Alder Burns

I have had good results on multiple sites with different animals using baited electric wire.  You hang one wire at nose height of the critter you're trying to control.  Every few feet along the wire, put a little tag of aluminum foil, with something yummy slathered on it (peanut butter is the default, it's cheap and most critters love it) facing outward.  The deer or other animal smells this, gives the tag a lick and gets a REALLY good shock!  He won't be back for months, and will warn all of his friends too.  I have kept chickens safe in a yard with just a flimsy garden net over it to contain them, from coons and possums this way.  Also with this method it's possible to get goats to respect a single wire fence as well.

My mosquito fish survive here in Illinois even when the pond freezes over.  But it usually doesn't stay frozen for very long.  In a really cold climate I would probably try to keep some indoors over winter, even in a bucket if I had nothing else.  They multiply quickly and would repopulate a small pond in the spring pretty fast.

As several people have already mentioned, and counterintuitive as it might seem, establishing a small permanent pond near the site actually helps with mosquito control.  Most mosquitoes breed in ephemeral water....that is water that dries up at least once a year and often much sooner.  Most mosquito predators, by contrast, prefer permanent water.  So your pond will be churning out numbers of dragonflies, damselflies, frogs, toads, and more....their larvae will be controlling the mosquito larvae in the pond itself, (aided by any kind of small fish you can add....mosquito fish are the default).  The adult forms of these creatures will then emerge from the pond and continue to eat up mosquitoes and other problem insects in the wider landscape.  This, plus diligent policing of your site and surroundings to eliminate ephemeral water, are the backbone of mosquito control.  Remember that most mosquitoes don't go more than a hundred yards from where they breed....so a bad problem is hatching somewhere nearby.....usually in human trash collecting rain water.  They can be sneaky....it might be a hole in a tree.  One time I tracked a bad problem down to a poorly hung gutter with water ponded in the blind end....directly overhead!

From someone who has spent a good part of my adult life in intentional community settings, my one bit of advice beyond what others have already posted (and I totally   agree about the site ic. org as a great place to start!) is to not be too hasty and make a bad decision that way.  Try to take or make some time to tour around several communities in your area of interest, maybe even volunteer at some.  Say a week or so at each.  What you want to catch is first, a general vibe of whether that life will really work for you (especially as contrasted with homesteading on your own), and secondly, the vibe of that particular community or type of community....they vary a good deal from one to another.  Especially pay attention to how newcomers would be incorporated in, and the dynamics between private ownership or stakeholding versus communal ownership.   Be aware that life happens, not only to yourselves, but to communities, and not all of them last forever.  Ask yourself, and the people you visit....what happens if 10 or 20 years down the line you or they decide that it just isn't working any more, what then?   Some communities can do this gracefully, evolving into a collection of neighbors who stay friendly, whereas others....well, speaking from experience it can get pretty spectacular.

The one strawbale house I helped build, and then lived nearby for years afterwards, was almost lost to fire one night.  A woodstove located in one corner heated the straw behind a layer of stucco enough to start smoldering.  When the people realized what was going on, they broke through the stucco from the outside to get at the fire, which let in more air, and for a long time made the fire worse as they dragged out flakes of straw with garden tools and doused them with water.  Eventually they got it out.  But the whole corner behind the stove had to be replaced with cement blocks.  More attention to clearance and heat shields was obviously necessary.  Stucco of any thickness may be fireproof itself, but still conducts heat to whatever is behind it.

Mine last however long they last....six months, a couple of years?  who knows?  I'm always on the lookout for them at thrift stores and in dumpsters.  So they come in and out, sort of like mulch I guess.  When they get holes in the knees I save them for the coldest days when I have long undies on anyway.  Then they get cut off for summer shorts.  When the butt goes, they get cut up into little squares for toilet paper at the humanure bucket....and so, yes, they become compost at last.

The last few transitions I've made, I made it a priority to take and move starts of everything I could.  Considering the monetary investment I'd made in many of them, this meant a pretty significant savings as contrasted to re-purchasing them for the new place.  A lot of course depends on season and distance...one recent transition was from California to the Midwest, in midsummer.  That one hurt....very little could be moved that wasn't a packet of seeds or a few dry bulbs.  But our most recent move was fifty miles, in late fall and early winter...and for that several car-loads of pots and plastic bags of dug plants happened, all to be quickly tucked in to what I called my "refugee garden"....just stuck in hugger mugger in rows; all while painting, doing mold and rot remediation, laying flooring, all the other moving stuff!  They grew there happily for a summer and then got moved to their permanent places in the new design the following winter.

The very best scrounger potting mix I've ever done is basically long-composted wood, from rotting logs and stumps....taking the parts that are already crumbly in the fingers.  If I'm potting something like hardy house plants sometimes that's all I'll use, but for needier things like veggie starts I might add in a bit of pee and ash for extra nutrients.

Perhaps more of a stopgap/temporary measure until I think of/find the time for/justify the expense of something else, I used ordinary cardboard on the outside of three of our worst windows, all facing onto views that don't matter.  I simply cut the cardboard as exactly to fit into the window wells as I could, and stuck it in there, four to six thicknesses thick.  One window facing north took enough wind and wet for the cardboard to begin to sag after several weeks, so I cut two sticks to the exact width plus a fraction and wedged them in to hold it in place.  Took me a couple of hours to set up and the difference in temperature issues has been very significant!  I've also done the rigid styrofoam board on the inside in a couple of other places, but they do cause condensation on the windows behind them as one other poster mentioned, so any day not bitterly cold I take them down and wipe the windows...

Two loose ideas: 1. warm air moves from the stove up to the ceiling and then out to the outside walls, cools and drops and is sucked back toward the stove along the floor.  Just having fans here and there, especially on the floor blowing out, is working against this natural flow. What we have are small fans that mount near the top of doorways or in corners where wall meets ceiling, to push warm air out, and then a box fan on the floor blowing cool air back toward the stove, so as to speed up the natural cycle that's already there.
2. As a stopgap measure while you pursue the mold and moisture issues, remember borax and boric acid are your friends.  Dissolve either or both in boiling water to saturation and then paint onto any moldy or half rotted surface of wood, drywall, etc. and let it dry and crystallize. This will kill and prevent all kinds of mold and rot.  Once it dries you can wipe off the dry crytals and paint over it if you like.