Cimarron Layne

Like a lot of people on this thread, I waited until retirement to purchase my first homestead property.  After retiring in Reno, NV, in 2016 (at 70), I went back to Maine where I grew up.  It was a great state for a kid who loved being in the woods, hunting, fishing, canoeing, mountain climbing, and lots of other outdoor activities year round.  Guess I thought I could relive my youth.  I bought a cheap, run-down old house about 25 miles from Mt. Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail that winds 2,190 miles from Springer Mountain in Georgia, which I had hiked in my younger days.

The plan was to fix and flip the house to generate some more cash to put down on a small farm in that area, but after two years of shoveling snow from October to May and realizing how short the growing season was there, I decided I'd prefer a more temperate climate.  After three trips to southern Appalachia (VA,NC,TN, KY), I found a 30-acre former horse farm that had been fallow for a while that suited my purpose.  It was on the south-facing side of a long ridge, and though a little steeper than I wanted, I thought it would do.  I quickly sold the Maine house to a couple who were going to finish the rehab, and I moved bag and baggage to southwest Virginia.  I was 73 and in great shape physically.

I hadn't considered myself middle-aged until I hit 65, and then only because I figured I probably wouldn't live past 130, so I could admit I was probably past the middle of my life.  I spent the next six months rehabbing the gutted trailer that had been left on the property, fixed the barn roof, and a couple of sheds, built a Justin Rhodes ChickShaw and bought enough electric mesh fencing to protect a couple of paddocks for pastured chickens from whatever predators might be in the area, and set up several raised beds for veggie gardening.  My intention was to form a small eco-community based on Permaculture.  Maybe 5 or 6 families with small homes scattered around the perimeter of the cleared portion of the farm or tucked into the woods around it with shared gardens, barn, greenhouse, and pastures for dairy cows, goats, pigs, and poultry.

I had invited a younger family that I'd met on the Internet to join me, figuring they'd help with the labor as well as putting in a few thousand toward the land purchase, but they turned out to be rather useless and brought with them a lot of drama and Covid-19 which I quickly caught.  That knocked the wind out of me for a few weeks, but I recovered and got back to work.  They never did get to work, so after a year or so, I borrowed enough money to buy them out and sent them packing.

I managed to maintain the farm on my own for about six months, but realized I couldn't develop it the way I wanted without some help, so I started advertising for another family.  The second family was the exact opposite of the first.  They had no money to invest, but they brought a 5th wheel RV to live in, lots of tools and a mini-excavator that proved quite useful, and they didn't need constant supervision or motivation.  If they saw something needed doing, they just pitched in and did it.  A real Godsend.

I was especially grateful for them after I hit 75 and started falling apart.  Over the next couple of years I had shingles, cataracts, kidney stones, a bad infection from a rescue dog's bite, and various injuries from falling off a ladder.  Each time, they drove me to the hospital, picked me up when I was discharged, and took over my chores while I was incapacitated.  I don't know what I would have done if I'd been alone on the farm with all those animals to be fed and cared for.  Though I had a couple of great neighbors, they'd have been hard-pressed to keep up with their own work and mine too.

But the second family never committed to the idea of starting a permaculture eco-community, and I knew they would eventually leave when they found a place of their own, and they were seriously looking for one.  So, in 2025 I put the farm up for sale and started looking for an established community to join or a smaller place that I could maintain alone.  A couple of horsewomen from New Hampshire fell in love with the 8-stall horse barn and the view across the valley and bought it lock-stock-and-barrel, including the tractor and implements, tools, and equipment.  The second family stayed on with them for a while but moved on soon after.

I drove about the country looking at eco-communities and small farms, but didn't find any that met my criteria.  Made it all the way back to Reno, NV, but found the prices out there had tripled since I left in 2016, so there was nothing affordable west of the Rockies, and long-term drought had made it even more difficult to homestead.  I was about to head south to Arizona and New Mexico when the house in Maine came back into my hands.  The buyers had defaulted on their loan and I had to take it back.  I tried hiring a local guy to clean it up and get it ready for resale, but he wasn't doing the job I was paying him for, so I drove 3,220 miles back to Maine and took over the project myself.

The house had been left in a deplorable state.  It took several weeks just to bag up and haul all the trash they'd left behind to the dump.  I spent the winter repairing damaged walls, kicked in doors, broken windows, etc. and put it up for sale again.  Meanwhile I've researched about every intentional community in VA/TN/KY area where I would like to live.  Very few of them are set up for elders who want to age in place.  They are mostly looking for younger people with muscles that haven't atrophied yet who want to work in agriculture and/or build their own homes with help from other members.

I just want a garden to putter in and a woodworking shop where I can make furniture to sell or trade.  I no longer have the energy, agility, balance, or strength to start all over again building a farm from raw land or a community from scratch.  I've found a few places to explore as soon as this house sells, but the dream of working my own garden until I'm 100 is fading fast.  I may end up in a senior independent living facility someplace playing Bingo once a week for entertainment.  I only hope they have a sunny spot for a couple of tall raised beds I can tend.

I found this thread interesting.  Didn't know there were so many options for bread pans.  I've used the same 8x4 steel pans for over 40 years, and they are great for banana bread and other quick breads, but when I started making my own sourdough breads, I wanted a bigger size pan.  So, I got online and found a restaurant supply store that carried 9x5 and sandwich loaf pans 12x5.  These make slices that are perfect for sandwiches and more slices than I can get from my standard pans, so the loaf lasts longer.  But whenever I find over-ripe bananas on sale, I still like my 8x4's for banana bread, date & nut bread, zucchini bread, etc.

Anne, a PMA is a Private Membership Association, also known as a Mutual Benefit Association as used by labor unions for their members.  It's a non-statutory business entity based on a contract among the members to assure privacy in the conduct of their operations.  In a PMA, members can jointly own assets like livestock, gardens, etc. and can sell or trade goods and services amongst themselves without being subject to sales taxes, regulations, or other outside interference.  Makes it possible to sell or exchange raw milk, meat, and such that are often restricted by local, state, or federal governments for sale to the general public.   PMAs are becoming popular with Agorist communities.

Hi, Larry,
Yep, it was beautiful.  On the south side of a ridge that got plenty of sunlight and a great view across the valley, but it was too steep and needed expensive terracing to make it farmable.  The hike up to the barn 2 to 5 times a day kept me in good shape physically but was getting to be a drag.  Too much work to maintain it alone, and couldn't attract skilled people to join me, so I gave up and sold it.  Now I want to find something similar only flatter and closer to a larger town or city where I can market what I grow or an existing community where I can share the land, labor, and expenses.  I've communicated with a few IC's in the Louisa, VA, area in south central VA, so I may be heading that way when I leave Maine (soon I hope).  If you'd like to stay in touch, you can email me at farm@corylayne.com.

Hi, all,

I sold this farm in June 2025.  Wishing now that I hadn't, but at the time it seemed like my best option.  Couldn't find a way to delete the post, so it is still here on Permies.  I drove all over the country (VA, TN, KY, AR, OK, MO, UT, NV, AZ, NM) looking at smaller homesteads and existing eco-communities but didn't find anything that met my 12 criteria.

I'm currently back in Maine where I have spent the winter re-rehabbing a house that I hope to sell this spring.  I did an 18-month fix-and-flip on this house in 2018-19 before I moved to the 30-acres covered in this post.  But the buyers defaulted on the seller-financed mortgage, and I had to foreclose last fall.  Got it back completely wrecked.  Most of the work I'd done on it had to be redone, plus more.  I'd say those people lived like pigs, but I would be maligning pigs.  Pigs ae much cleaner and less destructive.

Anyhoo, it's pending sale now and I'll be heading back to VA/TN/KY soon looking for another property to homestead with the intention of starting a small permaculture community to share the workload and development expenses.  If anyone knows of an available property with at least 10 acres (preferably more), with livable house or trailer, well and septic, electric, about half open land and half wooded, and not too steep, please let me know.

Or if you have land in the southwest VA, east TN area and are looking for someone to buy in and share, please contact me.  Thanks.

Also, if you are interested in joining up with me to share the land, labor, and livelihood, I'd love to hear from you.

I own a homestead on many mostly wooded, remote acres of land in northern Michigan. I’ve been incrementally converting this land into a permaculture system, but the going is slow by myself. While I’ve had success in planting gardens, hugelkultur, and off-grid living, I’d like to dramatically increase the rate of progress toward a community-centric, permaculture, and off-grid lifestyle.

Hi, A.G.,

After reading your post, I believe we are on the same path and could be clones other than I am much older than you are.  If I could tolerate a cold climate like northern MI, I would join you in a heartbeat, but I hate long winters, shoveling snow, and am subject to SAD so don't accomplish much during the winter months.  I prefer a more temperate climate.

I recently sold a 30-acre farm in VA after nearly six years of trying to build a Permaculture community there with little success.  I would have continued trying because the land met 9 of my 12 criteria for selection, but the 3 criteria it didn't meet when I bought the property in 2019 made developing it too costly and difficult to continue.  I won't make those mistakes with my next property.

Among the problems:  

1. it was too remote from a reliable market, medical care, and suppliers;
2. it was too steep and needed a lot of excavation to terrace
3. it had no water source of its own, only a spring on a neighbor's property that required expensive pumps to bring water to the center of the property

I am currently in Maine, holed up for the miserably cold winter, rehabbing an old house that I had sold in 2019 with seller financing.  The buyers turned out to be drug addicts who never finished the rehab I had started in 2018, and they eventually defaulted on the loan and I had to foreclose.  I got it back in Oct 2025 and moved back to Maine to clean it up and get it ready for resale.  They'd left it in deplorable condition, full of six years of trash, with broken windows, kicked in doors, broken appliances, a non-working furnace with several burst pipes, etc., etc.  After 4-1/2 months of work, it is almost livable again, and I hope to sell it this spring and head back to VA, TN, KY area to look for some acreage to start another community.

I'm looking for people like you who want to build something sustainable for the future where families can grow amidst natural surroundings with as little outside interference as possible.  By sharing the land, resources, and labor, we can all accomplish more and in less time than each of us working independently.  Teamwork makes the dream work.

I envision a number of profitable farm enterprises to support the project (Joel Salatin inspired): raising produce, berries, fruit, free range egg layers (chickens, ducks, geese), pastured poultry (meat chickens, turkeys), and pastured livestock (pigs, cattle, dairy goats for milk and cheeses primarily), plus other enterprises, e.g., woodworking, metal working, small engine repair, and other homestead crafts.

My background is mostly in accounting (CPA, corporate controller), financial software development, real estate investing, and business management.  I have a lot of experience in trusts, forming and accounting for corporations, LLCs, PMAs, non-profits, and other legal structures, plus 13 years in the Army from private to major.

Please PM me if you (or anyone else reading this post) are interested in a joint venture in the southern Appalachian region.  

Hi, Melissa,

I just found your post from 4 years ago and see your last update was 3 years ago, so I don't know if you are still in Idaho or have found something suitable or what.  Wish I'd found this a year or two ago as I had 30 acres in Appalachian Virginia and was trying to attract people to form a Permaculture community there.

In six years I found only two families, and the first was so God-awful I had to borrow money to buy them out and send them packing.  The second family was the opposite, a Godsend, but they had no capital to invest in the property or infrastructure so just rented a space for their RV and exchanged labor for rent.  Father was a master carpenter, mother had the greenest thumb I've ever encountered, and the two adult children were also very helpful.

But they never committed to the community idea, and I knew they would leave eventually.  I got tired of being broke, far in debt, and unable to develop the farm as I'd planned, so I decided to sell the farm and look for an established community to join.  I looked all over that area, TN, KY, and the Ozarks of AR, OK, MO but didn't find a community or a smaller farm that I could manage on my own.  I even went back to UT and NV where I had worked for many years.  Nothing met my criteria nor was as affordable to buy as Appalachia.

In the meantime, a house I had sold in Maine in 2019 came back into my hands after the buyer defaulted, and I returned to Maine to rehab and resell it.  It was a disaster, the buyers had been junkies who lived in absolute squalor.  Worse than any of the "hoarder" shows on TV.  Took me weeks just to bag up all the trash and haul everything to the dump, more weeks of scrubbing filth, patching kicked in walls, doors, windows, you name it.  Kitchen completely demolished.  I'll be all winter getting it livable again to sell in the spring.  This time without seller financing--I'm not going through this again.

Come spring I will be heading back to Appalachia to find a property that meets more of my 12 criteria than the last place did.  It was too steep, too far from a market for my produce, too far from healthcare and suppliers, and the only water source was a spring on a neighbor's property.  I had an easement to access it, but it wasn't mine, and it had to be pumped a considerable distance.  I won't make that mistake again.

That's a long story to get to the point I'd like to make.

I will be buying more property, a little flatter, a little closer to civilization, and with a good well or other water source(s).  If I can line up some people to join me, I will purchase enough acreage for all of us.  Working together, we can accomplish a lot more than I can working alone.

My vision is that the land will be in a land trust with the participants/members as beneficiaries.  The trust would lease plots to the members who would build their own homes.  Banks and other financial institutions, if needed, will lend on construction loans or mortgages for homes with 99-year leases.  Each individual would own his/her/their home.  A private membership association (PMA), operated like an LLC, would own all the community infrastructure (fencing, barn, workshops, community buildings, equipment, etc., and all members would share in the income/expenses of the PMA.

My plan is that the community would be self-sustaining and produce enough food for the members with a surplus for sale and produce products from other enterprises (pastured meat birds, pork, beef, lamb, etc., maybe cheese, herbs, nursery stock, honey, cash crops like ginseng, ginger, microgreens, mushrooms) to generate enough income to cover all of the costs of operation, tools and equipment, etc., and eventually pay members for their labor and cash invested.

Personally, I don't need much to live on and am willing to commit my savings and retirement income to the project.  I made a decent profit on the sale of the farm, and I'll have whatever I get from the resale of this place in Maine as it is debt free, and I have an 800+ credit score, so I won't have any problem financing the land acquisition.  I expect the property will have a livable house for temporary accommodations and probably a barn or other out-buildings.  I'd like to build a small earth-bermed house into the side of a south-facing hill with a solarium on the south side (think walkout basement with an earthen roof).  Anyone looking at it from a distance would see only a greenhouse on a terrace.

If this is of interest to you (or anyone reading this), please PM me with your email address, and I'll get back to you.

I raised an Aussie Shepherd pup, Buddy II, who was quite precocious.  One of his first chew toys was one of my deerskin slippers with which he would wrestle ferociously.  Sometimes he won, sometimes the slipper got the best of him, and worn out, he would cuddle up with it and sleep on the carpet until the next round.

My farm and the farms bordering it were just fenced with 4-strand barbed wire, so the neighborhood dogs were not detained by it and roamed freely farm to farm.  Nobody seemed to mind unless they hunted chickens and other poultry.  My Aussie often disappeared for hours at a time and came home with souvenirs of his various adventures.  Several times he brought home pillows stolen from neighbors' porch chairs.  He would carry them home intact, but then tear them to shreds all over the front yard.  When the contents were spread all about to his satisfaction, he would sit on the front porch proudly surveying his field of destruction.

One Christmas morning he came home with a rubber bone about 18 inches long that must have been a Christmas gift of a much larger dog.  How he got it away from the owner and managed to carry it all the way home was a mystery.

We didn't get many visitors at the farm, but whenever a strange vehicle drove up our long access road to the house, he would welcome the driver and passengers.  I think he always assumed they had come to visit him personally and he would monopolize any conversation they tried to have with me.  When they were ready to leave he would be there to see them off and let them know they were welcome to come back anytime.  Not the greatest watch dog in the community, but he was well-liked and visitors often returned with dog treats for him.

When he was about six months old, several of my neighbor's cows wandered into my front yard and were nibbling on my strawberries in a raised bed.  Buddy had never seen a cow before and became quite excited.  He was barking at them from a safe distance.  I came out on the porch and saw what was going on, went back inside and got my long cattle prod and cautiously approached the cows to chase them out of my strawberries and head them back toward the fence.  Once Buddy saw that I was not afraid of the cows, he quickly gained confidence and instinctively began herding them away from the house, racing back and forth behind and beside them, barking and nipping at their heels, as it were.  I got on my phone and called the neighbor to let him know his cows had escaped, and he and his son arrived with halter ropes to lead them back home.  He later repaired the fence that had been knocked down by a falling limb, and neither Buddy or I ever had to herd cattle again.

I couldn't let my chickens free range because of the dogs roaming around, but I pastured them during the warm months with electric net fencing with a solar energizer.  Buddy and the other dogs got shocked a few times and learned to respect the fence, but Buddy would run in circles around the enclosure like he was trying to get the whole setup to move.  He seemed to sense when the juice was flowing or not, and he'd wait for an opportunity to jump the fence and "play" with the chickens.  He liked to catch them, toss them into the air and catch them again.  It was a lot of fun to him, but the chickens didn't care for the game, and some of them died of heart attacks from the stress.  I couldn't break him of this, so I finally had to rehome him with a family that did not have poultry.

Hi, Em,

I've recently sold my homestead in VA and loaded everything into a box truck and drove 2,500 miles to Reno, NV, checking out communities in TN, KY, and Ozarks of AR, OK, and MO, but all too humid and too many chiggers.  One in UT would have been ideal, but way too expensive to join.  Currently staying with an old friend in Reno while I look for something out here.  Everything in the Reno area has skyrocketed during the 9 years I've been back east.  Having sticker shock on the price of even remote land with no water or other infrastructure at all.

Just got on Permies to see if I could find others in the area who are currently homesteading or want to, but not many in NV.  I'd like to join up with a few others either on someone's existing property or working together to buy and build.  I have my PDC and want to grow anything that will grow in the dry high desert.  Couldn't take the humidity in VA, coastal TX, FL or other places I've lived.  Love the dry SW best.  If I don't find anything affordable in Washoe County, NV, I'm open to heading for AZ or NM in search of community.

If you would be interested in talking with me, please call or text me at 276-832-2563 or email me at mail@corylayne.com

Thanks,
Cory "Cimarron" Layne

I use a standard cotton dishrag for cleaning counters, stove, etc., but I wash my dishes with ScotchBrite Dobie pads.  They have a tough nylon mesh over an almost indestructible sponge.  Gets off stuck-on food but doesn't scratch my dishes like chainmail or other metallic items would.  When it gets stained or looks dirty, I toss it in the washer.  They last for years, and I bought enough of them when they were $1 a piece that I doubt I'll ever run out.  They are about $3 a piece now in a 3-pack, but I'd still buy them if my current stock gets depleted.  

For dish cloths (for drying dishes), I use huck towels from a restaurant supply store.  They are large, absorbent, and last years also.  I bought a 6-pack about 6 years ago and they still look brand new though used 3 times a day and washed at least once a week.