Feeling underpowered, not overwhelmed

I’m just keeping up with a longer schedule than I would like.

It’s been the longest beginning, so long as any beginning includes all parts before commencing the actual plan. The false starts, the busy life, and the not meant to be. It has made for one long beginning of my plan to develop a sustainable property.

I attended my PDC in Southern Missouri in 2018. It was incredible and left me with so many tools to complete my goal. But life got too busy, and as I had finally begun in 2023  the work on version 1.0 on my 3.75 acres, life threw a curve ball and I found myself living on a small city lot with no good exposure. But it didn’t kill the dream.

I wanted to take a holistic approach to my eventual property and have always had an interest in building science to go along with my career as a pm building homes. I learned various methods to increase efficiencies in homes as well as alternative construction methods and materials. I made many mock up plans of ultra efficient homes built as sustainably as possible. So I thought the next step of the property would be crop and livestock management design to create as efficient of a water, energy, and resource system designed to work with the land around it. This is where I am at a weakness. I have read many different ideas and systems of livestock and crop management, but my personal experience has been limited to bees, a few peach trees, one of which did actually fruit before borers took it down. I’ve also had chickens and ducks with success but gardens destroyed by cats and deer. My cats thought bulbs were buried treasure.

Fast forward to early 2026 when life was seemingly going well, but I was no where near my ultimate goal, and didn’t feel I was living my life in alignment with myself. So I changed it. I had always gone on vacation to Arkansas to visit family and enjoy all the lakes and rivers and trails. My sister and parents now live in Arkansas and so I found a job, bought a small camper, adopted a somewhat crazy 6 month old border collie beagle mix, and relocated to Northwest Arkansas.

I have a few properties I’m looking at and I’m finally starting to put together both the phasing of the project and overall design. The property will be around 7-10 acres. The phasing is important because I intend to move my camper onto the property and live in it while I build the home and property out. This will be fully off grid, assembled in phases.

The amount of work ahead is intimidating as I will be managing projects during the week and squeezing in what I can on weekends and evenings.

So I’m wondering if I find a partner or maybe two partners to tackle this endeavor. I’ve rebuilt a couple of homes solo previously, working evenings and weekends to complete one. I’m confident in the building aspect but the greenhouses and livestock? Could I manage those as well? Is my timeline pushed too far out solo, or could I find the people that would have an interest in collectively working through design, build, and implementation of a holistic system?

If I did stay solo where would I go about getting feedback on my overall design, which forum would that fit best? Or is it best to break it down into the individual aspects that would make up the overall system?

Overthinking as usual I’m sure, but the project manager in me doesn’t like rework.

Welcome to the forum!  

In my experience finding other is disappointing.

Maybe I missed it, so how much land do you have and is it in Missouri?

Hi Ben,

Welcome to the forum!

As I'm reading your post, I can relate to the Big Dream vs challenges of reality-vibe. There's a thread about it here .  
I think working together is a great idea...but do you like the company of others, in a living together (apart) setting?
If so, you might want to also post in the intentional community section !

Good on you to follow your dreams! And good to have the conversation about challenges.
There's always a way. Often the solution is Observation and Time, observe and see where the route of least resistance/most result is.
I do think 'tribal living' is the way forward, but it needs heaps of self-accountability and realism.

Keep us posted!  I'm sure others will chime in as well. Good luck!

Hi Ben and welcome!

It sounds like you have a pretty good idea of what you want to do with your plot, but are just uncertain as to whether you can do it all alone or whether you need to get other hands on board. Usually this comes down to time and timing! Maybe as well as the long term vision for the plot you could spend a little time planning out a timeline of how the conversion might go: building access, house, water systems, earthworks, long term planting, chicken/livestock shelter Each stage takes a different amount of maintenance which then eats into your project time.
Having one other person can be such a boon, and only you can work out whether the effort of relationship building is worth the rewards. Having a few independent people can be less effort, but also less rewarding perhaps. You could also consider short term visits - workshops, or volunteers to help with particular projects. I gather these can sometimes be more effort than they are worth, but is another option perhaps.

Good luck and I look forwards to hearing more about you plans and projects!

Anne Miller wrote:Welcome to the forum!  

In my experience finding other is disappointing.

Maybe I missed it, so how much land do you have and is it in Missouri?

I am looking in Northwest Arkansas although I’ve looked in southern Missouri as well. Right now I’m hoping a deal goes through on roughly 10 acres.

I understand the disappointment, that’s my hesitation on brining in others.