I spent three and a half years looking for this piece of
land. Yesterday, Tony and Emily were here and talking about their ongoing quest for land. I wanted to write some of our discussion down before I forgot. Since this topic is so massive, I
should probably start with the disclaimer that this is all my own crazy, lunatic rant and is probably of no value to anybody but me and the voices in my head.
How many acres?
Decades ago I was obsessed with
gardening and outgrew my urban lot. I needed more space. Not only for my horticultural endeavors, but I needed to expand into all sorts of animals. I was sure I would never need more than 20 acres, but 10 acres would be fine. I even had thoughts that if this amount wasn't
enough, then someday I might be able to buy a piece of property next door.
I was wrong about lots of things. Or, maybe I should say, I changed my mind about lots of things.
I eat
beef. Tony eats beef. Emily was a
vegetarian for 17 years and when she came here she started to eat our meat (my impression was that the
root of being a vegetarian had to do with respecting the animal). By the standards of all three of us, beef might possibly be one of the healthiest things to eat.
Plus, one of the greatest tools for improving land is pulsing ruminants through the land. So even if a person is vegan, it would be wise to be a healer of the land with
cattle.
And, let's not forget the deliciousness of
milk, butter and cheese.
Cattle are herd animals. So the smallest herd would be about five. And if you worked your magic on a piece of land, you could get it to the point that it could grow enough food to 100%
feed five cattle on ... about 80 acres. Therefore, the bare minimum for beef/dairy is 80 acres.
One very painful thing is that 80 acres costs about twice as much as 40 acres. Which costs twice as much as 20 acres. And once you are on the raw land, you need some funds to build your home and all the infrastructure for everything you want to do.
Last night, Emily and Tony pointed out that their math came to the same conclusion. And as they have been visiting a lot of properties, shopping for their perfect piece of land, they are considering properties that are 40 acres with the idea that the smaller size will probably make it so they don't raise cattle. Of
course, when you have everything you ever wanted except for the one thing, then it sorta eats away at you to move to someplace bigger.
Another issue is that most lots that are for sale are surrounded by sprayers. One of the reasons that a
permie seeks out their own land is that they want to KNOW the full story of their food. For sure. Utterly and completely. The three of us swapped stories of the people we met that are passionate about organic and yet they still use all sorts of toxic gick in their stuff - it's as if they don't know what organic means, let alone the much higher standard of
permaculture.
The sprayers think that if their stuff drifts over to your property, you don't mind because you got a little free help. It's good for you.
So if you have 40 acres and you are surrounded by sprayers, then you want a lot of
trees to act as a buffer between you and the sprayers. You end up creating a sacrifice area. It isn't a 100% solution, but .... what else are you gonna do? And you left the
city to try this in order to KNOW the story of your food, but now your food is tainted. The purity is no longer pure. It's tainted. So you tell yourself "well, it was just a little. Maybe rather than "better than organic" I'll be okay with "organic". But then you might as well have stayed in town and bought the food labeled "organic".
I've met about 30 people that bought land like this - surrounded by sprayers. Or a sprayer on just one border. And about half of them ended up moving.
Plus, if you have to make a sacrifice area, how much of your 40 acres do you give up? There isn't a clear line about how far the spray comes over. So in your quest to KNOW the story of your food, how much are you willing to have your food tainted.
Wander Lust
Emily has itchy feet. I think one time she told me that the time she spent here was the longest she ever stayed in one spot. And even then, there were big trips in the middle of the stay.
If you have animals, and you are going to spend a week or a month on a trip - somebody else will need to care for the animals. In fact, it could be wise to have not just a "plan B", but a "plan C" and "plan D" as well.
Emily and Tony have a lot of first hand
experience with this. While they were here, Tim's family went on a trip and a guy .... let's call him "Emmet" promised to care for Tim's critters for five days. On day 2, Emmet decided to leave. No emergency - he just felt like a change of scenery. Poof! He's gone! Emily and Tony, being awesome, stepped in and cared for the critters.
I have lots of stories, but the one that really sticks in my mind was leaving for a three day trip and having to return on the first day because the two people, "plan B" and "plan C" both botched everything.
So, clearly you need "plan B", "plan C" and "plan D" - and you need them to REALLY know your stuff. And you need extreme confidence that they will do well. You need those people to understand your values. If anything goes sideways, you want these people to KNOW what to do to take GOOD care of the animals.
Your first thought is to develop good relationships with your neighbors. You'll help them and they'll help you. It will take some trial and error to find somebody trustworthy *IF* you have a pool of good neighbors.
My experience was not so good in this space. And I have visited with dozens of people that have long tales of woe - most of whom just embraced never travelling.
A lot of permies consider the idea of community. Bring a collection of people together with the same values and work ethic. And maybe the animals can even be owned collectively so anybody can travel whenever they want. This idea lasts no more than a fraction of a second because life has taught them that people are
fucking nuts and this can NEVER work. At the same time, there are some people out there that appear to be not crazy. In fact they seem kinda cool. It would be great to get together with those people. And it would be great to have the
freedom to leave. But this problem is just way too huge. Okay, more on that later ....
The Price of 80 Acres
80 acres with a creek, southern exposure, deep soil, forest, close to a lovely town and not all that far from a lovely city, nestled into forest service land at the end of a road, ... no improvements (house, barn, power, well, roads, fences): a million bucks.
Most people that want to travel this path don't happen to have a million bucks.
Nobody wants the debt of
mortgage, but some people are so passionate about this path that they will consider it. And most lenders won't touch bare land. In the country, a lot of folks are selling land and will do "owner financing". You need to put 20% to 35% down (I've seen it as low as 10%) and then you have mortgage payments. For a million dollar property, that's $200,000 down and about $4000 per month. So, for a lot of people, this is also a show stopper.
Okay, so you can find 80 acres for about $120,000 .... no creek, recently logged, some soil, maybe eastern exposure (smells almost like "southern exposure"), and maybe the town doesn't seem uber cool, but it probably has a kind of "character" that will grow on you ....
(and you can find 80 acres for $65,000: north facing slope, no way to access except by helicopter, and some serious problems you really don't want to know about)
Most people reading this are probably still thinking that $120,000 is still way out of their league. Suddenly the thought of five acres looks way better. The funny thing is that this property as a five acre plot will be $40,000.
One thing to keep in mind: most raw land does not have owner financing. You can either buy it outright or you don't buy it.
Selling Your Soul Into Slavery
So many people living in the city are coming to the conclusion that they hate their life. The work at a job they hate - mostly because they would hate other jobs even more. They take the money and pay for things they don't really want: car, house/apartment, work clothes, student loan so they can get a good job, stuff to dull the pain of their existence (toys, alcohol, hobbies, drugs ...).
They then start to get the idea of how cool it would be to walk away from it all and live in the woods. And then the mind wanders to other solutions. Universally, step 1 is "get out of debt." Naturally, thoughts turn to stuff covered in
books like "
mortgage free" or "early
retirement extreme" (ERE). In time the solution appears to be
permaculture and homesteading.
So, when you are shopping for property, I would like to make a strong suggestion to not get into a mortgage. It is an obvious suggestion. Nobody want's a mortgage. I just want to mention that for a lot of people, this is moving from "slavery to the system" to "slave to your dreams." There is a good chance that five years into the future, you might hate the five-years-ago-you.
Some people will do a lot of work to find a job that they can do out in the sticks. Or they will find land that is still really close to a town where they can continue to work. And with a 30 year mortgage, you might have to do that for 30 years. Your new life could turn out to be quite the burden.
Some people tell themselves that they will make major coin from their new property. I do think that is possible, but it almost always takes a big hunk of cash to get started. That's the cool thing about ERE, the root of the book is: the more humbly you are willing to live, the better your forward velocity.
I think a big part of
permaculture is the opposite of credit card debt. With credit card debt, you
sell your future self into slavery to pay for your whims of today (the whims are usually about anesthetizing your current existence). Permaculture is more about giving a
gift to your future self.
I like to think that the thing to do is to explore how humble you can be (ERE style) combined with
residual income streams. But, this is a story for another day.
There are hundreds of arguments for the infinite number of paths. I just wish to encourage everybody to have a strong preference to get out of debt and stay out of debt.
Attributes for a Property That Were of Interest to Me
80 acres minimum. 200 optimal.
Need deep soil. A lot of the property I looked at had no soil, or just a few patches of shallow soil. One property I saw was a 480 acre rock - beautiful, but not for me.
Need extreme privacy - I don't want a public road going through the property.
No building codes.
Sloped land makes it so you can control frost pockets. Plus flat land is usually a sign of flood plains - where other people's persistent herbicides get washed onto your land annually.
Need lots of weeds - this indicates that the soil is not poisoned with persistent herbicides that can take decades to get rid of. Probably 90% of the properties were dominantly grass - a strong indicator that persistent broad leaf herbicides were used.
Surrounded by properties that generally never spray. The forest service and timber companies will spray sometimes, but usually they don't bother. The nature conservancy sprays (which seems like an oxymoron, but it is true). Check the surrounding properties for lots of weeds.
Within an hour of missoula. For a while I looked at land that was within an hour and a half of missoula, but am glad that I found something within an hour.
- first, I have a powerful bias. I just love missoula. The carousel, freecycles, the saturday market, the events and people, the flavor of community ...
- second, I have a powerful desire to be someplace where it gets cold so I can build soil the way I want to build soil, plus, less bugs and less disease
- someday I want to be able to say that I grow a lemon tree, outdoors, in montana
- when showing off the power of the wofati or
rocket mass heater, it has more weight when you say you are doing it in montana
- I just love to say that I'm a montanan. When people ask "where are you from?" I found I like to say "montana" about 20 times more than "idaho", "oregon", "washington state" or "colorado."
Seven Years Ago ...
I built up dozens of tiny residual income streams. I had about $1500 per month coming in from residual income streams. In other words, I could do utterly nothing and my bank account would gain $1500 per month. I could go sit on a boat, out in the ocean for ten months with no connection to the internet or anything and come back to find about $15,000 in my accounts.
I was debt free.
I would sometimes take a programming job and bring in a few more bucks here and there.
I was bonkers about permaculture.
I had about $5000 of buffer in the bank. Not enough to buy land. Not even enough to buy land with somebody.
For a bunch or personal reasons, I wanted to stay in the seattle area for about three more years and then move back to montana. During me three year stay, I wanted to "do" permaculture. I wanted to express my vision in seed and soil on a few acres.
Chickens, pigs and gardens. Maybe four acres. I also wanted to be part of a community. I was willing to pay.
After four months of visiting dozens of places, I found a place. I lay down my money and got moved in. Then I found out that they told me whatever I wanted to hear because they just needed somebody to rent the place. I was not allowed to do my permaculture stuff. I was only allowed to do landscaping according to their limited, fucked up ideas on landscaping. At first I tried "patient communication" to help them learn about what I was attempting to do. That was working, but it was sloooooooow. I then met
Sepp Holzer and he asked me about my situation. When I told him, he said "Get out. Now." It then all clicked for me. I got out.
Things changed and I started my search for land in Montana. At first I tried to arrange a 15 year lease. I talked to lots of land owners about such a lease. My ideas were too different. I did find somebody that was cool with my ideas and I drove from seattle to montana and spent a few days talking and working things out .... only the land owner couldn't decide whether to keep the land and have me do my thing, or sell the land (80 acres for $900,000). I made lots of contacts. I moved to missoula and intensified my search. I would do lots of speaking gigs so that in the middle of the presentation I could tell the audience that I was looking for land to lease.
The Fall of 2012
I lived frugally, beefed up my residual income streams, plus did some work, plus .... all of my giving stuff away for years and years resulted in some very lucky oppportunities .... In the fall of 2012 I had saved up about $70,000. I figured that if I could put $40,000 down on an owner carry plot of at least 80 acres, that would leave me with $30,000 to make improvements.
Something clicked within me and I realized my innards NEEDED me to get some fucking land right fucking now. Yes, my passion is in putting out free stuff, but now I want to be a bulldozer and bring in funds asap. I'm sick and tired of dancing around all this stupid shit of owner financing. If I work hard for a short time i can come up with enough money to buy SOMETHING and get STARTED!
A lot of hard work and a lot of help and a lot of luck .... In May of 2013 I closed on 200 acres. It has issues, but it has crazy deep soil, lots of weeds, privacy, slope, no building codes, surrounded by forest service and timber company land and within an hour of missoula. Bonus of thick forests - the heavy tree growth is indicative of the deep soils.
Re-Husp
While I was in Montana searching for land, my brain stumbled into this idea that I now call "rehusp" (or "re-husp"). In a feeble attempt to summarize: I want to grow the future of permaculture. Not just with my ideas, but with 20 different artisans in seed and soil. Each permie would have their own vision for what is "best" and as they demonstrate their vision and talk about how the other 19 are "wrong", the cross pollination accelerates discovery.
This discovery came as I pitched an idea to a
local tribe in an attempt to lease land from them. While it didn't work out with them, the idea became clearer and bigger in my head.
Part of me remembered seven years ago with just $5000 and a residual income stream how I needed a few acres to do my thing. I paid a lot for that and didn't get what I wanted. I also met other people that were looking for a space to build a
cob home. They just needed to try. And they were willing to pay thousands of dollars just to have a space to try.
And I've met hundreds of people on their quest to find a place where they can do their permaculture thing. To get out of the rat race and stop being a wage slave. To build a magnificent
gift to their future self. To someday pursue
art, beauty and delicious instead of pursuing the dollar to just barely pay the bills.
Yes, I have my own crazy stuff that I must do because my innards demand it. And my innards now demand that I do re-husp even more.
Crazy is Relative and Subjective
About 95% of the population looks crazy to me. I expect that nearly all of those people will look at me and think that I am crazy. Crazy is relative and subjective. Well, most "crazy" is relative and subjective.
Of the remaining 5%, I think they are not crazy. And I am comfortable with most of them thinking I am crazy.
This bit about "crazy" is the foundation for my next few points.
When trying to get a million dollar property, one idea that comes up is "if I go in on this with nine other people, then I only need to pay $100,000 instead of a million dollars." The math can run for all sorts of properties for all sorts of different number of partners. You get the idea. The key is that if this works out, you can leave the rat race a LOT earlier. But people are crazy. And even if they are not crazy, people change. And even if they are not crazy and they stay not crazy for life, there are still all sorts of things that can go wonky.
Consider for a moment: marriage. Two people come together and judge each other to be not crazy. They are even certain that the other party is so super awesome that they decided to inform the authorities of their marriage. And half of them get divorced. But more importantly: before they even try to get married, look at all the relationships they had that didn't work out. A pretty high failure rate.
Thousands of properties have been purchased jointly. Some do work out. The concept of people coming together on a common piece of land is called "
intentional community". Some smell a lot like an HOA. Some smell a lot like a hippie love-in. Right now you can pop out to
http://ic.org and look at the hundreds of intentional communities that are currently open to new members. And hundreds more that are in the stage of "forming" (a group of people searching for the perfect piece of land). This doesn't include land that was purchased by married couples, or business partners or the hundreds of other potential arrangements. The point is that there are a lot of ways that this idea can be attempted. And a few do stand the test of time.
Permaculture is a very long term thing. What is the point of giving a gift to your future self if your future self moves away in two years to get away from all the crazy?
So we need a solution.
Seven years ago I dropped a lot of money and moved all
my stuff to a place that sounded like a fit. Only they lied because they needed my money. It turns out that they knew nothing about permaculture. My permaculture ideas seemed not just crazy to them, but fucking insane. When they prevented me from building
hugelkultur, they couldn't even allow raised beds. Naturally, as expected, they looked crazy to me.
And I wasn't even looking for 30 or 40 years - I was looking for something for three or four years.
So how could I have prevented that? How could I have found a better match? And all of the other people that are looking for a place to get out of the rat race and start with permaculture and homesteading.
The book "Mortgage Free" offers a dozen different strategies. Typically, you live frugally, build a grubstake, buy land that is near a town where you can continue to work and then build a tiny house in your spare time. And in the coming years, you add on to the house in your spare time.
In the book "
Early Retirement Extreme", you live frugally, invest your money and the more frugally you live, the earlier you can retire. It sorta leaves open the idea of forever renting or buying your own place.
An Experimental Path For a Few
I have given some general advice for people seeking land to purchase, but my brain is screaming about my own devious plots and ideas.
Suppose a person has saved up $30,000 and has built $300 per month in residual income streams. There might be a small property somewhere than can be purchased. There might be an IC somewhere to join. Maybe you can find a farm where you can rent a room and be allowed to do your permaculture stuff there.
Each of these things could work, but it just seems doomed for most people. The probability of success seems really low.
So I have created another path. This new path is also terrible for most people, but I think it might have a high probability of success for a few. For just the right people. Further still, I think that this idea could be a template for thousands of other properties, each with different values. It is a bit of a hybrid between all three of the above designs, plus one little thing that could take out 90% of the crazy (or crazy potential).
I confess that this idea is powerfully driven by two things:
1) My passion for re-husp
2) My frustration from seven years ago
There are a lot more things in the mix, but let's start there.
In 1989 I rented a room in a house in missoula. I lived there for nine years. The rent was cheap and the landlord didn't care about my gardening efforts. The landlord was very different from me. In nearly every way. Yet for nine years everything was okay. I could have kept living there, but ... I moved to get a better job.
I have met hundreds of people that have lived more than 20 years in the same place - renting. They are content. But, of course, for each of those people, there are probably a hundred people where they moved out or were evicted.
Why do these rental arrangements end? Usually due to a difference of opinion in how renting should happen. For example, the tenant builds a garden and the landlord thinks the garden will add maintenance work, or it will lower the value of the property.
Here is what I am currently trying: I now manage 300 acres. I like the idea of 20 people living here to do the re-husp thing. A person lays down some money to have "skin in the game" and then has an acre or two that is pretty much for their own use, plus access for projects (like raising cattle) to the full property.
A requirement is to listen to the first 240 podcasts that I have put out. I suspect that 99% of the people that try to listen to the podcasts will reject the idea of coming here. But I hope that this idea will end up being done, eventually, on thousands of properties. So anybody that likes this idea will find a place that is a fit for them.
The goal is to facilitate/incubate those that want to get out of the rat race. They want to stop being a wage slave to the system and give a gift to their future self. To get to the point that they are, for all practical purposes, retired at a very young age. They can then pursue their passions without having to get up every morning and go to a job they hate.
Rather than buying four acres riddled with problems, they might have a hybrid between 1 acre and 300 acres. They have their one acre plot for their home and gardens. They can arrange use of ten more acres for an overlayed use.
So when comparing this solution to land ownership: You don't have neighbors that spray. You get much better land for a much lower price. You are obfuscated from property taxes and the myriad of bits and bobs that come with ownership. You get some level of access to community resources.
When comparing to an IC: You don't have to attend weekly decision making meetings. The cost and benefits is about the same. The "crazy" is a significantly more predictable. Hopefully this solution has less than 1% of the drama in an IC.
When comparing to renting a room/house with land: Far more predictability. Permaculture is encouraged. The design is to have life long relationships as opposed to the idea of "flipping the property."
I like to think that for a few people that are bonkers about homesteading and permaculture, I have created the best path for them to get out of the rat race and TRY. The two dominant paths right now are:
Ant Village: rent a plot year to year. Currently priced at $800 through the end of 2016 (so 20 months if you start now). Plus we are currently offering something called "the ant village challenge" where one plot will be awarded a "
deep roots package".
Deep Roots: rent a plot for "life". A sort of "rent a whole bunch of years and get a whole bunch of years free".
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