Hi folks!
I hope this is an okay forum. I recently purchased 55 acres in Northern Idaho. It is very hilly, there are about 30 acres of mostly ponderosa pines, and about 20 acres of, very hilly, grassland. There is a
pond that seems to stay full even though there has been a drought. Supposedly it has a spring, but it could also be that the clay mud around here seals well and slowly allows the
water to
feed into the
pond from
underground. There are no utilities. Electric will cost 51K to hook up so I plan to go with
solar, generators, and possibly wind. There is no consistent access. It is fine in the summer when it is dry, and it is fine if it freezes, however, when it is wet the mud is crazy and the soil around here is clay so even if it is covered with grass the vehicle will create really bad ruts and cause bad erosion. We are living in an RV on the property. We built an RV
shelter from Versatube and we have put clear roofing on it and 6ML plastic on the outside. I'm close to having a plastic layer on the inside which would give me a 3 inch air pocket which will hopefully really help with the temperature and also the humidity. Right now it is very very humid in the shelter.
My challenges that I would love input on are as follows:
1. There is no driveway and we have about 1/2 mile of muddy hillside. It is epic-ly muddy which also means I can't just put gravel down. I have a
tractor with a box blade, a truck and a dump trailer, so my plan is to dig out about 6 inches and then put landscape fabric and large gravel followed by small gravel.
2. I don't have a well. In the state of Idaho I'm not allowed to drill my own well if it is deeper than 18 feet. However, I can drill 18 foot stock
wells. I'm wondering if that is going to be a possibility to develop water,
enough for our needs. The first well I dug was dry at 15 feet and we hit some serious rock at that point so I haven't dug deeper. I'm considering trying a new spot but not sure how to pick a good spot to try.
3. How can we start managing, improving, and using the
land? I have considered trying to get a mill and milling my own lumber and maybe even selling some of that. I would like to garden. I would like to manage the grass areas to improve them. However with all of these things I don't have much in the way of money to use right away so I want to be able to build a plan to develop things debt free. Likewise I'm fairly new to all of this so welcome ideas and inputs.
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