a new homestead on raw land - first step

I am a powerful advocate for Rob Roy's "Mortgage Free".  The general idea is that you live super frugaly to build some coin (a grubstake).  Buy land.  Build a shack to get you by for a few months while you build a humble home.  

I am saying that before you build the shack, you need a place to poop.  

Before you build a place to poop, you need some idea of which style you want to run with.  Naturally, i am going to advocate for a willow feeder.   Hopefully, long before you arrive on your new land, you have some idea of what style of willow feeder you want to build and why that style is a fit for you.


https://permies.com/wiki/287110/Cleaning-Rivers-Oceans-Home-willow

Love this. We are still looking for our final home, that is not only self-sufficient but also that of environmentally kind. I will share this with my husband later in the week, as his hours are long.

I am saying that before you build the shack, you need a place to poop.

I read "Mortgage Free" 20 years ago and I'm finally at the point of looking for land. Thanks, Paul, for stating the obvious! If it weren't for that, I would have built the shack first. Now I can look forward to happy willows instead of sad rivers.

I suspect the reality is that the location will dictate the design/method more than the reverse? Unfortunately, waste stream autonomy has a long history of destructive abuse and turning the corner on that is a many-generational project. Worth angling toward a few clustered salutary case studies, but this sh*t is intrinsically political, and permies do shy from that!

For us the first step after we bought land was to have a water well drilled before we could decide on where to place the future homestead. Where we live in south central WA, in a forested off grid canyon, the water can vary to a huge degree in a very short distance. If you hit ground water it could range from a few gallons per minute to an underground river. It can range from sweet and crystal clear to tasting like you're sucking on a rusty iron bar. We were fortunate on the 1st attempt and got 11gpm at 200' deep and it is absolutely delicious and cold even though it has a high colloidal mineral content which is for the better. If there was no water or its quality was poor the project would be over before it started. You have to have water.

As for the pooper, according to State law an outhouse is prohibited. So if you are a lawfully compliant permie it gets expensive real fast. A formal septic system on a steep canyon side is possible but it can get complex real fast. There are no willows around here but I can tell you that the Ponderosa Pine, Douglas Fir and Oregon Oak like the human waste just fine.

Already bought my first WILLOW!!!
I will get two more very soon.
Stockpiling a few materials and Found A Source for sawdust.  I mean a 20 ft high 40-50' long heap of sawdust ...
  I have basic plants practicing grow results for a first matrix fym mix palatable for baby plants, and of course the willows. All these will be growing over the winter as practice.  This is a MATRIX test for what all is going into the mixture for planting. Not HM, but one 5 gallon test humanure  will start in October for the soil cleaning cover crops .