Vick Smith

Megan LaCroix wrote:Your place sounds wonderful! Where in Texas is it located?

Between Houston and Dallas

Lots of wild edibles, berries, wild fruit trees, etc. wet-weather pond, not in floodplain, some structures on site - you could tear them down, you could fix them up. Only willing to sell or lease to people who care for animals and won't go in and shoot everything/raze the property. Local wildlife includes raccoons, foxes, bobcats, many types of birds including water birds. Plus a colony of feral/semi-feral cats that keep all rats/mice away. (Which reduces snake population) Predators leave our chickens/goats/etc alone as we have guardian dogs on property. Fully fenced. New well being dug now. Power in place. Septic system in place. Structures include a shell house that is sound but ugly - has no insulation or interior finishing. Last time I was there I found a leak in the roof where a shingle separated from the septic vent. Another home-built house with no plans or conventional anything - may need to be torn down, up to you. Also a barn, chicken coop, other small structures.
If you want to lease, I'd be willing to trade part of the $ for help fixing it up as well as caring for/protecting the wild animals & feral cats. (And willing to let you have first crack at purchase if you fix it up and love it and want to buy it)
If you want to purchase, I'd be willing to consider a lower price in exchange for a solemn promise plus character references along the same lines. (caring for/protecting wild animals/ferals)
In either case, also willing to consider leaving some of the goats along with their guardian dogs. A few of the goats are in milk, a few might be pregnant, some are $$ valuable but I would want assurances that you wouldn't just immediately sell them - and wouldn't ever sell the less $valuable ones for meat.
See - I've got all these annoying conditions, and I realize that setting all these limits reduces the chance that anyone would want to buy or lease the property... but I'm willing to take that chance. It's really important to me that this land and these animals pass from my hands to someone else who is willing to care for them in a way I haven't been able to due to health issues. I had big dreams, but just can't keep up. My loss is your gain.

So I own land, but can't live there right now for a variety of reasons. I have a bunch of animals, would love to rent a little house on some land for myself and them, but the only places for rental properties I can find just show apartments and houses in suburbs. Do people in the country never rent out their houses? And if they do - is there a super secret hidden place to look for them?

Judith Browning wrote:

That sounds like a wonderful fun house!

You are not alone in this forum...there are many here who have built or are building rather differently

Our first cabin years ago was a group project with not much collective experience...hay bale walls for the first few winters...a quick floor just before our oldest started to crawl...cedar shakes replaced after the first chimney fire...vertical log walls that made chinking quite difficult...sometimes we knew better and sometimes we didn't...sometimes we just do what's necessary at the time and move on.....

Thank you So Much for that. I've been stressing about it a lot lately and have been dreading people shaking their head and wagging fingers. Around here (local, not this forum!)  I get patronized a lot - 'silly girl building a house without a man!' And am just over it lol.

Well, I don't know how unconventional it is, but could probably use a professional's going-over, as I built it with my adult child..
I know. Plans, and drawings and calculations should be part of the mix. But I built it *sigh* by the seat of my pants. Please don't throw tomatoes - I know there's a right way to do this stuff, and I didn't follow the plans/etc. I'm living in a no-permits area, and so I just went for it.

Very simple structure, a henge with another henge on the outside 8 feet away to make a wide corridor -circle in the middle is unroofed, has a door in, it's a courtyard. You've probably built a card house along the same lines. South side extended for a large kitchen, whole wall is windows between the 4x4s instead of siding. Floor was earth - then the cats ripped it to pieces no matter what I did, so I went to laytex-crete ferrocement with burlap. (lay down damp burlap, squish in laytexcrete mixture, paint over it with more laytexcrete to make smoothish surface. -Needs another layer painted on -Cats can't rip it up.) Roof built like a deck, with the intention of eventually building a deck up there, but - due to some personnel changes, I can't complete it. I love it, really, but oh my gosh as I get older I realize there's going to be a lot of upkeep and and I may have to even knock the whole thing down simply because I can't keep it up, probably won't ever be able to totally complete the project and won't be able to sell it either.

Well, if there's anyone looking for land in TX with an unconventional structure....

Those of you building in rural areas, areas that don't require permits or don't ask about permits, what do you do if you decide you want to sell your land with an ... unconventional... structure on it? Knock it down and sell as land-only? Look for a fellow permie-type to take it off your hands and continue the trend? Asking for a friend. (Not really, asking for myself, lol)

I agree, they do kill gazillions of small mammals. Like rats. I like feral cats WAYYY better than I like rats. We have an LGD who keeps the cats away from the house (and HER cats, lol) so I don't worry about them predating any of our own animals... I like cats, and if I saw one dead in a trap, I'd worry that it actually wasn't feral...  because a feral cat looks JUST like a tame cat. And, even alive, many people can't tell the difference between a feral cat and a dumped off housecat... Or a lost housecat.

Yeah, we're pretty rural, but there are a lot of feral cats here. So no snaring for me, lol!

So how do you keep other stuff (like cats) from getting caught in the snare?