Affording homesteading land

I'm sure every job on the entire planet can find some sort of strike against it relative to permaculture principles.

It seems like those of us that want to homestead feel the need to source money from homestead-y things, BEFORE we can afford an actual homestead. Principles of sustainability, waste reduction, reuse, non-petroleum based operation are extremely, extremely difficult to bypass in order to make money from society, which is what's needed to buy privately owned land.

What did you do for money in order to begin homesteading? Do I have to sell out to cash out?

Your comment is a bit tangled.
Are you suggesting that people are aiming to earn cash from homesteading, prior to having a homestead, to finance that homestead?
This is the never ending question!
How to finance the life plans, and its been covered very often elsewhere on the Permies site.
I guess its like most dreams, you need to compromise to aim higher.
And since the current society we all live in has swung around to a society that many just want to skip the 'baby steps' and just step into a 'forever' home,
it will require a mind set change.

Jeff Steez wrote:I'm sure every job on the entire planet can find some sort of strike against it relative to permaculture principles.

This is something that frustrates me many times a day--we're in a system we didn't choose, and to try to get out of it, we usually have to compromise for awhile in order to make the best choices that lead us out. I'm still trying to "get out" of suburbia/urbia, and so I know some of the feelings it sounds like you're having.

Jeff Steez wrote: It seems like those of us that want to homestead feel the need to source money from homestead-y things, BEFORE we can afford an actual homestead. Principles of sustainability, waste reduction, reuse, non-petroleum based operation are extremely, extremely difficult to bypass in order to make money from society, which is what's needed to buy privately owned land.

Before I learned about Permaculture, my husband and I worked hard to achieve the American dream that our parents, who had been young in the '80s, taught us well: keep up really good credit scores, pay off all college debt and other debt as quickly as possible, and then get a mortgage, on my husband's income (I'm a housewife). I'm different now than I was when I first married, but the "system" is definitely not! To buy land and have more of a Permaculturally-based lifestyle, we will have to sell our city house and live with someone/in an RV for awhile until we can find a cheap (ha!) country place we can pay most of down.  My husband's profession is TOTALLY anti-Permaculture, and extremely deleterious to his health, and I have always hated it. But once we have land, and we aren't tied to a big dollar amount for our mortgage, he doesn't have to have that loathsome job to pay our mortgage.

Jeff Steez wrote:What did you do for money in order to begin homesteading? Do I have to sell out to cash out?

To sum up: we are salvaging what we can from our lower-Middle-Class American lifestyle choices in the past--home value and paycheck and credit scores--to try and get out.

That's the plan anyway.

Hi Jeff,
I have a couple thoughts. The first is, that you don't have to buy land in order to make money on "homesteady stuff". There are many, fairly high value, crops like greens and micro greens that can be grown in a small area inside a room/apartment/basement. There are many opportunities to buy food in bulk and then process it in some way (jam, jelly, pie, jerky, dried fruits and veggies, dried herbs, etc.). In many places there is land for lease or rent. This is the option I would recommend if you are interested in any kind of livestock. Talk to farmers in the area, look online. You could probably find a few acres to lease and you can get practice without the responsibility of owning the land. In our area an acre of haying field is only about $25 per acre per year. Often times people will lease their land just for the cost of the property taxes if you are going to take care of it for them in some way.

Second, having said all that, I will also say that I think it is ok not to be 100% sustainable 100% of the time. I think wisely using resources that are not sustainable is just fine. I think you are right in that any job you do is going to have something that is not sustainable. When you think of computers and cars and things we are used to using... and realize how much of them are not renewable... Just don't let perfect be the enemy of good. And good luck :)

I worked my ass off, usually more than one job at a time, for 40 years to afford my land.  I guess I resent the insinuation that I'm a sell out because I worked "regular" jobs to get where I have.

To me, permaculture is so much more than sustainability.

Permaculture covers the basis of permaculture agriculture, the philosophy, the ethics, and the design concepts.

Permaculture principles is also how we live our lives. Living within nature.

What I know about permaculture I have learned from this forum and the wonderful people who share their knowledge of all kinds of different things from permaculture, animals, plants, cooking, health, etc.

So how do we afford land without going against permaculture?

I say work hard, save your money, find time to enjoy nature, and find what you love right at home.

We have found that when the time is right somehow that piece of property that you have dreamed of for so long just seems to turn out.  

At least that is how it has happened after buying and selling many properties, the one we now have found its way into our hearts.

Jeff Steez wrote:Do I have to sell out to cash out?

 
Well, to "cash out" you generally have to sell something big like your record label, house or business.  I'm not sure if that's what you're really asking.  I'm guessing you're wondering if there's a way to get enough coin to buy land without compromising your principles.  In my opinion, it depends totally on your principles.  The more rigorous and high-minded your principles are, the less likely you are to make enough money to buy land.

One of the few ways I know of to get land without much of a compromise to your principles would be the SKIP program.  There is a commerce section in there but you can easily find ways to achieve that within a permaculture mindset.

To answer your other question, I helped make disposable diapers in my past life.  I made enough money to quit that and start doing something I preferred.  I believe that if I quit that job due to how it compromised my values, they would have hired another person in 2 weeks to keep doing it.  So the job would still get done, I just wouldn't be able to influence the company to be slightly better on the environment than my replacement.

I talk to some young people that want to "help the environment by going to college for environmental engineering".  My guess is that they could do more for the environment as lawyers, engineers, salespeople, business majors and all the other "normal" degrees.  Just secretly push their respective companies in a greener direction.

Which of the permaculture greats said something regarding the use of petroleum powered heavy machinery like, "These machines dug us into this mess, I think it makes sense that we may have to use them to dig ourselves out." I think the same can be said of much of "the system." Through most of history, I believe the average person was virtually (or literally) a slave and had no real choice on how to live life. While life may not be perfect, I think we may have at least a bit more power to make a difference than most people in the past.

I have one foot in the natural world and the other foot in the corporate/money world. This is a practical and resilient arrangement. Each world informs and balances the other.

For the record, I have never "sold out" my values. I do "rent out" my skills on occasion -- it takes money to operate. The notion that this is wrong is, in my judgement, misinformed.

Land does not need to be "owned" in order to do homesteading or permaculture. Claiming to own land would violate my personal ethics.

I followed the plan that Rachel above outlined.  We "kept up really good credit scores, pay off all college debt and other debt as quickly as possible, and then got a mortgage".  Once we had equity in our suburban home, we got a home equity loan (HELOC) to purchase our homestead land.

The loan was not big enough to buy the piece of land we wanted.  What worked for us was yearly "balloon" payments, rather than a monthly mortgage.  We used 80k from the loan to make the down payment.  We then immediately started paying down the HELOC month by month.  At the beginning of the next year, we made the annual balloon payment, withdrawing the money out of the equity of the HELOC we had put back.  After four years, we made the last balloon payment, and owned the homestead free and clear.  In another 4 years we had the HELOC paid off.

So, fast-forward to today, we are completely out of debt.  We still have the home, the homestead, and money in the bank.  It worked for us.

I do the best I can. To even begin to assume that I could start cold acquiring coin for land without some sort of current infrastructure connection would be hard. Take for example Permies.com itself. There is an infrastructure in my mind there that relies on or in some way to non-permie-esquness. I think that I have enough peripheral skills to create an income stream from home but that being said I still rely on a connection to those that do not have necessarily my same values or desire for them to dip their toes in a permaculture lifestyle.  Without a true transitional setting to where we are all pulling the wagon in the same direction, I think that one would have a hard time being self sufficient or locasufficient (my new word). Even if one was to go woofing and be submerged in a permaculture venue there would still be shoulder rubbing with unenlightened ones. Throw away the tv throw away the cellphone don't even think electric vehicle if you want to be true to the cause of self-sufficiency. Would you or are you willing to share what you will accept or discard in your move to ethical homestead ownership? What do you have to offer other than labor/ knowledge/belongings to create an abundance of coin to purchase a homestead? I still work, I still teach, I still create artwork/products that I sell to support my continuing efforts toward self-sufficiency. Sim-Permies, Sim-Farm, Sim City ethereal realities that aren't realistic it is going to require compromise and work. You can accumulate coin in good works that are supportive of ethical values, but one has to accept that currently there will be some interconnectivity with those that haven't gotten the bug.

There are several urban gardening entrepreneurs that utilize other folks back yards, lots, fields to farm and are successful in their efforts. A venue for someone with a true desire to the cause. A teaching tool as well as a revenue generator. Beekeeping. quail are revenue generators that can be started with minimal space. We have a one-acre farmer that is supplying our local small town with micro greens and lettuce requirements for the few restaurants  we have. Tell us what your end goal is, just enough for you?  Do you imagine your homestead as a local food provider? We all have differing levels of and definitions of homesteading let alone self-sufficiency. What are you doing now to achieve that goal? Many roadblocks can be self-made/imposed when you're reaching for a goal. What have you done today? Today after work, I am installing solar heaters to IBC totes in our community greenhouse for the upcoming cool weather. During slow time at work, I'm making packets of several  tepary bean varieties for a Lofthouse inspired Landrace experiment with the local Grange.  Walking the walk, not making me any coin but I'm spreading the word. Spreading the word through teaching lecturing once one has enough practical experience to share would be another revenue generator as one grows
.

Joseph, I am intrigued by your comment "Claiming to own land would violate my personal ethics."
Could you see yourself as a custodian of land?

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:
Land does not need to be "owned" in order to do homesteading or permaculture. Claiming to own land would violate my personal ethics.

I wish our society embraced other forms of land-stewardship as normal and thus easy to orchestrate. It has seemed easier to go ahead and "own" land, morally bankrupt as I think that structure is, before pouring my life into it.

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:
Land does not need to be "owned" in order to do homesteading or permaculture. Claiming to own land would violate my personal ethics.

I wish our society embraced other forms of land-stewardship as normal and thus easy to orchestrate. It has seemed easier to go ahead and "own" land, morally bankrupt as I think that structure is, before pouring my life into it.

Land ownership is great when no one is in sight. When you own land that's within a community and choose to destroy centuries old forests and put in an eyesore of a storage facility, it's downright wrong.

While it's against the modern American way to "get free land", historically Americans did, literally, in many different ways, get free land. So I don't see what the big deal is if some of us still want that. It's not like we're asking for a mansion fitted with a Lambo. It's a bit of dirt sectioned off by an invisible border seen only on a map.

Christopher, Can you explain what your thoughts on the issue are? Thanks

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:
Land does not need to be "owned" in order to do homesteading or permaculture. Claiming to own land would violate my personal ethics.

I respect that. I take the approach that land is held in trust. Much would improve if others saw things the same way.

And while I technically own my land, I find, in practice, that my land owns me.

John C Daley wrote:Christopher, Can you explain what your thoughts on the issue are?

My stance on land ownership starts with this kernel: if land is owned, then it can all be owned. If ownership includes the right to enforce trespass*, and all the land is owned, then it is possible for living people to have no spot of ground where they are actually allowed to exist. Therefore, land ownership is antithetical to the right to life (a society can have one or the other). I get that that's pretty removed from daily reality, but it displays, in my opinion, a degenerate philosophy at the core of land ownership.

*The meaning of ownership is somewhat variable from place to place and could be altered to fix this problem, but it seems like our current situation grants landowners pretty strong rights.

Jeff,
I'm sure you will already have found these threads about saving money on a low income, escaping the rat race and earning from residual income streams, but I will post a few links here for others who are interested:

https://permies.com/t/106871/Early-Retirement-Saving-Money-Poor
https://permies.com/t/139641 (building residual income streams)
https://permies.com/t/23470 (trapped in the system)
https://permies.com/t/16439/building-residual-income-streams
https://permies.com/t/42038/debt-dirty-word
and of course:
https://permies.com/wiki/skip-pep-bb the SKIP program

I wish you all the best in your efforts to build yourself a better world, it is easier if you have company on the journey.

This thread is now locked to further comments, discussion of ethics is a cider press topic.