Your experience homesteading in South Carolina?

We are once again on the hunt for some land and are considering South Carolina as one of the handfuls of states we consider moving to. Plan to start small 4-10 acres. Within 40 ish minutes of hospital, as my career is in healthcare. What has been your experience? Land prices? Any recommendations on counties who are homesteader friendly? Or like minded areas? Or conversely, areas to definitely avoid?

Thanks!

Hi Heather, are you on Facebook? There are a couple of good SC Permaculture groups on there that could be really helpful. While I'm in SC, I mostly stick to my own area and can't recommend where to buy or where to avoid. My local community is growing by leaps and bounds with lots of housing developments, so acreage is getting snatched up, but there is still some open land here. Lots of farmer's markets, gardeners, permaculturists, and such if you look hard enough.

Unfortunately (arguable) I am not on social media. Pros and cons to this of course. Definitely looking for community wherever we move. I can tell by land searches and browsing Craigslist that general farming/homestead areas seem popular in the midlands (Lexington, Richland, and surrounding counties). But would also need to work in hospital within 35 mins or so. Moving is so daunting when in new area. Land seems pretty affordable though.

Hello!! We moved to Union County, SC from Chicago about 9 months ago and it was the best idea we could have had— after looking at about 4 different states to move to SC won our hearts and the property has been coming along wonderfully, we’re very excited to watch our first full spring bloom around us on our 6 acres.

The current project list is rather expansive but locally we’ve found wonderful sources for chickens, ducks, rabbits and fruit trees/plants.

We haven’t ventured into goats/sheep/zebu/cows just yet but have seen a healthy amount of people selling these animals not too far from us.

We are less than 2 hours from Charlotte and the Greenville Hospital is roughly an hour from us.

As far as other locals having an interest in permaculture I can’t really say I’ve found anyone but there is a pretty healthy agricultural community in the upstate SC area for sure.

One major perk I really like about SC is that any homeowner has the legal right to get permits to do any work they please on they’re property without a contractor. This means if you’re outside of city limits you can do most any building or work on your property that you want.

Land is apparently slowly becoming more scarce in our area as a lot of locals own empty land that they aren’t willing to sell because developers are trying to build all over out here.

I’d be happy to answer any questions you have about Union County or our experience so far.

Hey thanks so much for replying! Yes I’m noticing there seems to be quite a bit of land in SC with varying price ranges. I love everything you’ve said so far! Our goal is not to be too far from a hospital (also because I work in healthcare) but with enough space to be more self sufficient and hopefully one day start a CSA, maybe more. HOAs are out. I wonder if any of the local people would be willing to sell if they knew one was buying for these purposes and not to be developed. I’m very much against development myself. I don’t necessarily need neighbors who practice perm; I haven’t had the privilege of affording a PDC either. But definitely prefer not to live on a plot surrounded by heavily sprayed/fertilized farms. We see that a lot here in OH. Are there many of those? What have you noticed as far as other policies (county or otherwise) that encourage this type of lifestyle/freedom, if anything? For example TN is another state we’re looking into and from what I can tell, they encourage homesteading openly. Thank you for your time! I’m very happy for y’all!

Local folks general seem pretty skeptical when it comes to selling land in general-- BUT! Here's what we did; we checked everyday over about a 300 mile radius throughout upstate SC, the first two houses sold out from under us very quickly and one of them the buyer offered $1,000 over asking price and "as is"... it's risky, but it worked out for them as far as I know.

So the next property we spotted an hour after it was placed on the market and it had everything we had wanted and much more-- and by the photos it looked to be very well put together and maintained. The next day we had a realtor walking through it with us on a video-call and made the $1,000-over "as-is" immediately and we got it.

There really are minimal crop-farmers out this way which also makes buying used tractor prices a bit higher but no, I don't see much of any spraying fertilizing. We looked at Tennessee as well but had our reasons for picking SC, one of which is that we are only a few hours from the beach.

I would say look on the outskirts and around Anderson, Greenville and Spartenburg. All of those cities have good potential for hospital employment and have great potential homestead/permaculture land surrounding them not too far.

We are out in the countryside really and yet Walmart, a nursery, two lumber stores and Tractor Supply are  10 miles / 11 minutes away... 10 miles doesn't seem all that far when your country roads have 55 mph speed limits (well, no speed limits posted)

And around upstate SC, when you live outside of city limits, it would seem the county doesn't really care what you do. I've planned and started several projects and just being used to getting permits and having to check with regulations I have talked to multiple departments about digging and building and for the most part when I ask about this stuff county workers look at me like "so? it's your property, do what you want"

I've never lived where it was mostly clay in the ground, but I will say I am grateful it is. Granted it will take a few years to really get my land healthy and fertile, but clay is so darn handy for projects!

Hope this helps, good luck and may you flourish wherever you decide to drop roots!

As I said before, always available to answer questions