This design combines two themes I love a lot from Lego : the Castle theme, and the Farm (sub)-theme.

Fortified farms were a common thing in european middle-ages. Protecting a big farm with walls and towers allowed to defend isolated estates.

This makes them a perfect subject for a lego set, giving a very nice civilian building for the Castle theme, while maintaining a castle-like design for the fortifications.

I centered my design around the features I wanted to include, especially a barn with stables, a chicken coop, a central well, a main building with living spaces and a gate and tower closing the outside wall.

I chose the main color by exploring the parts I wanted to use in the available palette. I especially wanted to use 2x2x3 slopes for the bases of the walls, which lead to the use of dark grey. I added a lighter color for the inside walls, tan was an obvious choice. Finally, red was chosen for the roofs because it allowed to use the curved slopes for the angles (and it looks nice).

Finally, some details were decided on the go while designing the main structure, like the vegetable garden, the apple tree, teh chimney with logs and cooking pot, the bunk bed for the children of the farmer and the various plants and pond on the outside wall.

The roofs may look weird on the back wall, but I couldn't have some roof overhang from that side, or the building couldn't be opened. The opening was a feature I wanted to add from the start, inspired by the old castle sets.

Finally, the minfigurines selection was chosen to have a nice family of farmers living in the farm and a couple of knights visiting. I wished to add as many animals I could, because it is a very important feature for a farm set in my opinion: the knights have their horse, but so does the farmer, and he also have an ox, a rabbit, a bird in the ceiling and (of course) a frog in the pond. I really wanted to add chickens (which seemed to be a no brainer for a farm), and since the palette didn't allow it, I brick-built them!