We are 4 years into the process you describe, in NW New Mexico. We bought the
land 4+ years ago, and moved here from Wisconsin 2 years later, 2 years ago last July, immediately after retiring.
I spent every free moment of my last 2 years of working researching and planning.
We looked at all sorts of building styles/methods (Earthship, SIPs, containers, modular homes, earthbag, rammed earth, adobe, tire bales). If we were 30 years younger we'd probably make an earthbag house. We ended up building a tire bale house because it is vastly faster getting the basic walls up, and we have a landfill 7 miles away that gave us the tire bales. In those pre-retirement years we also did a lot of the groundwork for building, researching the permitting process for alternative materials, the tire recycling permitting process, etc. (We are building the first fully permitted tire bale home in New Mexico.) Our best resource for thae building methods is naturalbuildingblog.com and its sister sites. Tons of resources and info.
We looked at all sorts of info on growing in this environment (greening the desert, food forest, capturing water, greywater, etc). Brad Lancaster is great. Gary Nabhan is also an excellent resource and writes about many different aspects of foodways and conservation in the SW.
Art Ludwig's Greywater Oasis books are also must-haves if you want to do greywater.
We learned a ton, but there are so many things you can't really do until you are on site. The most important is to find community. We connected with the farmers' market organizations in the state and in our area, and the farmers at our little
local (30 miles away) market have been super supportive and encouraging. We connected with the local county extension and they put us in touch with other farmers with surplus sheep manure. We found local folks with earth moving equipment who could help us prep our site through word of mouth. We found our local landfill for tire bales. We found a local sawmill where we could get sawdust. We connected with food sovereignty organizations and initiatives in the Navajo Nation where we could
volunteer. Everyone has been just super.
Of
course covid happened 7 months after we got here which shut down that community building, so we are glad we got an early start in that area. As a silver lining, there were many virtual opportunities that we couldn't have taken advantage of if we had to travel to do them in person. I took master gardener training, we attended farm safety training and got certified to
sell produce through the New Mexico Grown program that gives grants to schools, senior centers, and early childhood centers. We got food handler certification so we can participate in New Mexico's new homemade food act. We took a soil regeneration international course, attended a beekeepers conference, farmers' market conferences, and continued work with a Diné food sovereignty policy initiative. Now that things have let up somewhat we were able to volunteer on a restoration
project making adobe bricks through the Cornerstones organization. That was basically a one-day
workshop on working with earth (for adobe, earth plaster, earth floors, etc) that others charge hundreds of dollars for.
Meanwhile, through covid lumber prices soared and all aspects of building slowed a bit (but not catastrophically). Everything in construction takes vastly longer than you think, whether you are hiring the work or doing it yourself, even when you try to be realistic and build in padding in the schedule. We are facing our third winter in our little popup tent camper with an outdoor kitchen under an EZ-up. We do have a
greenhouse and
chicken coop, an almost-finished house shell (meaning maybe 1/4 or 1/5 of our house is "done"), and 35
chickens.
The vast majority of what we have planted has failed (and we are experienced gardeners, at least in WI). This year we decided to put growing mostly on hold so we can focus on getting that house built. We spread ourselves too thin. Our local farmer and extension friends say it takes about three years to build up your soil. We are still making some progress on that front. We do have year-round cherry tomatoes in the
greenhouse and have had some luck with squash, peppers, and kiwano melons. We are hopeful for this year's tree collards, potatoes, and ginger. But I would say at least 90% of our seedlings have failed, so we stopped trying to replant until our house is further along. We do also have citrus and banana trees started in the greenhouse and a couple have started to minimally produce.
Now more specifically to your question on where to start. In hindsight, here's what I would do "next time."
If I knew where I wanted my gardens I would start early on with
berm & basin / contour swales for those areas to start slowing water for building up those areas. (If you aren't sure yet what your planned layout will be don't do that -- I wouldn't mess with the land until you know what you want where). Our land (140 acres) is almost all hilly (face of a mesa and part of the top but the top is very hard to access by road).
Find a manure source and apply manure to your planting areas. Go get mulch from a landfill for free and cover your (now flatter) plantng areas with a thick layer of mulch. This is all with an eye toward starting to build some life into the soil rather than struggling to grow food on depleted soil when you are really to busy to do it well (in our case).
I would also start a Johnson-Su bioreactor immediately (easy to google). It is a one-year composting process that you fill in one day, water daily, and harvest in a year to add microbiology to depleted soil. We started ours this spring so hope to apply it to our soils next spring, when hopefully we will have the bandwidth to give more attention to our soils. We filled ours with course sawdust (really they are small
wood chips), sheep manure, and
coffee grounds that we got for free from sources glad to be rid of them.
Start a worm bin or soldier fly larva composting, bokashi composting, or whatever works best for you for your general organic waste needs, to start creating quality
compost for future use.
Think hard about whether you really need a well. You might be able to catch all of your water instead of getting a well. We also have ~10" of rain per year, but now that our roof is on and guttered to the tanks we can catch 3000 gallons of water in a one-inch rainfall. (in our current camping lifestyle that is about 20 week's worth of water - of course we will hopefully
shower more often once we have a house!) You do need big enough tanks... Do your one-page place assessment and use Lancaster's tools to calculate needed collection area and required tank size. If you are serious about greywater and catchment (directly in the gardens and on the landscape as well as via the roof), maybe you can get by without a well.
We have designed dual plumbing for our house to separate greywater and black water. We are trying to get permitted to process our blackwater with a vermicomposting septic that produces irrigation water for landscape plants in place of a traditional drainfield. We have not yet guttered the chicken coop or greenhouse so we have a lot of harvesting potential there too.
Some of our info is on our blog,
brownkawa.com
Good luck to you!
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