Elron Larch

Looks like my own fault for a lack of due diligence before creating an account. I tried to hold my nose and sign up despite the clear indicators that this forum was owned versus stewarded. The more I dig around the more I don't want to support this forum (didn't realize it was copyright at the bottom, as that alone should have been a red flag). I will keep it to reddit permaculture forum next time or other more public venues. Too bad, as there are a lot of good resources on here, but I'd rather support something a bit more open.

This has nothing to do with the replies I've received, which I am thankful for. I am happy to continue the conversation, but don't want to continue to support the medium it's taking place on as it conflicts with my own values of how communities should be run, and I don't want to directly support the owner whose values I don't suspport. Definitely not in the spirit of the gift economy that I believe is a part of the overall ethos of permaculture. I'm not tied to permaculture in any way, but I am tied to open, non-commercial, collaborative values.

Thanks again for all the input.

Bryan Elliott wrote:I like the house location.  Gravity feed from the spring and off the road good.  If you put a little parking area on the flat spot on top, you've cut your walk to about 300 feet.  Nothing wrong with that.  As for the legalities just call the old logging ruts your driveway.  if you absolutely need a driveway to the door you can spend that money later.  You are in Maine--if you need something heavy into the house, some one close probably has a team of horses or yoke of oxen to drag it in for you.

No draft horses nearby that I saw, but I did notice that the closest neighbor across the street (who is a woodworker that does yacht interiors, according to my google-ing) has one of those kubota 4wd compact tractors with backhoe/loader. Pretty much the exact model I would buy if I was on flatland, hand plenty of funds, and had larger usable acreage.

Yeah, I'm thinking if there's a legal issue I can simply have a crappy driveway for cheap until I save up if it proves truly necessary.

Hrm, maybe that was bad data (wikipedia soruce). Another source cites an national standard of 800ft of 2.5" hose on any fire protection vehicle.

I think the only genuine safety issue I can see is fire--which is mostly a money issue, as 400sqft house and a good detector makes any personal harm pretty unrealistic.

It looks like standard fire hoses are quite short (50-100ft). Not quite sure how that even gets anything done when you have such huge houses these days, but they do have incredible PSI so maybe they can shoot it quite far. I'd imagine in a rural area where there are people burning blueberry fields that have no easy access they would have some kind of mitigation approach that would work with poor access.

A pond and a pump would be a better solution to a fire than a driveway, my bet, as my 400ft shanty would probably burn down before a truck could even show up.

Marco Banks wrote:If you can find a way to get multiple functions out of a road, then it might make it more attractive to you.  Roads make a nice surface to catch water and move it toward a swale or pond.  They can serve as a kind of terrace.  The certainly make it easier to move livestock, particularly in the winter when you want to do so using an ATV or some other vehicle.  

Its a pretty big piece of land.  Will you at least want to use an ATV or small tractor?  If so, a "road" may be nothing more than the two tracks made by the continual use of an ATV over the same route.  It would seem that such a "road" is more than a footpath, but certainly less than a long, wide, crowned, paved roadway.

One other variable to consider: time.  What I can do now (in my mid 50's) is considerably less than I could do when I was in my roaring 30's, strong and full of vigor.  Recently, as I've tackled projects and considered modifications to our home and property, I always consider, "How will I be able to manage this 10 years from now?"  I don't know how old you are, but I do know that tomorrow you'll be a day older than you are today.  And 30 years from now, you may be wishing you'd have bit the bullet and put in a roadway to help facilitate the movement of stuff around your property.  I suppose that you can always build something then, but if it will make your life considerably easier now, then perhaps you'll want to think about it today.

Best of luck with your big project.  How exciting.

Thanks!

I'm 38. Not a big or strong guy, but stubborn. The land is big, but much of it is unusable. I'm not doing any animal agriculture, otherwise that would certainly be a good use of complex topography. The two green areas selected total only about 3.5 acres. Tractor couldn't pass through most areas because of the steep ravines. ATV or 2-wheel tractor is more realistic -- but I just can't much think of what I'd use them for. I'm planning on growing beans, grains and vegetables, plus orchard. Otherwise firewood is great, but my usage their is quite small (maybe 1-1.5 cords a year should do us, even if we scale up to 400sqft -- we spent last winter in 145sqft ).

I do think, ten years down the line, maybe a driveway and further development would merit equipment and land work. We're cash only and moving on a tight budget with no major employment lined up. Phase 1 is really just about getting to initial stable, minimal economic footing with as little outgo as possible. Phase 2 is maximizing food production and growing a few market items (the ravines and inaccessible areas would do great for mushrooms, for example, and most the difficult to access slopes and bluffs could support additional orchard).

Everything else comes after that and hopefully we'd have saved up money again in the future and made good local connections to affordable labor/materials enough to consider more conveniences or efficiencies (road, plumbing, landwork) as we got older, though I'm hoping to get more stubborn and minimalist as I get older. I figure, I might be more incapable as I age, but if trends continue as they have in my life so far, I'll also be a bit more monkish and have an even easier time just going without.

Mike Jay wrote:

Hanee Birch wrote:The other lot is actually for sale and would be quite cheap (same realtor as the land I'm likely buying has it for $18.5k and said "please just low ball me and give me any offer I will never sell that land").

Those sound like lovely words to hear from a realtor.  Offer $1,500 and see what happens.  Is that the two or so acres to the East of your property?  Why won't they be able to sell it?  Just looking at it from the internet it looks lovely.  If you can ever get ajoining land cheap, it's usually worth it in the long haul.  How many people have I heard over the years say "I wish I bought that 40 next door for $3,000 when I had the chance".

We're cash only and trying to live with as little income as possible. Every penny counts. The main reason I would buy the land is to prevent neighbors, but, if the land is unsellable, the neighbors are already prevented.

That 2 acre lot is not it (that's the one across the street with a clearing) -- that one is a nice little lot, but is so small in terms of usable land that you run into serious problems with siting due to all the setbacks (well, leachfield, house). Quite tight.

The lot bordering to the north between this lot (13 acres) and the one above is 5 acres, long and skinnny, the road on the north of it and a stream on the south of it. It would be almost completely unusable due to not only topography, but also it's got a creek cutting through it between it and our intended property, which means you've got shoreline zoning in effect for 75feet into the property as well (not much clearing allowed and no building). It's been on the market since 2011. I'm pretty confident it is going to remain that way for a good long while. I could ask for some sort of first-right-of-refusal from the owner, but investing in not very usable land as just a neighbor-insulator is a slipper slope -- I could do it on my other border too which has two lots that haven't been touched ever and are owned by out-of-staters. Both have cove frontage. But buying them (I'm sure a cold letter on TONS of lots in these areas would result in a sale -- it's really hard to sell raw land in these areas, takes years often) would just increase my tax burden (especially since it's water front), and I've not got the man-power to make them reward me in any way other than buffer or as an even larger playground.

Regarding the driveway, how bad is the rutted logging path?  If you got a few dump truck loads of road base and spent three days with a wheelbarrow, could you fill in the ruts enough to get a normal truck through?  Then it would be a walking path in bad weather and a driveway in good weather.  You could just walk it in the winter (no need for a plow truck) and drive it in the summer.

My kind of thinking. I do think this could work. Once the logging slash is removed I think just filling in the ruts would probably do for a couple years with light use -- could still be a lot of material, though? Eventually I'd have to fill in between to crown it and do spot repairs in those first few years. The ruts are compacted, maybe up to 12" below grade in some wet parts. Reusing it is what my primary plan would be if I did go for a road. Only time would tell what kind of soil conditions I would have in spring and whether the land would just swallow up the gravel quickly without being scraped down. But not much to lose.

I also much prefer iterative approaches instead of "design-upfront" approaches. Having been a design-heavy person in the past, I think that approach just as often bites you back for hubris. An incremental driveway with localized learning about EXACTLY where the problems and limitations are and small test-fixes, is much more my style.

Another complaint is the issue of scale-of-use relative to scale-of-construction: even if I did have a nicely done $10k driveway put in, with three sizes of gravel, and culverts, and scraping down to hardpan, and all that jazz, I'd end up parking at the top just for the nice walk 90% of the time. My use case is a lightweight, AWD vehicle on good-weather days and special occasions. It is only firetrucks/ambulances and potential material delivery that make it compelling to do anything other than the absolute bare minimum of "can just barely get down it in my subaru, turn around, and head back up, when I need to bring in a trailer load of something".

I guess a more specific question is: does anyone see any GENUINE SAFETY CONCERNS with a 400ft footpath and/or crappy-road as the only access to your house? I still just keep remembering that the one time I needed an ambulance they had a 4wd electric gernie they could go right up the hill with, and otherwise they could have easily used a stretcher and two guys pretty easy. Not to mention, if I hurt myself, I'd be just as likely to do it 400 feet from my house in the woods cutting down some tree as I would conveniently at the house at the end of a nice driveway.

Hi Miles, thanks for your reply.

Is there a second road , shown at the bottom of the picture, that you could use as an access road?

I have attached another picture. The other road I can't access both because my lot doesn't touch it and because it would be nearly impossible. The other lot is actually for sale and would be quite cheap (same realtor as the land I'm likely buying has it for $18.5k and said "please just low ball me and give me any offer I will never sell that land"). But between the two lots is a stream most of the way, and then that lot is almost all crazy topography, thickly wooded and both steep and cut through with swales.

What other plans do you have for the property? Will you be trying to capture runoff from rain and snowmelt in any of the gullies?

Right now the focus is on the initial house, water supply, waste situation. In maine we can legally do a 25gpd design leachfield and no septic (with composting toilet) as long as we hand-carry or hand-pump water (which is what we're doing here in VT, but here it is not legal and we just dump our kitchen waste water onto our compost pile). The burden of being legal there is pretty low so that is what we are trying to do, all on the up and up. We will be doing solar, but rather small amount (maybe 2 100watt panels). We currently use about 0.5kwh per day on average (almost all of that is our fridge). We can run the fridge easily in the hot season since there will be plenty of excess power during those times, in the winter it will use less if I design it so that it is in an uninsulated alcove off of the house. But overall I would like to do a cold storage, particularly a spring house sounds about perfect if the source is good enough. With cold storage taken care off I could almost ditch the electric altogether (could use and charge laptop at library, we don't do internet at home besides, fine with candle or lantern and early bed), but it's easy enough to have a very minimal system.

With water, I am hoping to develop the spring I located (which is not high flow probably, but our needs are pretty small) or do a shallow-dug well or pond. For our household water use of 25gpd (we currently use about 8gpd where we are, but we take showers once every couple weeks at a friends house), calculations I ran said I'd need about 600sqft of roofing and a 500 or 1000gallon tank to do the rainwater catchment, but I have some concerns about needing a tank in that case and to bury it rather deep due to frost -- also it's been unclear how to take advantage of winter precipitation. Overall, maine has plenty of water, so the idea of capturing water in a big degree that seems to be a big part of a lot of permaculture thinking is a bit less of a priority for me -- it may be that I am instead trying to increase drainage, I will wait and see what the land needs. I'm fairly comitted to hand-working the land and would like to hand dig any shallow well, etc, but it is tempting to contemplate earthworks.

Long term we'd like to do an alternative building, but short term this is an economic proposal: we're spending our savings completely on this risk, moving away from a well-paying job (in my wife's case) and hoping to reduce our overhead to bare minimum. To do that we need to get a bare minimum of building/water/waste/access/electric on a very tight budget (we have $50k to work with total, land we're hoping to get at $30-35k). That means time-wise I'm a bit forced into doing stick-frame construction. I don't have the cordwood supplies quite on site and they would need a year or two to cure, plus it's heavy building, heavy foundation. Same with strawbale. I probably would go with strawbale but we have a high water table most likely, and I have some concerns around doing any heavy building. I'd rather a light building and 2x6's fit that bill.

As for growing: we are both lifelong vegans (for strictly ethical reasons, not ecological or political ones, so no need for arguments here about how smart it is to do critters) and are keen on growing as much of our own food (including grains and beans -- we are big fans of Will Bonsall), but know the land will be limited in that respect. I will do what I can bit by bit each year, but very interested in doing it in a permaculture way, focusing on perennials and establishing ecosystems that re-produce themselves. My bent is towards the Fukuora type approach of minimal intervention and I would like to also integrate as many wild-harvested foods as possible. Rather excited that I can harvest my own sea salt as well.

I think you mentioned that you might be able to buy a piece of equipment , use it , and then re sell it ?

That's the best option I can come up with. It would still probably require borrowing in some form (either from family or financing), which I'm rather averse to. But, even if I bought a small excavator/tractor, I'm a bit of a safety freak and not very comfortable with the idea of using it on slopes. I also am, how do I put this, existentially-averse, to relying on technology to speed up what can be done by hand. Being a crew of 1-2, though, I am fine making compromises especially when there are good economic incentives, etc. I'd really, really, rather prefer though to do things by hand, even if it meant spending digging a pond for an hour each day for two years. I've no aversion to the work, I just may not always have the time for it or the physical strength for it.

May I tell you what I would think about doing if I owned this property?

Certainly! The more ideas the better!

A road or driveway can serve several functions. When I look at the picture I wonder if you might be able to cut in a driveway from a point somewhere at the bottom right of your picture, if there is a road there, and move across the property towards the top left, approximately on contour, across the gully's to the home site. The driveway can also act as a swale or Keyline, to capture and direct runoff water into the gullies. If you can also create a "dam" across the gully by running the road across said dam, then you can create a nice pond at the same time. So a driveway becomes a major part of your permaculture plan.

I like the idea of combining functions and it makes the driveway a lot less of a needless aggression on the land, but I'm concerned that the cost of damming a gully could be quite large. If I bought that other parcel or otherwise went on contour it would mean a much longer driveway -- not sure the cost tradeoff on that. Also I'm a bit concerned about washing-out since these gullies are formed, after all, by ages and ages of runoff following the same patterns. Not a big fan of fighting nature (and if there's one thing that always irks me a little about mainstream permaculture it's this idea of heavy earthwork to make the land into something else) -- if it's done just perfectly, I get it, but as we know many times human intentions don't work out as expected. The gully-pond might increase erosion on its sides depending on soil structure. It might run out underneath the driveway or take out the driveway in a large storm. If I were to try something like that, I think I would have to do it experimentally, as a thing in itself, start with damming a small amount of water and increase it year by year watching carefully for its effects. The driveway, though, if it were to be useful, would have to be there from day one, and I wouldn't want to do something so experimental as the basis for my primary access, particularly if a foot-path on a comfortable (by foot) 25% grade for 75ft would suffice.

(NOTE: the attached images are both oriented north-up, as one would expect. These give an overhead view.)