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Good things come to those who wait ⏳️

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I am often reminded of back in 2009 and 2010 when I started looking at replacing my Ford Ranger with a bigger, newer truck. I decided to hold off a few more years and was able to get a nicer truck with more money saved, and relatively low prices due to do the recession. I had originally looked at getting a stripped down work truck or something used, but I decided to throw some more money at the Ford Ranger, and keep it on road for a few more years, despite pushing over 140k miles and needing more parts and repairs. But I ended up getting Big Red, and then lifting it with a 6-inch lift during the beginning of 2015.

I so want to buy a house, and I’ve been looking but I concede I don’t want to buy or build in New York State if I can avoid it due to the gun laws and burn ban. Plus most of the houses locally are your run of the mill, plastic-coated, vinyl-sided suburban houses with gas heat and grid-tied electricity on a tiny piece of land. There are a handful of rural houses that pop up on the market, but they are mostly a variation of the suburban house some in neighborhoods that smell like cow shit with a longer commute. But if I hold out for a bit longer until I’m 55, I know I can have something much better.

I’ve been watching how much battery, inverter and solar technology has improved over the past decade, and it’s truly remarkable. With advanced electronics and LiON batteries – it’s such a different world then old fashioned lead acid batteries and old-style MPPT controllers like Midnight Solar ones. It’s only going to get better and cheaper in the next decade. Combined with more money saved, I can build or rebuild really the ultimate off-grid homestead that I actually want, not some crap suburbanite-lite house with a big blue bin and grid-tied solar panels on the roof and Tesla Swastika-Car on driveway. I don’t have to stay in Albany or New York forever, if I don’t buy here but just focus making through age 55.

I grew up on 4.8 acres of land in Dormansville … 🚜

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Neighborhood I Grew Up

That probably seems like a lot to the city or village dweller, but it’s really not compared to many other parts of country. It means having neighbors nearby and having restrictions on your freedom as your neighbors are close enough to hear you shooting your guns, smell your livestock and burn barrel. Or smelling their hogs or poop-filled diapers in their trash fire. Or the pow-pow of their AR-15 or the roar of the pickup truck without a muffler.

When I own my own land, I want have more acreage, less house and material stuff and more freedom to do what I want on my land. Less of a chance to be a nuisance to them, or have to put up with their nuisances that come along with rural life and freedom to live one’s life as you should. Land is expensive, but the farther you are out in the country, the cheaper it is. And if you give up a nice house for a shed-to-cabin or a trailer, you can afford much more land that can provide a buffer from between you and the neighbors. Live and let live.

Dormansville

Thematic Map: Agriculture in New York
Map: Tug Hill State Forest (Inman Gulf Area)

Previously Used Lands Can Revert to Wilderness

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One of the claims sometimes made is that previously industrialized or man made landscapes can not ever be reversed into wilderness. It is claimed that once man touches a landscape, mines, farms, or timbers it surface, it can not ever revert back to a natural status.

Grown Up Farm Field

The reality is that is far from that.

Man made works, while remarkable, quickly start to fall down and revert back to a more natural status, quickly after abadonmnet. Certainly man is powerful, can move large mounds of earth, and bring materials from far away. Yet, as soon as man walks away, plants start to grow into cracks, water erodes roadways and causes buildings ot fall apart, and animals start to return to recolonize a land once dominated by man.

Fragmentation and private inholdings can make it more challenging for abandoned lands to revert back to wilderness. Any attempt by man to upkeep man’s works, will prolong their existence. Man can fight the natural forces through his active stewartship of his products, and through design, but he can not stop nature’s processes once underway, by simply standing on the sidelines.

Sun Filters Through Mountain House

Buildings make take decades to fall in and rot away in soil. The lost of old growth timber might take hundreds of years to be replaced. Eroded soils, rock cuts might take thousands if not million years to be disolved back into a truly natural state. Yet, still man’s battle against wilderness is only temporary at best, for once man takes his hand of wilderness, it only starts the long path into wildness once again.