In this episode, we talk about how we were able to get a great price on land that wasn't even on the market at the time. We explain in three steps how we looked for land, found land that met our criteria, and negotiated pricing while considering start up cost and natural resource revenue opportunities.
This Bush Radical video of his basic off-grid cabin is pretty neat. When I own land, I'd love to live the simple life like this.
Probably heading up to the Adirondacks to beat the summer heat plus the issue of fire insurance on the building next to my parents house sealed the deal of me not getting that property but I wanted to write down what seemed to be my concerns and the things I liked so I would have the list when considering future properties.
I’ve continued to think about country living and building my off grid homestead. Commuting sucks especially in the big city, as I’ve determined in the past two days when I drove to work – one day for the Pine Bush Hike and the other for heading out to Schoharie to camp.
It’s nice to get out of town, but I’ve come to realize that much of the nice of the really nice land is beyond sensible commuting distance. There is no reason to live in a suburban subdivision surrounded by corn fields that smells like cow shit. Commutes aren’t certainly a good reason to live out in the country.
Maybe for as long as I have to live in big city, focusing on making money, I should continue to live in the city where I can bike to work. Continue to research and plan my dream homestead, but realize it’s not compatible with living in New York or being within commuting distance of my work. It just isn’t possible to put together to incompatible views of my future.
Driving out to the Green Mountain National Forest via Sand Lake, there was a sign advertising 6 to 10 acre house sites. My parents have 8 acres where they live in Westerlo, and I think the town requires a least 3 acres for new home sites, to protect the rural character of the land, even if it ultimately is just promoting sprawl and McMansions with abandoned, farm fields reverting back to woods.
When I eventually move out to the country, I want to own enough land to be back from the road, have privacy, be able to shoot guns, have bonfires, heat wood, burn trash and debris, and listen to music as loud as I want to. I’m not into burning junk tires or super amplified music, but I do like have my freedom to do what I want with my land, and nobody knowing or caring. If I want to butcher a deer or hog in my backyard, so be it. I guess you could figure out far you have to be from the road to be screened, how far smoke travels, how loud your guns are. Obviously, you have to respect local laws on when you burn and how far you have to be from other people’s homes and barns to be shooting. But we all knows that sometimes smoke and noise travels farther then you would like, and that’s why it’s important to have the right kind of neighbors.
No matter how remote you live, there are always neighbors down the way. Many country folk don’t give a fuck about how other people live their life, to them it’s live and let live. Which is good. But it only takes one person to call the cops when they smell the wrong kind of smoke, or are bothered by noise of shooting or music. Rednecks are usually good neighbors while the nosy, moved out of the city in the fancy McMansion is the worse. But you never know, so having distance is important. And sometimes a reasonable person can get annoyed or change. Good people sometimes move out and bad people move in.
Livestock and wood are another consideration. Livestock can require quite a bit of land for forage and you often don’t want them penned up right next to your house, because especially cows can be quite noisy at night and hogs smell like hogs. Wood heat can require a good supply of firewood, especially with those outdoor wood boilers – but even fireplaces can burn through a lot in a cold winter. All considerations on how much land I would need to save up to buy. But those are easy to calculate – in contrast having decent neighbors who don’t make a fuss about nothing is far more important then having a lot of land.