Purity Lopez

I have spent most of my life living in the Wilderness. Never married. Its not exactly a farm but I grow a lot of my own food.
I am looking for a retired MOBILE (preferably fit or wanting to be) woman who can bring her own RV, and has reliable transportation.
I am a 80 year old woman, vegan..but very fit…..martial artist, I have a lot of workout equipment you can share.
Total output for you would be $400 a month. This would include rent and utilities UNLESS you are using a lot of electricity, then we would have to renegotiate. Heating must be propane…..electricity is very expensive here. You can use evaporative cooling here. If you decide to use AC, you will have to pay for that.
I can share my Starlink if you are a normal user.
Looking for someone to move here between now (Aug 2025) and Spring (2026). Spring here is April.
Lots of area for gardening on your own, I have five acres. You can grow year round here….its pretty mild weather…winters rarely get to less than 32 at night, days are mostly 50-60. Summers are mostly in the high 90s except for a week or two here and there that can be 105. We get moderate rain and snow in the winter…..little in the summer. Humidity is low here. I live on a plateau…it can be very windy here.
I do have a lot of trees…so its not your normal desert property.
If you like to cook, I have almost every cooking appliance known to womankind….plus solar ovens for outside cooking as well as rocket stoves.
Animals are welcome.
No smoking, no drugs.
This is a rural area, its three miles on a dirt road to my place, no streetlights. No near neighbors. USPS does not deliver, my post office is 10 min away, and you can share my PO Box. FedEx and UPS also has to be delivered to the PO Box.
Its thirty minutes to town…Walmart, normal grocery stores like Vons, Staters, Aldi’s, Grocery Outlet.
Medicare doctors, dentists, a small medical center
Palm Springs is down the hill (I am at 3500’) and is approximately an hour away.
I am a quiet person, I can be chatty but it is not a regular thing with me. I tend to lean toward a hermit nature. I am not unfriendly, its just that I have spent my life alone so its normal for me to be rather “self” sustained. I am though, very happy to share my knowledge on this kind of lifestyle.

I have five acres in the High Desert town of Landers, California. Pretty rural. Been here 20 years now. I grow much of my own food. I am 80, woman….unencumbered. I have lived in the wilderness or very rural for 60 years. There isn’t much I don’t know how to do. I built, alone, everything here.
I would say there isn’t much that I don’t have here in the way of being self sustained. On grid, but also off grid capable.
In the past I have had interns but it was not a success. Most young people have great fantasies about this lifestyle but are unable to understand or implement the reality. This is not Little House on the Prairie. It’s hard work, you work when you don’t want to, no vacations.
I want to expand what I have created here, to be even more sustainable.
I am willing to teach, but whoever I teach must be willing to learn and put aside the ego. I am not a bossy kind of person, but I don’t like confrontation/argumental types of personalities. By that, I mean people who will argue without knowledge of the subject.
I am neurodivergent…..and pretty much a hermit. I am not antisocial….I just don’t talk much unless there is something important to say.
What I am looking for is a woman intern…maybe in the future, to become a partner. No wages. There is a lot of room for a yurt or a tepee, or whatever you want to put up. I can help you set up a solar system and you are welcome to share my kitchen cabin and greenhouse shower…..anything I have, you can use.
There are little requirements for what you have to do in return. You are welcome to share my garden, or start your own. The weather ranges from 45-60 during the day, 30-40 at night in winter. Summer ranges from 80’s thru May then 90-100 thru late October. I grow food year around here.
Mainly I just need someone who can help me at times I need help. I just put up another greenhouse and it would have been nice to have some extra hands.
I’d like someone who could pick up curbside orders of food in town, and the monthly Azure Standard delivery. I only shop twice a month so it’s not a big job.
You have to have your own transportation…..I can share my truck with you for picking up supplies and such but there is a need for a second vehicle in case of an emergency or if you care to work in town. It’s 20 minutes to town. Small town but we have Walmart, major grocery stores, Aldi’s. Palm Springs is an hour away.
I won’t be deciding right away. I want to get to know the person….at least online for a little while.
Age is not a factor. But health is. No smokers or persons who use drugs. I am vegan but if you aren’t that is fine.
This is not city living. My place isn’t pretty but it fulfills all the functions of providing long term self sustainable living
This is an unincorporated area…..we have almost no government oversight here. Everything is dirt roads off the main two lane roads. No streetlights. I have two neighbors but it’s not close.
Me: Ex nurse. Ex construction worker. Ex Martial Arts instructor. Still am a TCM Specialist. Avid cook. I have almost every known cooking appliance known to mankind.
There is a full complement of work out equipment here and I do Taiji almost everyday.
I play harp, bamboo flute and steel tongue drums. I have a violin but have not yet had the time to pick it up.
Lastly, I am Chinese/Korean American. It’s a big part of my life…I am Taoist. I mention this last because if you are anti any of these things or overtly religious….this isn’t a good fit for you. It’s fine if you believe in a god, but I don’t want to get into discussions about it.

Ben Zumeta wrote:That sounds a lot like permaculture to me.

No. Everything but the older mulberries are in pots

7 feet. I have the btm 1’ covered with OSB then the cedar plank above it…making the fence 7’ high. In some areas instead of OSB i have hardware cloth. It depends on what i have in that area and how hot that spot is as to whether i need some air to get in or not

The fence poles must be set in concrete or the fence will eventually be pulled down by the wind

I put steel poles in for longevity- it is surprising how fast the years go by so using steel pipe assures that putting poles in is a one time deal

Use emt electrical clamps to hold 2x4’s length wise between poles to fasten planks and bottom layer to

You can also use galvanized metal panels instead of planks but that will add heat in significant amounts

Be sure and always use deck screws instead of nails. Nails will back out as the wood dries out

I thought about whether I should post my two cents worth regarding people thinking they are good judges of character....professionally trained or otherwise.  I worked in the mental health field for a number of years....specifically, in state mental institutions.  My advice is not to get too cocky about thinking you have it all down pat and can accurately, 100%, judge the character of a person.  Number one rule when working with severely mentally ill psychopaths is remembering that they (and some sociopaths) have NO conscience.  What does this mean?  Well....A person with no conscience does not put off those "vibes" that we pride ourselves as having as our skill set in making those judgements about whether someone is dangerous or not. We only have to look through newspaper archives and confirm that.  I have worked with psychopaths.....trust me on this....there are many that give off no indication at all that they are a bad seed. In fact, just the opposite. Serial killers for instance, are able to kill so many because they are able to give off this essence of well-being...a person that is kind and considerate and has your best interests at heart.

I just finished reading a case study where a man posed as a back-backer. So sociable and friendly.....puppy dog eyed kind of guy.  You don't want to know what he did, and how many he did it to.

Use common sense.  Number two rule is don't trust someone you don't know, no matter how affable they appear.

This does not mean you have to skulk around in fear.  It means you don't trust someone until that someone has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.....that they are completely trust-worthy.  Me, I don't have a fear based molecule in my body....but I would hesitate quite strongly to have people I don't know parading through my property.  In the 1950's, the time I grew up, this wasn't so.....but times have changed and drastically so in the last year. Be Wise.

Clau.....Bravo!  It always warms my heart to hear of others who walk this Path and over-come the challenges day by day.  I just finished watching a great movie on YouTube called July Rising.  It is very true to life about a young woman trying to farm alone after she inherits her grandfather's farm.  Most commenting only saw failure and heartbreak at the end.......but she walked away with a ton of money....enough so that she could start small, pay cash and never be beholding to others.  This is a great lesson....learning to be truly self-sufficient.  You can't be if you owe others money for your piece of heaven. Thank you Clau, for sharing your Journey with us.  My dwellings are also small on my land....and nothing is more wonderful that sitting here looking out the window and seeing, all around me, the fruit and nut trees, the gardens.....the birds singing in the trees.  I can't imagine any other way of living.

Abraham Palma wrote:Hi, Purity, may i ask, do you bury your pots?

No.  When I first started all that was available were Air Pots and Root Trainer Air pots.  I had a lot of trouble with them. With all the holes, they were drying out so fast I could hardly keep up with watering.  Then I found the Oxy pots on Amazon.  I don't know what it is, I can't see a real difference in how they are made but they don't dry out more than a normal pot and even if they are dry and you start watering them, the water doesn't run out the holes first. Really happy with them.  The two brands I was originally using, I had to wrap shade cloth around the outsides, then they worked fine.  With the Oxy's didn't have to do that.

What I do is I put each pot in one of those tubs you see at Home Depot - the ones with the yellow lids. I elevate them on the thin red bricks, then I keep the bottom filled with water up to the bricks.  It serves two purposes: humidity and it keeps the ants off the trees. We have a LOT of ants here in the desert....it was the only way I found that keeps them off the trees.  I feed my Great Pyrenees one of those little jars of baby food pork for her morning meal.  I've started using them for weighting down the branches I am espaliering.  I was tying the branches to the holes on the tubs but the ants just walk up the string.  So this works really nice. You can use a empty jar (hole drilled thru the lid so you can insert a wire/string) and then as they are trained you can gradually add water to the jars or add more jars.     I use the 7 gallon pot for normal trees/veggies and the 12 gallon for standard trees I have pruned into bushes.

If you buy your perlite/coir/vermiculite in bulk and using the coir brick as a measurement - one brick coir, verm and perlite, you can fill 3 of the 7 gallon Oxy pots.     If you buried an Air Pot it would defeat the purpose of using one. The holes are there so that as the root contacts the hole it recoils from the air and instead of continuing to grow and encircling the pot, it puts out a new root instead. That is why you can keep fruit trees and such indefinitely in these pots. They will create thousands of tiny little hair roots which allows them to use the moisture and fertilizer more efficiently than a plant in the ground.  You can see that by looking at roots of trees you are putting in the ground - the roots are really thick so not as efficient.