One of the problems I face with finding a home is the life I love is literally miles from nowhere. I spend so much time wilderness camping where often the nearest house is five miles or further away – and sometimes further. Usually the same is true with other campsites – miles away.
There is just very few places anywhere near the city that is like the life I spend up in the wilderness. Places where I can burn stuff and shoot as much as my heart desires without any neighbors nearby. Where I don’t have to think about how much noise or smoke I create.
It just seems like every house and land you look at is nearby another house, anywhere near the city. Maybe country lots are slightly larger than your typical suburban and urban lot but not by much. There is some half decent places but they’re all on the border of too far to reasonably commute on a daily basis.
The truth is that I need to look west where there is more land and things are more spread out. But that is going to take a complete reboot of my life, starting from scratch and that isn’t easy either. And it’s damn scary too.
Tankless water heaters have long been a go-to for off-grid properties. They quickly turn propane into hot water, which is good. But I'm wondering about the pros of cons with solar and even batteries being so inexpensive these days - compared to a heat pump water heater or even a conventional water heater. Water heating is pretty energy intensive, but if you can do it with solar, it's one less thing to bring on the homestead. Not to mention the possibilities of traditional water heating using a solar collector, as has been popular with eco-conscious families and homesteads since the 1970s, though there yo uhave
I think my dream house or cabin would be as small as possible. As a single guy, I don’t need a lot of space, just room enough for a small table, a place to put a futon-style bed, a dresser, some room to hang clothes, have a stove and sink, a small propane heated shower, and a toilet or shitter bucket to take out to the outhouse.
I don’t really want or need a lot of space, because the more space you have, the more you need to clean. More space means more need for heating, more need for lighting and more room for stuff that will break. Fewer things, mean fewer things to fail and break and a simpler world to live in.
I look at horror with marble countertops and fancy carpets. So many things to break and fail. So many things I don’t think add much value to life. I don’t like complicated wiring or all that technology – especially nowadays when you can do almost everything on your laptop. I do like the big screen and a standalone keyboard but those aren’t something that take a lot of room. I doubt I’ll ever want internet at home, except maybe through my Smartphone.
On Friday I went into the office rather than work from home with it being a cold and rainy day. I realize some days are going to be that way, but still it’s tough to be stuck at home in my relatively small apartment with not a lot of places to get up and stretch my legs. From a cleaning and maintenance perspective my apartment is too big, and indeed when I own my off-grid property I think I would want something smaller.
As a raw number, 500 square feet sounds big but it’s just 5 foot by 10 ft, in one direction too small for me to lay down. 750 ft is bigger than that, 7.5 ft by 10 ft but hardly expansive space. Even 1,000 ft is considered a tiny house by modern standards. But small is nice as it means less space to clean, less space to heat, and less room for clutter. If it can’t fit inside, it can fit in the burn barrel, the compost heap, the dead pit, the scrap metal pile or the landfill. There is just too much stuff in this world and industry is always pushing more on us.
If I had my way, I’d probably have a single room cabin which by definition is easy to clean, heat and maintain with no internal walls. Just room for a bed, a propane range and and oven, small refrigerator, woodstove, small wooden table and maybe my old rocking chair. A gun rack on the wall, a place for the solar batteries and maybe a dresser. And nothing more. A chest freezer for meat I’ve harvested is best stored outside in a shed with electric fence. Don’t need anything more. I’d rather do my business in a outhouse or external building incinerator privy with quick on propane heater, and likewise the same for showering. Keep the moisture and smells outdoors.
Space for stuff isn’t the issue. It’s space for stretching my legs on particularly cold and wet days that are inevitable in the woods. Wet days in the truck camper as claustrophobic, as the screen tent or under a tarp. I just like to have space to walk around indoors. Even my apartment seems too small to be cooped up all day. Maybe I’m just spoiled by downtown office hooked up to the Empire State Plaza and the half mile plus of tunnels. But I guess on a homestead there is always animals to feed and wood to split even on a rainy day.
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 spend too much downtime flipping through the Land and Farm website, which markets hunting camps, farm land, off-grid properties, and other rural lands. It’s kind of a fun hobby to have as it doesn’t cost anything but the unlimited mobile bandwidth I currently have and is a good reminder that the money I save and invest today will have benefits tomorrow. I have some thoughts what the land would like and ads I’m most interested in. I’m not buying this week or next, but it lets me know what’s out there and what I could reasonably afford eventually.
Generally the properties I’ve been looking at have been priced between $200k – $250k. I picked that amount as I think based on what I’ve saved and what I project to save, that gives me the ability to buy with cash plus have money to make repairs and address my significantly lower income when I move to rural area where fewer good-paying jobs are available.
I am interested in properties that are roughly 50 acres give and take, with the value of land being roughly 2/3rd of the value of property. I am most interested in properties that have small cabins, shed-to-homes or even mobile trailers on them, because it means the majority of my investment goes into the land, not the home or barn itself, which for me is far less important.
I would probably want to live at least 15-20 minutes outside of a small town, maybe 30-40 minutes from a bigger city, just so I don’t have to deal with suburban houses being built nearby and increasing codes and regulation as time goes by of my land and hobby farm operation.
I am attracted particularly to land that needs work — land where invasive species have taken over, the soil degraded, run-off or a certain amount of dumping and debris exists on it and needs to clean up. These aspects will help reduce the cost of land, but also provide an enjoyable project to work on restoring the land using goats, pigs, fire and heavy equipment to clean and restore the land.
I like the idea of either having diverse habitats on the land or rebuilding them. For example, areas that are mature forest for timber production, some that are brushy lands, some that are meadows for grazing animals. Maybe a wetland and small pond. This will bring in wildlife for hunting and trapping, and provide for interesting wildlife and bird observation.
I want to have buffer from neighboring residential properties. I like the idea of having livestock, a gun-range in my backyard, and being able to burn trash and debris. But I don’t want to smell my neighbor’s pig pen and horny buck goat or smoldering burn barrel for endless hours while I’m trying to enjoy some fresh air outside.
I don’t want to have to worry about keeping the noise down, or being too close to neighbors to shoot my guns whenever I want.
I really like the idea of being off-grid — for the simplicity and self-reliance nature of it. I like if I have a problem with my electric supply, I can fix a fuse or replace a broken component. I don’t want to have to worry about my power going out. I want to keep the system simple enough that I can repair it myself. I want simple plumbing, so if I have issues I can fix them myself, and safely process and dispose of wastes on site, in ways that aren’t polluting the environment but returning them back to nature.
