Hi all,
A few months ago I bought a 2.6 acre property 10 minutes outside of Leavenworth, WA in the eastern Cascade Mountain foothills, and I’m considering the idea of opening up the
land this spring-fall for others to live here in exchange for helping with building/growing this “homestead”.
I moved to this area 1.5 years ago after having traveled around the country for 2 years doing work trades and
WWOOFing on farms and homesteads. It was an awesome
experience, and I learned a lot. Now I’ve been extremely lucky to be able to buy this land, and amidst the daunting nature of trying to rehabilitate a piece of land and structures that were not given the most care, I am wondering if there might be a good fit for others to join me here seasonally to help with the process.
The weather here is a full 4 seasons (hot and dry reaching around 100F in summer, cold and snowy dropping typically to around 15-30F in winter) I think this would be a better option for the warmer months.
The property is within a canyon, although for this area it has good southern sun exposure, with winter sun rising over the east hill at about 830am and setting over the west hill at about 2:30pm. The property is adjacent to a 35mph road, which buffers the railroad line on the other side (luckily it’s on a turn so it goes about 35 mph with no honking). The other side of the property line is a year round creek that’s host to small fish, many birds,
deer, foxes, raccoons, mountain lion (haven’t seen those yet), and more. The land has mature walnut,
apple, pear, willow, cottonwood, pine, douglas fir, chokecherry, butter cherry, hawthorn, and birch
trees. I have ordered several nut and fruit trees/shrubs to plant in the spring, and a
local non
profit will hopefully be able to plant lots of
native plants around the land through a grant they received for riparian areas in this county. The land has a very good and powerful
energy about it and that was the main draw. This property was one of the first homesteads ever built in this area for year round living. The property has a 100 year old stud framed two story house with a rock and mortar basement. It teeters on the edge of something worth restoring or tearing down. There’s a double wide trailer that needs to be demolished and removed. There’s a few random outbuildings that were
chicken pens and little storage barns that have deteriorated. There’s currently one well, two septic systems, and power to both structures. The septics tanks some repair with the baffles, and the well is filtered for iron, which is common in the
wells around here. I use 5 gallon jugs for drinking
water that I fill up in town. I’ve dowsed the land and heard from previous owners that there’s likely a shallow
underground spring on the property that I’m very interested in exploring to see if I could get cleaner water.
My goal is to make at least two dwellings here that are comfortable, simple, economical, and use minimally toxic materials, although still not entirely sure if that means restoring what’s here and/or rebuilding on existing footprints. I’d like to grow food, store food, and leave this land better than I found it in terms of biodiversity and habitat for many species. I had a lot of wild dreams before buying this place about harvesting roundwood logs to build with, making all my own silverware from carved
wood, creating a food forest, raising sheep and other animals, having multiple passive
solar earthen buildings, etc. But upon moving in, working full time, and realizing the time and cost it takes to do everything, I’ve scaled back my goals a bit (for now).
I’m 27, living solo, my family lives a few hours from here, and I work as a land steward at an environmental education center and as the gardener for a food forest at a nearby resort. When not trying to build/grow this property or working, I'm typically playing sports, watching sports, thinking, reading, eating, or foraging.
I don’t have a set exchange in mind, or what the setup would be exactly, but I’m trying to open the idea of what it could look like. I’ve lived in intentional communities and other shared land type of communities and they all function a bit differently. For now, I think the best I could offer, and what I think would be the best benefit for others, would be to offer a place to stay on the land in exchange for your time helping with things. If someone had a van or trailer or some other type of mobile housing, I could provide land to stay on with access to power,!water, and bathrooms/composting toilets in exchange for a certain number of hours per week helping with projects. I would prefer people who feel inspired by this idea and have homesteading related skills, such as building, plumbing, electrical,
gardening, general labor, etc. I could envision people staying here for varying lengths of time, and since weather is most easily livable in the late spring thru early fall that would be the ideal window.
If this is of interest, please feel free to comment and provide feedback on how you think I could go about making this work. Even if you’re not particularly interested for yourself, I’d be curious if others have done similar setups on their land and how they navigated including other people to help and share. I am not for sure yet that this is something I’ll be doing, but I am curious to hear what the response would be and if people have questions or comments about the idea. Play it by ear. Thanks for reading. -Sean
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