, turns of 10 to 20 ft radius, and stone under its wheels on this soil. On this line every turn sits on 32 percent ground, where even a 20 ft flat needs banks near 9 ft, or walls. Stone for the whole length is 150 to 200 tons. That is a road, and I did not price it.
Before you want wheels down there, check three cheaper ways. An old roadbed: the hillshade layer in the Google Earth file shows them as faint level lines. Gentler turn sites, found on foot. Or a spur from Hidden Cove Drive, which drops to the height of the foot of your slope about 650 ft down the road past your entrance. Whether your land touches the road there is a question for the plat.
Trail rules
| Rule | Number |
|---|---|
| Grade of any climb | Under 10%. |
| The half rule | Trail grade no more than half the slope of the ground it crosses. |
| Walking tread | 3 to 4 ft, all on cut ground. |
| Tread tilt | About 5% outward, so water crosses and leaves. |
| Dips | Every 20 to 50 ft the tread dips and climbs for 10 to 15 ft, so water cannot run down it. |
| Turns | Switchbacks suit side slopes of 15 to 45%. The landing is nearly flat. |
| Cut and fill banks | 2 to 1 or flatter. |
| A machine over 50 in. wide | 6 to 8 ft of tread, turns of 10 to 20 ft radius. |
| A side-by-side off the tread | Never across a slope over 15%. |
What the rules mean here
Never run a trail straight down the spur. At 22 to 30 percent it will wash, and it is too steep for a child.
Do not flag this line yet. It is re-drawn once the septic drawing is on the map. Then flag it and walk it with the leaves down, and you will see the ground before you pay to cut it. Do not clear it, by mulcher or by hand, until its NRCS contract is signed or you have chosen to go without: clearing a trail corridor may count as starting work NRCS would otherwise help pay for. USDA rates the erosion hazard on trails here as severe, so rock the dips and the turns and keep water off the tread. Bare tread with dips will do for feet. Wheels need stone.
The numbers are the Forest Service's for trails and Georgia's for banks. NRCS allows farm access up to 15 percent, but a child and a loaded cart want 10.
The bank above the driveway
About 8,100 sq ft of bare bank, 190 ft long, between the drive and the road in the October 2025 photo. About a quarter acre of slope and road shoulder drains onto it from above. Three moves, in order.
First, keep water off the face. A ditch set several feet back from the lip catches it. On the old ground the top of the bank drops about 30 ft toward the entrance, so that ditch runs steep and must be lined with rock. The plan decides whether to carry the water along the top or drop it down the face in a pipe; loose rock alone will not stay on a face this steep. Either way it ends at the pipe under your entrance. Second, settle the face: ease it back where there is room, and hold the toe of the worst stretch with a low stone wall. Third, blanket and seed the same week. Georgia's manual wants a blanket on any bare slope steeper than 3 to 1, and no cut or fill steeper than 2 to 1.
A wall under a sloping bank carries a load. Treat it as engineered whatever its height: a drawing, with drain stone and fabric behind it. The model building code waives a permit only for a wall up to 4 ft, measured from the bottom of its footing, that holds no extra load. I could not confirm Pickens's own rule, so ask. Easing the bank back moves its top toward Hidden Cove Drive. Ask who owns the road before anyone cuts toward it.
The barn's two slopes
The barn covers about 4,200 sq ft. In a 10-year storm, one with a one-in-ten chance each year, its roof sheds 14,200 gallons, about 210 gallons a minute at the hardest. The natural ground fell 23 to 25 ft across its footprint, so part of it likely stands on fill, with a cut above it. I cannot see either, or where the roof water lands.
Two things come first. A licensed geotechnical or civil engineer looks at both slopes and marks where the barn's roof water may be let go. Then, once your buried lines are on the map, that water goes into gutters and, for now, into pipe laid on top of the ground: one unbroken length from each downspout, held with sandbags, not stakes. Run it round the side of the fill on ground you can walk, not down its face, to the engineer's marks: undisturbed woods floor lower than the foot of the fill, never beside it. End each pipe in 10 ft of slotted pipe on a bed of stone, set level, so the water spreads. Do not climb the low-side bank to lay it. This is project W2, a stopgap until the buried lines.
Nothing is dug near the barn until the engineer's letter says where. That covers the buried roof lines, the trench, the pig pen's ground and any tank. The pens stand beside the barn, so the letter also decides whether they stay. If the slope is moving, stop. The fix may cost more than the reserve, and it re-orders the whole plan. If it is sound, the answer to its steepness may be cover and a path, not a wall.
The driveway
Pick up a handful. If there is no sand or dust in it, it will never lock. Federal road guidance says surface stone needs 4 to 15 percent fines to bind, and that areas of coarse stone stay loose. So a thin cap over a deep loose bed will rut. Once the buried lines are marked, dig one hole to see how deep the loose stone is. Then ask bidders for two prices: blend crusher run into it with a blade and a roller, or strip the excess for drains and pads and cap what is left with about 4 inches, rolled tight.
On the old ground the drive climbs about 18 ft from the entrance to the barn. It passes about 50 ft from the house, 6 to 11 ft above its uphill wall. So the drive's water runs back toward the entrance, and whatever spills off its low edge runs at the house. The rule: no driveway water is turned out above the house. Whether the drive tilts into the hill with a lined ditch along the bank, or sheds through pipes that end past the house, is the designer's first decision. Ask the designer to check that the ground falls away from the house wall on its uphill side. Your well stands at the front left corner of the house, about 50 ft from the middle of the drive. Georgia's well law wants every well protected from surface runoff, so the plan keeps the drive's water away from it. Mark it before the crew comes, and let no machine park on it or pile stone against it.
Hidden Cove Drive drops about 37 ft in the 200 ft above your entrance, near 19 percent, with a stretch over 20, and keeps falling past it. The road's water and yours meet at the entrance and leave down the entrance hollow. That is where the pipe goes. Follow that water down the hollow on the plat before the pipe is set. It must stay on your land, or join the road's ditch with the road owner's consent. If the county keeps the road, Pickens asks for an access permit first and a pipe at least 15 inches across and 20 ft long. Lay a spare sleeve under the drive before the stone goes on.
The old ground has one 50 ft pitch near 13 percent on the line of the drive. If that pitch is still there, ask for an alternate price in chip seal for it: sprayed tar with stone rolled in, at $2 to $5 a square foot. Loose stone creeps on a pitch like that.
Clearing, rock and trees
Mulch where you will not grade. A forestry mulcher grinds brush and small trees where they stand. It leaves the roots and a mat of chips that hold the soil. It runs $1,000 to $2,500 a day. Clear to bare ground only where you will build, because bared ground must be covered in 14 days.
Felling is a hired job. A mulcher does not take down big timber. Hire an insured tree or logging crew for any tree thicker than your leg, any leaner, and anything near a building, a line or the road. Stumps and tops are chipped or hauled. They are never buried in fill and never pushed into a hollow. Write that into the contract. Ask the Georgia Forestry Commission about the burn rules before any pile is lit.
Sort the rock, but do not count on it. The rock under this soil is soft and flaky. Stone for outlets and walls will likely be bought: sized rock ran $46 to $67 a ton delivered on a 2026 Georgia bid. The designer sizes the stone for each outlet, and it goes on fabric.
Trees are material. Logs for posts and boards. Chips for paths, pens and pig bedding. Leave trees on ground steeper than 33 percent and within 50 ft of any channel. If logs leave the place for a mill or a wood yard, a county may require notice first; ask Pickens. Trees you cut and use at home are not what that law describes.
The weeds, in four moves
This fall: cover the bare, leave the rest
Rye and straw go on the bare banks now. Do not cut the weedy slopes this fall. Standing weeds are their only winter cover, and most have already dropped their seed.
Now: a clean edge
Cut a neat strip along the yard and one path down the slope, on foot with a brush cutter. Cutting grass on foot does a septic field no harm. Keep the path off the drawn trail line until the trail's NRCS hold is released. A crisp edge makes rough growth look kept. It costs an afternoon, and it is the fastest change you can make to how the place looks.
Before spring: know what you are fighting
Send photos of the worst weeds to the Pickens Extension office and take soil samples; a UGA soil test is $6 to $10. You will learn what they are, how much lime the ground wants, and which cover fits each patch.
In season: give every square foot a job
Lawn: small, on brought-in topsoil, where you sit and play. Meadow: the slopes, in a dry-ground mix, cut on foot with a brush cutter once or twice a year, or grazed where no septic field lies under it. Mulch: beds and banks near the house, under chips from your own clearing. Kill or smother what is there before any seed goes down: mow low and tarp, or spray. If you spray, the label is the law. Keep off the swales and away from the well, and keep goats off until the label's waiting time has passed. Ground with a job still needs its yearly cut.
Seed dates for this ground
| Cover | Mountain dates | Piedmont dates | Rate per acre | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cereal rye, temporary | Aug 15 to Oct 31 | Sep 15 to Nov 30 | 168 lb | The one to sow now. About 4 lb per 1,000 sq ft. |
| Wheat, temporary | Sep 15 to Nov 30 | Oct 1 to Dec 15 | 180 lb | If you miss the rye dates. |
| Annual ryegrass, temporary | Aug 15 to Nov 15 | Sep 1 to Dec 15 | 40 lb | |
| Straw alone | Any time | Any time | 2 to 4 inches deep | Holds a cut for up to six months. Anchor it. Over seed, spread it thinner: about 2 tons an acre. |
| Tall fescue, permanent | Mar 1 to Apr 15, or Aug 15 to Oct 15 | Sep 1 to Oct 15 | 50 lb | The manual says not for droughty soils. Keep it to brought-in topsoil. |
| Weeping lovegrass, permanent | Apr 1 to May 31 | Mar 15 to May 31 | 4 lb | Listed for spring seeding and widely used on dry road banks. Confirm with NRCS. |
From Georgia's erosion-control field manual. Pickens is usually counted a mountain county. These dates hold in both columns: rye September 15 to October 31, fescue September 1 to October 15, lovegrass April 1 to May 31. For temporary cover the manual lists 10-10-10 fertilizer at 500 lb an acre, about 12 lb per 1,000 sq ft. Lime at 1 to 2 tons an acre unless a soil test says otherwise. Ask NRCS or the Extension office to suggest a mix for these banks, with native grasses if they will take.
Test the pens where they stand. Automate what needs no trench. Then one trench.
You told me four things on October 9. The pens stand on the right side of the barn. The barn has water and power. The well is at the front left corner of the house, and the septic tank at the back right. Sheet 1 says how I read left and right, and what changes if I have them backwards. This sheet tests the ground beside the barn, scores the other ground nearby, and gives the numbers for building. Two questions only paper can answer come first. Does your zoning allow pigs, and what setbacks does it put on pens? Does your deed carry covenants about animals? Ask Pickens Planning, and read the deed.
Seven tests for where animals live
1 · 100 ft from any well
Georgia law sets 100 ft between a well and any animal or fowl enclosure. That means your well and a neighbor's. By my reading your well is about 220 ft from the east side of the barn, so pens there pass. Tape it from the well casing to the nearest pen fence before you call this test closed. A garden bed sits beside the well. Put no manure or compost on that bed, fresh or aged, and keep the compost pad 100 ft away. Keep animals, wheels and fill off the septic field too.
2 · Out of the swale and both hollows
The yard's runoff gathers in the barn swale and runs toward the pond, in a trout-stream watershed. Keep pens on the high ground to either side, with thick grass between them and any channel.
3 · Away from the house, and not above the porch
Their water must not run at the house or the well. Cool evening air drains downhill and carries smell with it, so pens straight uphill of the porch will be noticed. My screen kept pens more than 130 ft from the middle of the house.
4 · On ground that can be made level
There is no natural flat ground here. Pens need tiers tipped 2 to 4 percent so they drain without washing, with 6 inches of stone over fabric at gates, feeders and waterers.
5 · Reached by a lane a truck can climb
Feed arrives by truck. Under 10 percent if you can, never over 15, with room to turn a truck and trailer. A yard you can drive onto saves a carry every day for 20 years.
6 · Water can get there
Within a hose length of a spigot now, and on the trench line later. The trench-fed automatic waterers I found need 5 psi, and every 2.3 ft of drop gives 1. So to feed one from a roof tank, the pen must sit 12 ft or more below the bottom of the tank. A plain gravity bowl needs only a foot or two.
7 · Somewhere for the manure
A compost pad on level ground: 100 ft from any well, 200 ft from the boundary if you can, with 35 ft of thick grass below it. Georgia's manure rules exempt manure from your own animals, but those are still the working numbers.
The ground beside the barn, where the pens stand
I still cannot see the pens, so I measured a strip 60 ft deep along each side of the barn on the 2019 ground. The barn pad has reshaped the ground closest to the walls. Take these as what the hill was doing before the pad was cut, and still does at its edges.
| Side of the barn | Natural slope | Height | Where its water runs | Your well, as I read it | Your well, if I have left and right backwards |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| East · toward the woods. My reading of “right side” | 28 percent | 1,338 to 1,356 ft. Level with the barn's uphill wall, and above it | At the barn. On the old ground its runoff ran through the barn's footprint. | 220 ft | 185 ft |
| North · uphill, toward the road | 25 percent | 1,344 to 1,358 ft. Above the barn | At the barn. On the old ground its runoff ran through the barn's footprint. | 164 ft | 133 ft |
| South · downhill, toward the swale | 26 percent | 1,318 to 1,331 ft. At the barn's low wall, and below it | To the barn swale. It meets the water path in 105 ft. | 176 ft | 137 ft |
| West · the court, toward the house | 24 percent | 1,322 to 1,339 ft. Between the barn's low and high walls | To the barn swale. It meets the water path in 125 ft. | About 100 ft. Tape it. | 69 ft. Inside the 100 ft rule. |
On the old ground every side slopes 24 to 29 percent, at or near the 25 percent limit I used to screen farmyard ground, and the east side is the steepest. A level pen floor there means a cut bank above it and fill below it. By my reading the well is well over 100 ft from the east, north and south sides and about 100 ft from the west side, the court. If I have left and right backwards, it is about 69 ft from the court side, and pens there would break the rule. My distances are from the house corner, not the casing. So four things decide whether the pens stay. The tape: 100 ft or more from the well casing to the nearest pen fence. The engineer's letter, because the pens lean on the barn's cut or its fill. A walk with a level, after rain: is the pen floor level, and does water come in from the bank above or leave toward the barn wall? And the mud: if the pens are still muddy a week after rain, the water has nowhere to go.
If they stay, they want three fixes. These are project P4 on the list, about $2,800, and NRCS may share the cost, so ask first. Keep the hill's water out: a small lined ditch above them, placed by the plan and the engineer's letter, never dug by eye. Put 6 inches of stone over fabric at gates, feeders and waterers. Keep thick grass between the pens and any channel. If the pens' own water runs at the barn wall, none of these answers it: ask the engineer. If the letter or the walk says move, patch A below is the nearest ground, and the barn's water and power reach it with a short trench.
How the nearby ground scores
I screened the ground within 400 ft of the barn for what the lidar can measure: natural slope of 25 percent or less, under a tenth of an acre draining across it, more than 130 ft from the middle of the house, at least 80 ft from the middle of the barn, and at least 4 ft below the old ground at the barn's uphill wall. Three patches pass. They are marked A, B and C on the Sheet 5 map. Then I measured each against the tests the screen left out.
| A · South of the barn | B · By the entrance | C · Farther southeast | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Size | 17,600 sq ft | 15,600 sq ft | 7,800 sq ft |
| Natural slope | 23 percent | 19 percent | 21 percent |
| Height, most of it | 1,311 to 1,339 ft | 1,308 to 1,340 ft | 1,313 to 1,339 ft |
| For scale | The old ground under the barn ran from 1,324 ft at its low wall to 1,347 ft at its high wall. I do not know its floor. The house stands on ground from 1,311 to 1,324 ft. | ||
| Nearest edge | 34 ft from the barn, 152 ft from the house wall | 165 ft from the barn, 107 ft from the house wall | 278 ft from the barn, 392 ft from the house wall |
| Middle of the barn to its middle | 160 ft | 310 ft | 368 ft |
| Truck lane | Unproven. On the old ground a lane round the barn's low corner pitches more than 25 percent. | On the driveway. | 353 ft from the driveway. |
| Gravity water from barn tanks | 6 to 41 percent of it sits low enough, depending on where by the barn the tank stands. | 26 to 62 percent of it sits low enough. | 3 to 50 percent of it sits low enough. |
| Nearest path draining an acre | 39 ft | 53 ft | 26 ft |
| Its water runs | Southwest, and passes 227 ft from the house. | West, and passes 151 ft from the house. | West, and passes 359 ft from the house. |
| Your well, as I read it | 200 ft at the nearest | About 100 ft. Tape it. | 451 ft at the nearest |
| Septic field | Not on any map I have. The tank is behind the house, clear of all three. Check each patch against the county drawing. | ||
| Bottom line | Closest to the chores. The lane, the barn's fill and the water path are open questions. | Easiest to reach and to water. It is your front door. | Too far from the barn and the drive. |
No patch passes every test. A is closest to the chores, but its near edge is 34 ft from the barn, a water path draining an acre passes 39 ft from it, and on the old ground a lane round the barn's low corner would pitch more than 25 percent. The barn pad has reshaped that ground since, so the drone survey decides. B is gentler and already on the driveway, but it is the first thing a visitor sees. All three are wooded and would be cleared by a tree crew.
That is the case for testing the pens where they stand before paying about $19,000 for tiers and a rebuild. If they pass, both stay off the list. If they fail a test that cannot be fixed in place, walk A and B with the map, then check the septic field and the plat. By my reading, patches A and C are well clear of your well. Patch B is about 100 ft from it, so tape that before you count on it.
If you build tiers
Patch A slopes about 23 percent. One level step 30 ft wide would need banks about 6 ft tall above and below. Two tiers half as wide move half the dirt, and their banks are about 3 ft, as long as a strip of natural slope is left between them. Stack them tight and the two banks join into one 6 ft bank.
A tier 16 to 20 ft wide takes a 16 ft hog panel or a small shed, and its banks run near 4 ft. Sheds and posts go on the cut half, never on the fill. Before the tiers are bid, the designer lays out the pens, the lane, the feed store and the compost pad on paper and checks them against the table below. Two tiers 100 ft long and 18 ft wide give 3,600 sq ft of level ground. Try your own widths on the Sheet 5 calculator.
The pig pen
Build a deep-bedded pen. Six 16 ft hog panels on T-posts make a pen 16 by 32 ft, room for two or three feeder pigs with space to spare; extension guides give 100 sq ft each. Run a hot wire, a strand of electric fence, inside the panels, a hand above the bedding, and raise it as the bedding builds. Add a three-sided shelter, a drinker fixed to the panel where the pigs cannot tip it, and a covered feeder. Set it on 6 inches of stone over fabric, on level ground the earthwork crew cuts on its one trip. Bed it a foot deep or more with your own wood chips, add more as it packs, and clean it out to the compost pad. That is the pen that holds smell and runoff on a hill like this. Materials and ground run $2,300 to $6,400.
Pigs plow, and USDA rates this soil for grass or trees, not tilling. So keep pigs off the slopes. Moving them through the woods works on gentle ground. Guidance for livestock lots runs 2 to 4 percent, and only about 3 percent of the land in the 40-acre ring is under 5 percent. About a quarter is gentler than 15 percent, mostly on the ridge above the road and in the hollow bottoms, where the water is. If the plat shows gentle ground that is yours and well back from any channel, move them with electric netting, seed and straw each paddock the day they leave, and rest it a full season. The national sustainable-farming center, NCAT, warns that where erosion is significant, rest will not restore the topsoil, and that hogs can kill mature trees. Two or three pigs from April to October fit this pen, and the bedding composts over winter.
Room and fence, by animal
| Animal | Shelter | Yard or pasture | Fence | Water a day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goats | 8 to 15 sq ft each | 25 sq ft each in a dry lot, a yard with no grass; 2 to 4 an acre on fresh brush, then one an acre or fewer | 42 to 48 in. woven wire with 4 in. openings, or 5 electric strands | 2 gal |
| Pigs, growing | 5 to 6 sq ft of roof each | 100 sq ft each in a lot | Hog panels, or 3 electric strands with the lowest at 6 in. | 3 to 5 gal |
| Laying hens | 3 to 4 sq ft each | 10 sq ft each | Hardware cloth buried 12 in.; covered run | 9 gal per 100 |
| Ducks | 4 to 5 sq ft each | The larger the better | Night house as for hens. No published day fence; electric netting is the usual choice | Not published |
| Geese | About 15 sq ft each | 20 to 40 an acre on pasture | Night house as for hens. No published day fence; electric netting is the usual choice | Not published |
Extension and NRCS figures. Two notes are mine: the duck and goose day fence, and the 4 inch openings, chosen because Cornell warns that goats hang their heads in 6 inch ones. Georgia's NRCS specification asks six strands or more on a boundary fence of plain electric wire. Black bears live in these mountains; Georgia DNR suggests electric fence around chicken pens.
Keeping them alive
Worms
The barber pole worm is the main killer of goats in the humid Southeast. Rest goat ground between grazings, keep hay off the ground, and learn to check eyelid color. Ask Extension for a parasite plan before you add goats.
Separate pens, separate water
Goats that reach layer feed can bloat and die. Pigs kill poultry. Ducks and geese must dunk their whole bill, and they turn any shared drinker to mud. Give them their own tub, dumped daily onto stone that drains to grass.
Dogs, and the night
Langston University notes that a pack of dogs can kill 20 to 30 goats in one night. Goats in netting in the woods need a night pen or a guardian animal. Lock the birds in every night.
Netting
Electric netting can tangle and kill horned goats and kids when the power drops. Check the charge with a meter at every move. Thin dry soil grounds poorly, so use three ground rods or more.
Feed
Feed left out draws bears and rats. Georgia DNR: “Removing attractants is critical.” Keep it in latched metal, under a roof.
Sick birds
Keep wild birds out of the hens' feed and water. Keep one pair of boots for the bird pens. If birds die suddenly, call Extension or the Georgia Department of Agriculture before you handle them.
These six are common practice and my own judgment, not from the research behind the rest of this sheet. Ask the Pickens Extension office to check them against your animals.
Water and feed, by the week
The sliders start at my guess of your numbers. Set your own.
Water
- All animals, a day
- A week
- Thirstiest pen group, a day
- Barn roof yields a year
- That is the animals' need
Feed, about a week
- Hens, layer feed
- Goats, hay
- Pigs near market weight
Rules of thumb: a quarter pound a hen a day, 3.5 lb of hay a goat, 6 lb a finishing pig. Goat grain is not automated. Goats gorge, so grain is fed by hand. A covered hay rack is the goat's feeder.
Water: goats at 2 gallons, pigs at 5, hens at 9 per 100, from an NRCS table. Ducks and geese are set at 2.5 gallons each, my own figure, because no published one turned up and they splash out more than they drink. Measure yours. Roof yield is 4,171 sq ft times 58.65 inches of rain, with 15 percent lost.
Automate with no trench
Doors and feeders first, this month: timed coop doors, treadle feeders that open when a hen steps on the plate, a covered hay rack and latched metal feed bins.
Then water, and the barn makes it easy. Screw a tap timer onto the barn's spigot and a vacuum breaker onto the timer's outlet. Run a hose from there to an anti-siphon float valve on a tub at each pen group. The timer goes first because a screw-on breaker is not made to sit under pressure all day. Have the plumber check that backflow protection, and that the spigot is a frost-free one, before the hose goes on. The protection keeps tub water out of the house line. The timer opens the line for ten minutes or so twice a day, and each valve refills its tub then. So a stuck valve or a split hose spills tens of gallons, not thousands. Size each tub for two days of water; the calculator above gives the gallons. Stand each tub where a spill cannot reach a barn wall or the fill: at the pens' far edge until the engineer says where. Look in every tub at each chore. Ducks and geese keep their own small tub, dumped daily.
Three limits. Before a freeze, shut the spigot and take off the hose, the timer and the breaker, so the spigot drains. Anything left screwed on holds water in it and can split it. Carry water those mornings, and stay to watch the first time you open the spigot after a freeze. The well pump stops when the power does, so keep a day of water on hand in jugs. And until the trench is in, run no extension cords to the pens: fence chargers are solar, and coop doors run on batteries. All of it moves with the pens. This is project Y2, about $1,800.
The automation kit
| Piece | Unit price |
|---|---|
| Timed coop door | $140 to $190 |
| Treadle hen feeder | $70 to $90 |
| Covered gravity feeder | $39 to $280 |
| Float drinker, simple | $88 to $280 |
| Anti-siphon float valve | $19 to $28 |
| Goat netting, 82 to 100 ft roll | $95 to $98 |
| Frost-free yard hydrant | $243 to $341 |
| Frost-free stock drinker | about $1,300 |
Retail prices, October 2026. The frost-free drinker is the exception: no retail price turned up, and the figure is implied by a Pennsylvania NRCS payment rate.
The trench, when its turn comes
One short trench from the barn, which has water and power, to the pens, the pig pen and the compost pad. In it: a 1 inch water line, a power conduit, and a spare conduit with a pull string. A hydrant, a frost-free yard tap, at each stop. Have the electrician check that the barn's panel has room for the pen circuit, and the plumber that the barn's line can feed the drinkers. It buys water that does not freeze and power at the pens. The hose does the rest of the year without it.
Expect about 18 to 24 inches of cover here; a north Georgia county lists frost at 12 inches, and the electrical code asks for 18 inches over plastic conduit and 24 over direct-burial cable. Your plumber and inspector set the depths. Where the trench runs downhill it will carry water like a drain unless it is plugged: ask for clay or sandbag plugs every 25 to 50 ft, rolled backfill and a seeded mound over it. Bury a tracer wire with the water line and warning tape above the conduit, so the next locator can find them.
The power line needs a permit and an inspection before the trench is filled. Ask the electrician for weatherproof outlets with ground-fault protection, on their own circuit, at each pen group. Photograph every foot against a tape for your map, but photos do not replace the inspection. If you lay the pipe yourselves, do it from the edge; Sheet 7 has the rule for trenches.
Keep stock water out of your well
A trough on a float valve is tied to the water you drink. If pressure drops, trough water can be drawn back down the line. Fit an anti-siphon valve at every trough and a backflow preventer, a valve that lets water run one way only, where the stock line leaves the house supply. Have the plumber sign off on both. Until the trench is in, the vacuum breaker after the timer and the anti-siphon valves do that job for the hose, once the plumber has checked them.
Tank water and house water never share a pipe. And a frost-free hydrant drains only when it is shut with the hose pulled off. A drinker left on it under pressure will freeze and can split it. For water that runs unattended all winter, buy the frost-free drinker.
Goats as the brush crew
Each goat opens about a quarter to half an acre of brush in a season; the guides say two to four goats an acre to start, then one or fewer. So 12 goats need 3 to 6 acres of fresh brush each year, and hay for most of the year. The 1,500 ft of fence on the list encloses about 3 acres at most. Fence them with 42 inch electric netting and move them before they bark the trees you want.
Use them when the woods are in leaf. Mountain laurel and rhododendron stay green all winter, and NC State Extension lists both among plants that poison livestock, eaten most in early spring when little else is green. Walk each paddock first. Cut or fence out both, and carry the cuttings out; cut leaves stay poisonous. Keep goats off freshly mulched ground until the cut leaves have dried. Ask Extension about wild cherry and dog hobble too.
One earthwork crew, one trip. Every crew does a second job while it is here.
Each machine costs $200 to $1,000 or more to deliver before it turns a track, and every crew that bares soil has to cover it. So buy the work in packages, and get the side jobs done while the machine is on the place.
While each crew is here
| Crew | Its own job | What else it does on the same trip |
|---|---|---|
| Private locator | Buried lines past the meter | Pins every line on your map. Finds the septic tank lid. Traces the water and power from the house to the barn. |
| Backhoe, two hours | Test holes before the bids | Every bidder prices the same rock. It comes after the lines are marked, and it shows how deep the driveway's loose stone is. |
| Mulcher, one day | Brush the goats will not eat | The lines for goat netting. The fence lanes and the trail corridor too, but only once each has a signed NRCS contract or a written no, and the trail only after its line is re-drawn clear of the septic field. Clearing sooner may count as starting that work. Keep the machine off the ground held for the septic field. |
| Earthwork crew | Ditch, bank, driveway | Level ground for the pig pen and the compost pad. The buried roof lines. Sleeves under the drive before the stone. |
| Stone trucks | Driveway stone | Pads, outlets and the compost pad on the same order, by the full load. |
| Trench crew | Water and power | Plumber and electrician on the same day. A spare conduit while the trench is open. |
| Fence crew | Goat paddocks | Gates and corner posts for the pens. |
How to buy it
One page and this map
Give three bidders the same scope sheet and the same marked map. Walk the ground with each one. Paint and stakes before the machine unloads.
Price by the unit, and hold a tenth
Machine and operator by the hour with a ceiling. Walls by the square foot of face. Stone by the ton, with tickets. Excavators with operators ran $105 to $255 an hour on Atlanta-area guides this year. Drainage is proven by water, so keep 10 percent until the first hard rain has run through the new work.
Settle rock before it is found
USDA maps soft rock 10 to 20 inches down. Have test holes dug before the bids, and ask each bidder to name an hourly rate for rock. Rock that needs a hammer raises digging from a few dollars a yard to $50 or more. This is what the reserve is for.
Cover is in the contract
The crew that bares the soil covers it within 14 days, with seed, straw or blanket, and sets silt fence, a cloth barrier that stops mud, below the work. Topsoil is stripped and piled before any cut and spread back on the finished slopes. Stumps and brush are chipped or hauled; none is buried. Write all of it into the price.
Each crew calls 811
Three business days before it digs, every time. A request lasts 30 days. Hand tools only within 18 inches of a mark. Your private lines are on your own map, and the crew gets a copy.
Before you sign
A certificate of liability insurance and of workers' compensation, sent by the insurer. The state erosion-control card, Level 1A, which the county's permit form asks of the applicant. Two finished jobs you can go and look at.
Ask NRCS first
Fence, buried stock water, drinkers, stone pads for animals, barn gutters, trails and brush work are standard cost-share practices. I could not confirm which ones Georgia funds this year, at what rate, or whether a place with no farm sales yet qualifies. So ask. Work begun before a contract is approved is not paid, and clearing a fence line or a trail corridor may count as beginning. Ask too when contracts from this round are usually signed; if that is after your earthwork date, the held rows wait a season.
The rows marked Hold on Sheet 4 are worth that wait: the trench, the waterers, the long fence and the trail. Each takes no money on the list until you release it in its own row: when its contract is signed, when NRCS says no in writing, or when you choose to go without. A yes with no contract is still a hold. The rows marked Ask are small: the barn gutters, the buried roof lines, the pig pen, the compost pad, the pen fixes, the mulcher day, the meadow, the tiers, the roof tanks. If NRCS says one could be paid, wait for it or go ahead without, on purpose. The bank, the driveway and the house yard are house work. Do not expect cost-share on them. Veteran and beginning farmers may be eligible for rates up to 90 percent of NRCS's cost estimate.
Then set a date for the trench
The trench is short now, because the barn has water and power, and it ranks just above the bank. While it is on hold it takes no money. So set a date: the day you book the earthwork crew, with real bids in hand. If its contract is signed by then, or NRCS has said no in writing, release the trench and the waterers in their rows on Sheet 4. At middle prices they come to about $13,000 and are then paid ahead of the bank package, which falls $10,900 short. At those prices the money does not reach both.
The two score within a point. That is a tie, and the bank costs more to leave for a year. So I would keep the ditch and the bank first, and dig the trench on the same trip only if the bids leave room for both. If the contract is not signed by then, leave the trench on hold or go without on purpose. Digging before a contract gives up cost-share on the trench. Digging later costs a second machine delivery.
Free help to call first
NRCS writes a conservation plan at no charge for land it serves. UGA Extension in Pickens County tests soil, names weeds and advises on animals. The Georgia Forestry Commission writes a forest management plan free. Ask the tax assessor whether the land is under a conservation-use covenant, a ten-year promise to keep land in farm or forest in return for lower taxes, and what it allows. If you will sell farm products, ask about the sales-tax card that $5,000 of yearly farm sales earns.
Do yourselves
Seed, straw and blankets on ground you can stand on. Pens, netting, feeders and coop doors. The hose, tap timer and float valves, after the plumber's check. Surface pipe from the barn's downspouts. Pipe and conduit, laid from the edge of an open trench. Cutting up wood that is already on the ground, with chaps, a helmet and a second adult there. Upkeep you can do from the drive or a path.
Hire
All machine work on ground steeper than 15 percent, whatever the size of the machine. Tree felling and clearing. Gutters, and anything else done from a ladder. Any wall. Anything that connects to power. The drone survey, the engineers and the grading plan.
Six ways this ground hurts people
Machines on slopes
On the 2019 ground all but 2 percent of your yard was steeper than 15 percent. That is the most the Forest Service advises for a side-by-side off a built trail, and NRCS asks for 5 to 1, or 20 percent, where farm equipment is to work safely. Leave machine work here to insured crews.
Trees
Felling on a slope kills experienced people. Hire an insured tree or logging crew for any tree thicker than your leg, any leaner, and anything near a building, a line or the road. Family saw work is wood already on the ground.
Mowing
Georgia's 3 to 1 figure is a design limit for banks. It is not a rating for your mower. The mower's manual gives its limit, and it is likely gentler than most of this hill. Keep riding machines off the back slope altogether: nearly all of it is steeper than 15 percent, and a third is steeper than 25. Cut it on foot with a brush cutter. Graze only ground with no septic field under it.
Trenches
Lay pipe from the edge. Nobody climbs into a trench deeper than their waist unless its sides are sloped back or shored. OSHA makes that the rule for crews at 5 ft, and sooner if the walls show signs of giving way.
Ladders and wires
Barn gutters mean ladder work over ground that falls away. That is a job for an installer with the right gear. Look up for power lines before a ladder, a dump truck or an excavator's arm goes up.
Children, visitors and water
Trenches are fenced or filled the same day. Tanks and troughs are lidded or shallow. Children stay out of the pig pen and off any ground where a machine is working. Electric fence is switched off before anyone handles it. No extension cords to the pens.
Permits, and the one-acre line
| Ground cleared or graded | Sq ft |
|---|---|
| Bank above the driveway, and the ditch along its top | 10,140 |
| Driveway and parking court, reshaped in place | 6,500 |
| Level yard by the house, with its wall and banks | 3,150 |
| Slope beside the barn | 3,000 |
| Utility trench, 200 ft at 6 ft | 1,200 |
| Roof-water pipe runs and outlets | 1,100 |
| Pig pen and compost pad, with their banks | 1,400 |
| Pipe at the entrance and its outlet | 400 |
| House and barn | 26,890 · 0.62 acre |
| Walking trail, 1,089 ft at 10 ft | 10,890 |
| Four turn landings | 1,200 |
| With the walking trail | 38,980 · 0.89 acre |
| Farmyard ground, cleared | 17,600 |
| Lane to the farmyard | 1,410 |
| With ground for a farmyard | 57,990 · 1.33 acre |
Pickens County requires a land-disturbance permit before more than one acre is disturbed, with plans by a designer the state has certified. Georgia's stormwater permit for construction starts at one acre too. Both count a small job as part of the larger plan it belongs to, and this page is one plan. A permit adds a certified plan, a state notice, inspections and fees. I did not price them.
State law exempts farm work such as pasture, livestock yards and farm buildings. It exempts forestry, and work done under NRCS supervision. Those may cover the farmyard, the fence and the trail. They are unlikely to cover the bank, the drive or the yard, which is work at a house. On this count the house work stays under an acre, and clearing for a farmyard is what takes the plan past it. The count is rough, and the call is the county's, not mine.
Ask Pickens in writing before the crew is booked, once the bare banks are covered. Sheet 1 lists the questions. Ask your builder too whether final cover was part of the house permit.
Six steps for every project, 20 minutes every Sunday.
The same loop runs a $200 gate and a $12,000 driveway. This page ranks the list and keeps the settings you agree on. Notion holds the day-to-day. The map lives in Google Earth.
- CatchOne inbox. A photo, a place, one line. Anyone can add.Passes when it has a zone.
- FrameWrite the outcome: when this is done, who can do what.Passes when it serves a sentence of the picture.
- RankThree ratings, a cost range, and what it needs first. Notion scores it at once. For its place in the full order, ask me to re-run the rule.Passes when its groundwork is done.
- ScopeOne page: sketch on the map, quantities, who, price, test for done, and where its water goes.Passes with money assigned, lines located, permit answered.
- BuildIn crews. Photos before backfill. Changes in writing.Passes when it meets its test after a hard rain.
- KeepBuried lines on the map. Upkeep on the calendar.Closed only when the task exists.
The rhythm
- Sunday, 20 minutes. What moved. What is stuck. What is next. Nothing else.
- First Saturday. Walk the land with the map. After rain, look from the drive and the paths. New notes go in the inbox.
- Each quarter, and after every bid. Put the real prices in Notion, then ask me in our chat to re-run the list with them. Sheet 4 takes ratings, not prices. Re-rate it together, and check money against the plan.
- January. Reread the finished picture and plan the year.
Who decides
- Every project has one owner. The owner writes the test for done.
- A fair starting split: Bonnie holds the test for anything seen from the house or in the daily chore round. Drew holds contractors, buried lines and the money log.
- Any spend over a set amount needs both of you. Pick the amount once.
- The reserve is spent only on surprises, by both of you. What is left when the digging is done goes back to the list.
Notion, set up for two
Notion is the right home for the list. It does linked lists, boards and phones well. It does not do maps, so each project carries a place name that matches a pin in Google Earth.
One thing it cannot do is the ranking. The rule takes the best package, then re-ranks what is left, and a Notion formula cannot loop like that. So Notion stores the rank and the status as plain fields, copied from Sheet 4. That keeps one order in both places. A new project or a real price does not reach Sheet 4 by itself. Put it in Notion and ask me in our chat to re-run the rule: I read the Projects list, run the same rule, and write the new ranks back.
This page keeps its own settings. When you are signed in, the ratings, weights, budget, reserve, pens choice and NRCS releases you set on Sheet 4 are saved with the page. Share the page with Bonnie and she sees the list as you set it. Invite her as a contributor or an editor and she can change it too. As a viewer she can try changes, but they are not saved.
| Database | What it holds | Key fields |
|---|---|---|
| Projects | The ranked list on Sheet 4 | Rank, Status, Paid for, Zone, Layer, Crew, Owner, Risk, Daily life, Payback, Cost low and high, Needs first, Ready, NRCS, Window, Outcome, Test for done, Where its water goes |
| Money | Every quote, commitment and payment | Date, Project, Who, Kind, Amount. Projects add these up against the budget. |
| People and bids | Contractors, agencies, suppliers | Trade, phone, unit prices, insurance on file, how it went |
| Upkeep | Recurring tasks, born from finished projects | Task, Zone, Month, Every, Last done, Next due, Owner |
| Field notes | The inbox | Photo, Where, Note, Became project |
Four formulas for the Projects database
Benefit
(3 * prop("Risk") + 3 * prop("Daily life") + 2 * prop("Payback")) / 8
Cost points
let(mid, (prop("Cost low") + prop("Cost high")) / 2,
if(mid <= 500, 1, round(1 + log2(mid / 500), 2)))
Own score
round(20 * prop("Benefit") / prop("Cost points"), 1)
Ready
every(prop("Needs first"), current.prop("Status") == "Done")
Needs first is a link from Projects to itself. These show each project's own score beside the Rank you type in, and tick Ready when its groundwork is done. They use functions from Notion's published list but have not been run in your workspace. I can build the databases and test them there.
Views to build
- Bonnie's board. Cards by status, photo on the card, phone first.
- Ranked. By Rank, with the money line marked.
- Ready now. Ready is ticked and Status is not Done.
- By crew. What goes in each bid package.
- Calendar. Windows and seed dates.
- Due this month. Upkeep only.
On the Free plan, keep one owner and invite the other as a guest on the Farm page. Two owners on Free meet a 1,000 block cap. Plus is $10 a member a month.
The map side
Google Earth
Keep using it. The file that comes with this page opens in it: your terrain layers, the trail line, the two water paths, the three patches, the ground held for the septic field, three pins to check and one to drag. Google stops offering the Pro desktop download in June 2027; installed copies keep working, and the web and phone versions open the same file.
A parcel app for the walk
onX Hunt shows parcel lines and your position for $34.99 a year in one state. Use it to walk the boundary once the plat is in hand.
CalTopo for trail work
It shades slope angle from the same lidar used here and lets two people edit one map. Good for flagging trail lines.
Where each number came from, and how far to trust it.
Measured for this plan
- Elevation: USGS 3DEP 1 m DEM, project GA_Statewide_2018_B18_DRRA, flown through April 2019. USGS 3DEP
- Cross-check: Cherokee County 2023 one-foot contours. Cherokee County GIS
- Photo: Esri World Imagery, source date October 10, 2025. Google Earth Pro historical imagery, viewed on your computer.
- County: U.S. Census geocoder places the address in Pickens County. Census geocoder
- Streams and watershed: USGS National Hydrography Dataset and Watershed Boundary Dataset, unit 031501040404.
- Rain: NOAA Atlas 14 at the site; NOAA 1991 to 2020 normals, Jasper 1 NNW.
- Soil: USDA soil survey GA622, Cherokee, Gilmer and Pickens Counties, read through Soil Data Access with data dated August 31, 2026; the same data is on Web Soil Survey. Series description: Tallapoosa.
- Slope uses the standard 3 by 3 method on the lidar, lightly smoothed. Water paths are computed flow lines on the natural ground.
- The trail line, the farmyard scores, the count of ground on Sheet 7, the driveway and road profiles and the distances to water paths are computed from the same lidar by fixed rules, described on Sheets 5, 6 and 7.
Rules and standards
- Georgia Field Manual for Erosion and Sediment Control, 2016 and the Manual, chapter 6: cover within 14 days of disturbance, erosion blankets past 3 to 1, 2 to 1 cut and fill, seed tables.
- Georgia Erosion and Sedimentation Act, O.C.G.A. 12-7-6 and 12-7-17: buffers and exemptions. Dawson County's summary of the exemptions.
- Georgia EPD: trout stream designations, 2014; field guide to state waters that need a buffer; construction stormwater permits.
- Pickens County: Residential Guidelines, Access Encroachment Guidelines, Planning and Development.
- USFS Trail Construction and Maintenance Notebook: grade, the half rule, tilt, dips and turns. USFS trail design parameters: tread and turn radius by kind of use. USFS UTV tech tip: 15 percent off the trail.
- NRCS practice standards 560 Access Road, 575 Trails, 600 Terrace, 362 Diversion, 561 Heavy Use Area.
- Georgia's Best Management Practices for Forestry: road grades. O.C.G.A. 12-6-24: notice when timber is cut for delivery to a mill or wood yard.
- FHWA Gravel Roads Construction and Maintenance Guide: fines, and why loose stone stays loose.
- O.C.G.A. 12-5-134: 100 ft between a well and an animal enclosure, and wells protected from surface runoff. Georgia 811 guide: notice, ticket life, hand-dig zone.
- OSHA 29 CFR 1926.652: protection in trenches. Georgia amendments to the residential code; the 4 ft wall exemption is International Residential Code R105.2. Spacing of stacked walls: Allan Block tech sheet, a wall maker's guide.
- North Carolina's erosion manual, and Georgia's 2002 field manual: straw at about 2 tons an acre over seed. Georgia's current manual gives a depth only.
Programs and tools
- NRCS Georgia, October 9 batching deadline; how to apply; 7 CFR 1466.8, work begun before approval; 7 CFR 1466.23, payment rates.
- NRCS Georgia directory: the Calhoun Field Office serves Pickens and Cherokee Counties. State office.
- Notion pricing, block limits and formula functions.
- Google Earth versions: Pro desktop download ends June 25, 2027.
- Taxes: conservation-use covenant, O.C.G.A. 48-5-7.4; Georgia farm sales-tax card.
- onX Hunt; CalTopo.
Animals
- Goats: Langston University, NCAT ATTRA. Poisonous plants: NC State Extension.
- Pigs: NCAT, Hogs: Pastured or Forested Production; NCAT, Hooped Shelters for Hogs, for deep bedding; swine facilities on pasture.
- Poultry: eXtension space allowances and predator management.
- Water: NRCS North Carolina 614 table; Ritchie install guide. Mud and lot slope: Clemson.
- Manure: Georgia rule 40-13-8, 200 ft from the boundary and 35 ft of grass. Goat fence mesh: Cornell.
- Bears: Georgia DNR.
Costs, and how far to trust them
Each project's range is a build-up: quantities taken from the map where they can be measured, times published unit costs. Open any row on Sheet 4 to see its lines. They are planning figures, not quotes. If every project on the list as it starts, with the pens staying, came in at the low end, it would cost $70,900; at the high end, $262,600. A move of the pens adds $10,400 to $28,300 for tiers and a rebuild, and takes the $1,100 to $4,500 of pen fixes off. That spread is the honest state of knowledge before a plan and three bids.
Unit costs come mostly from national cost guides (HomeGuide, Angi, HomeAdvisor) dated 2025 and 2026, with Georgia anchors where they exist: a June 2026 Columbus stone bid, Atlanta-area excavation rates, north Georgia stone dealers, and retail prices from Tractor Supply and Premier 1. Prices for placed rock, straw, seeding and erosion blanket come from North Carolina DOT bid tabs.
- Cost guides: retaining walls, forestry mulching, land clearing, excavation, gravel drives, drains, swales, Atlanta excavation, trenching, hydroseeding, woven wire, culverts, machine delivery, drone surveys, landscape architects, land surveys.
- Public bids and schedules: Columbus, Georgia stone bid; NCDOT bid tabs for blankets, straw and seeding and placed rock; NRCS payment lists for West Virginia and Pennsylvania, FY2026, used where Georgia's would not load.
- Stone dealers and retail: stone at Ball Ground and Jasper, road fabric, Tractor Supply, Premier 1, ChickenGuard, Woodford hydrants. Soil tests: UGA lab.
Where no published price turned up, the line is marked “my allowance” on its row. On that starting list those lines add up to $48,000 at middle prices, about 29 percent of it. The largest are the long fence, the yard finish, the roof tanks, the grading plan and the trench's pipe and wire. Three more prices are built from published figures by my own arithmetic and are not marked: the wall, seeding on slopes, and the machine day. Their lines carry another $59,000.
The weakest numbers are the bank above the driveway, walls on steep ground, earthwork by the machine day, the grading plan and the trench. The wall price takes the guides' boulder-wall range and adds half at the top for rocky ground, as one guide advises; Atlanta's average for all natural stone walls is $60 a square foot. Seeding on slopes runs from a North Carolina road bid to twice a guide's flat-ground price. The trench is priced at the published rate for hard ground. Three local bids will replace all of them.
Not priced on the list
- A new boundary survey, if the plat's corners cannot be found. One guide puts 25 acres at $2,000 to $5,000 and 50 acres at $5,000 to $7,000, more on steep wooded ground.
- The permit path past one acre: a certified plan, a state notice, inspections and fees.
- A barn fix beyond the placeholder, if the engineer finds the slope moving.
- Grading at the house wall, if the plan finds water standing against it.
- A trail for wheels: walled turns and 150 to 200 tons of stone.
- Hay storage, winter water heating, and the animals themselves.
- A second machine delivery, if the trench or the trail comes after the earthwork crew has gone.
My own reasoning, to check on the ground
- The reading of Bonnie's complaints as one unfinished job. I have not stood on the place.
- The ratings on Sheet 4. They are a first pass.
- The trail line, the choice of a walking trail over a road, the ground each takes, and the bank and dirt arithmetic in the calculator.
- The rule that screens farmyard ground, and the scores on Sheet 6.
- The deep-bedded pig pen, the six cards under “Keeping them alive”, the feed rules of thumb, and 2.5 gallons a day for a duck or goose.
- The cautions on fill, trench plugs, tracer wire, ground rods and water tanks, the clean cut edge, the size of the reserve, and the wet and dry seasons for earthwork.
- The barn's surface roof pipe and the slotted pipe that spreads its water: a stopgap of my own design. The engineer marks where it ends.
- The hold on the first 200 ft of slope behind the house. It stands in for a septic drawing I have not seen.
- The hose, tap timer and float valves for automatic water: the timer first, the breaker after it, tubs that hold two days, and the freeze drill. Have the plumber check the backflow protection before the hose goes on.
- The three fixes for pens that stay, and their price. The plan and the engineer place them.
- No manure or compost on the garden bed beside the well. The law names animal pens, not garden beds; the caution is mine.
- The advice at a tie: pay first whatever costs more to leave for a year. The page compares the highest risk rating on each side.
- That barn gutters can be cost-shared. NRCS has a national practice for them, roof runoff structure, number 558. I did not find Georgia's terms for it.
- The 12 ft of drop for gravity water, which comes from the 5 psi minimum on two makers' waterers.
What I could not confirm
- Whether a place with no farm sales yet qualifies for EQIP, which practices Georgia funds for 2027, and at what rates. Georgia's payment schedule would not load.
- Pickens County's rules on retaining walls, timber notice, zoning for pigs and open burning, and its frost depth.
- Who keeps Hidden Cove Drive, and whether a pipe already lies under your entrance.
- Which side of the barn and which corners of the house you meant by right and left. I read the pens as east of the barn, away from the house; the well as the front corner on the entrance side; the septic tank as the back corner on the barn side. That is right and left as they fall on a map with north up. The pins in the Google Earth file and the marks on the Sheet 2 map show that reading. One conclusion turns on it: with the well at the other front corner, the court side of the barn is about 69 ft from it, inside the 100 ft rule. The hold behind the house, the table of the barn's four sides and the engineer's questions stand under either reading. Tell me if mine is wrong.
- The distance from the well casing to anything. I measured from the house corner you named, so every well distance here can be off by the casing's distance from that corner. Tape it.
- Where the drain field runs, and where the pig pen and the compost pad will stand. The plan places them after the pens test.
- The trout class of Fourmile Creek on the state's current list.
- A slope rating for riding mowers. No maker's figure was found, so the page leans on NRCS design slopes.
- Whether the Calhoun office staff and number are current. The directory is not this year's.
- Web searching ran out partway through the research, so the last items were checked by reading known pages directly.
How this page was checked
- Six review passes by separate AI reviewers that were given the page and the data, not my reasoning. The second found four safety gaps and about 60 smaller faults. The third found two more safety gaps that my fixes had let in. The fourth found five faults of order and wording, two of them about safety. The fifth found that the barn's roof-pipe stopgap ran ahead of the engineer, and seven smaller faults. The sixth read the October 9 changes. It found the hose's backflow guard fitted where it is not made to sit, a freeze drill that could split the barn's spigot, an NRCS switch that a plain yes could flip, and a well test passed on a reading of left and right I had not confirmed, with eleven smaller faults. I fixed what each found. The fixes made after the sixth pass were checked by me and by the page's own tests, not by another reviewer.
- No engineer, conservationist or extension agent has seen this page. None of it replaces walking the ground.
- The ranking code on this page is tested against a separate script on 300 settings. On October 9 I found that the test's own generator of settings was lopsided: its coin flips were not fair, so some combinations were barely tried. I replaced it and ran the comparison again.
- Measured numbers are filled in from the computed files, or checked against them when the page is built.