Hiya mvandecar.

I'd like to make a suggestion. The first thing would involve dabbling in a little civil engineering to find your contour lines.

Once you find your contour lines, you'll see where you water flows on top and down that hill. This will slow the water under ground keeping it up on the hill a bit.
Yet, you must be careful and keep it away from the house so it doesn't
affect your foundation. These things were a learning curve for me, but becoming well worth the effort.

Finding the contour helps you discover the best places to put your permanent roots, like trees, shrubs
and other perennials. Keep your planting simple, tho. Make simple and small changes to avoid hazards (unless you're an engineer!)

You have a really good clean slate to work with. No matter what, I'd begin with a rough site plan. Start small or simple and make adjustments as you go.

Welcome.

i love those porches.We were hit by the May 20 tornado here in SW OKC and lost everything. My house has large porches around three sides.

i understand how daunting that blank canvas can be. I agree with chickencoupe, watch your drainage areas. I would suggest that you start this year with your trees, shrubs and hardscape. Be patient, add a few things each year you will be there before you know it.

its easy to,get caught up in doing to much at once, but it can be to much and mistakes will be made.mi tell you this from experience, I always get to much going at once.

If it were mine, I would spend my funds and time on fruit trees the first year and maybe a nice pecan on the west that will help to shade the house at maturity. Bon has a great idea on doing a little ground work first. It is hard to tell how much elevation you are dealing with, but a swale running around that hill with fruit trees below it would help to control possible erosion. Herbs would probably do great as it appears they would get plenty of sun.

I love the house and think it will make a lovely home.

My son had 4 raccoons hit his apple tree just about the time they were ready to pick. While they were there they managed to kill a couple of young chickens.

Thank you for all the input, a lot of information I hadn't even considered. I have started several things indoors that are currently destined for container gardening. We have deer, but also a cattle dog that runs loose, he seems to deter them somewhat. Fences to keep the pooch from the cool shade might be most important! I have been thinking a lot about fruit trees. Any opinions on dwarf fruit trees, too good to be true? Maturity at two years with good fruit production? What types of fruit trees do well in oklahoma? I'm also considering grapes, but debating if they're worth the hassle

Many people have success with dwarf fruit trees, though I think two years might be a bit optimistic. I'd expect a great harvest by the 3rd year (if the trees were planted from containers) or maybe by the fourth year (if they were planted from bare root trees). It depends on what kind of fruit it as though. Generally stone fruit produce earlier than pome fruit, in terms of age of the tree. I generally don't grow dwarf trees though (except my citrus trees which all are grown in containers, which has the effect of limiting their size), only semi-dwarf and full-sized ones.

The tree fruits that grow best for me in southern Oklahoma are peaches, plums, cherries and figs. One of my neighbors also grows apricots and nectarines and two other neighbors grow pie apples. Apples and pears require more spraying and maintenance than I want to do, but some people grow them here. They do tend to have more disease issues.

I don't grow grapes here, but we have tons of wild ones so I know I could. They do require well-drained soil and lots of pruning.

I'm going to link the OSU guide on growing fruit tree in the home garden. It is full of helpful information.

Fruit Trees in the Home Garden

One of the unfortunate things about growing edible plants is that you don't know what sort of wildlife pressure you'll have until you have the edible plants growing there to attract them. We have coyotes and other wild animals roaming at night in large numbers so our dogs sleep inside for safety, and that leaves our fruit trees at the mercy of the plentiful wildlife.

Carol, I hate raccoons. They are hard on the garden and hard on the poultry. We have a lot of poultry and we don't put up with raccoons being around. Of course, being surrounded by the Red River on three sides, we have far too many coons most years. We haven't had all that much trouble with them in the last couple of years, but I think that is because a bad outbreak of distemper (largely on the Texas side of the river, but it must have been here as well because their population is way down) really affected how many we have now. I'm not sorry that we are seeing fewer of them. They are vicious and we've lost so many chickens to them that we don't tolerate them being around at all any more.

We are raising baby chicks right now and Chris built us a new and much sturdier chicken brooder to keep them safe. We have Black Australorps whose wings are just beginning to feather out, and in early March we have another 70 chicks coming. Our current flock is ancient and we needed some new bloodlines in the mix. Chicks always seem to attract coons so we are watching out for those suckers.

Thank you for all the information and that link! That looks like an excellent place to start. We are getting ready to start with the chicken business ourselves. Going to build some chicken tractors and see how that works for us. We currently use rotational grazing with our cattle and thinking a similar tactic for the chickens, close to the house would be beneficial. Where do you get your chickens from?

You're welcome. There are many wonderful hatcheries. Country Hatchery is located right here in Oklahoma (in Wewoka). Cackle Hatchery (located in Missouri) is one that's shipping us chicks in few weeks, and Murray McMurray is another one we order from occasionally. Our son has ordered his meat chickens from them. You also can find chicks at local farm stores and feed & seed stores, sometimes as early as February but also in March down here in southern OK, and maybe even in April in more northern parts of the state where it warms up a bit later. Down here, the local Atwood's has chicks right now. In fact, they've had them a couple of weeks. I haven't been in a Tractor Supply Store or Orschlein's lately, so don't know if they have poultry yet but they do have them a bit closer to Easter. All things being equal, I prefer to buy locally as opposed to having them shipped, but sometimes if you are looking for breeds that are a little more rare, you have to order online. Sometimes the stores will have certain breeds as straight run, but you can get only pullets if you order online so we'll order online for that reason. We certainly don't need more roosters.