For rent: A sweet, small, one-bedroom home in the Upstate NY woods. It's extremely secluded (we sometimes garden in the buff), off-grid, with owned solar panels and brand new LiFePo4 battery bank, and a brand new backup propane generator (hooked up to our giant, permanent propane tank).
It's 5 minutes from a small town, 15 minutes to a bigger town, 20 minutes to an even bigger town, and 40 minutes to Saratoga Springs (of horse racing fame), Bennington Vt and Queensbury NY (has every store you need for shopping),
There's a sizable shed for yard tools, chicken feed, gardening supplies, etc, and a lean-to built on the back for building supplies or outdoor storage. We've got lots of building supplies that we will leave for your projects. There's a sunporch/ greenhouse addition being built out from the covered porch that needs to be finished, but most of the supplies are present to do it. The greenhouse is going to give you a huge head start on spring planting, and also give you an outdoor feel in the winter for smoking or hanging out with friends (no smoking in the house).
There's room for another shed if you want to put one up (there's already a shed kit here, waiting to be built), for a few goats or additional storage. The neighbors on the right are rarely there and have agreed to let us pasture our goats there to help keep the brush and weeds down, but we never got the goats because life intervened. I'm pretty sure they would make the same deal with renters.
There 's a chicken house, a fenced chicken yard and enclosed, sheltered chicken run for bad weather.
There are two large garden areas with trellises, raised beds and terraced beds. We also have multiple grow bags that we will leave. Growing cannabis is legal here, and we've grown successfully for 3 years. Fruit trees include hardy fig, dwarf Lapin cherry, dwarf mulberry, elderberry. Established grapevine, raspberries, blueberries and a red currant that makes amazing jam (well, YOU have to make it, the bush doesn't do it spontaneously). Established herb beds and prolific, sweet strawberry bed that come back every year on their own. Tulips, daffodils, lilies, catnip, irises, more, already established and come back each year.
There's a 400 ft deep well, and we have never come CLOSE to running out of water. Never any sediment, etc. We have a septic tank, but we haven't had to pump it for the 6 years we've been here. We use a combo of composting toilet and utilizing urine for fertilizer to keep from filling up the septic tank, so it has time to empty on its own. We DO use the upstairs bathroom, just not as much. We recommend putting in a grey-water system to further spare the septic. We meant to, but never got around to it.
The woods provide plenty of deadfall wood for kindling for the wood stove and logs for hugelkultur. Also, edible mushrooms grow in our woods at the right times of year (KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS! We take no responsibility).
Our neighbor on the left (through dense woods, not visible from our property) currently plows us out in the winter, but not for free. He's super-nice and will make you a good deal. His wife is willing to help support your chickens in exchange for eggs.
Our neighbor near the road (also not visible from our house) has a horse farm with an endless pile of aged manure for your fertilizing needs. You can shovel and haul it yourself for free (after establishing friendly relations) or she may be willing to load your truck or trailer with her tractor for a fee.
1/2 a block from the end of our access road, there's a regularly-replenished pile of free wood chips for making garden paths, mulching, mushroom substrate, etc. and a little further on, a mountain of free sand for filling potholes on the access road or whatever you need sand for.
Behind the property are 30 acres of woods full of deer and wild turkey, if you're a hunter. We're not, but people hunt there every year, and we've never had trouble with hunters' bullets going astray or whatnot. You just need to get permission from the landowner, but it doesn't seem hard to do, based on the amount of hunting that goes on there.
We encourage any person or couple (not suitable for kids) to try your permie experiments here--just keep it permie and don't use chemical pesticides or fertilizers, and do a good job. This is a great place to start out and see if the off-grid life is for you. We love it here, but we're moving to be closer to my daughter, who is having health struggles, and to my granddaughter.
Now for the somewhat challenging aspects: the property is on a slope, hence the terracing. The largest gardening area is not terribly sloped and the smaller one is level. There's a steeper slope behind the house, which limits its usefulness. We thought it might be a good place for a couple pigs, if properly fenced. Another thing we didn't get to.
The driveway is steep-ish and requires an AWD/4WD vehicle to get up it in the snow or ice. Before we got an AWD, we parked at the bottom and walked up. Helpful hint: save ashes from the wood stove for icy conditions. They work great for providing traction for feet and tires! Also good for the soil in small amounts.
The property is on a shale bed, so there's not a lot of naturally-occurring topsoil for planting. However, there's a reasonably-priced service that will deliver a truckload of topsoil and compost, which we've used liberally, filling in our terraces, raised beds and planting bags. We've augmented that with our own garden /chicken manure compost from our permanent compost bin that we've built. One surprising benefit of the rock layer is that we have no problems with burrowing animals like groundhogs, which generally devastate gardens in our region.
The house is strictly wood-heated. There's not enough off-grid electricity for space heaters, and propane heaters will cost you a bundle in propane. So, firewood will be an expense. We'll probably leave a lot behind to get you started.
The previous owners never put in flooring, so it's concrete. You could put in flooring if you want, but we've found that we track in so much dirt that we're better off with concrete because any nice flooring would get ruined. Once the greenhouse is done though, it can be a buffer from the outside and you can take off your shoes before entering. Then flooring might be feasible.
The house is about a 600 sq ft footprint. It's got a loft upstairs (200 sq ft?) with a bedroom and bathroom (just one). So it's small. The only door in the house is the one to the bathroom, a barn door. So there's no way to retreat from your partner and slam the door if you get in a fight. It's a lot of togetherness. When I need time to myself, I go to the car.
It's necessary to watch your power expenditure. We don't have many electric appliances, and things like microwaves and dishwashers are probably not in the cards. We actually turn off the power at night. and charge our devices during the day. We charge solar lights (which we will leave for you) outside and bring them in at night, plus we have battery-powered motion-activated lights inside for moving around after lights-out. We'll leave those plus the rechargeable batteries and charger. I have run high-energy stuff like power tools at midday when the batteries get replenished as I use them, and we'll also leave a gas generator behind for such things.
The fridge is propane and apartment-sized (much bigger than a mini fridge). You have to adjust the temp to the weather. In winter it will freeze if you don't, and on hot days, stuff won't stay quite as cold. Again, not enough power for an electric fridge or freezer. You could install more panels and batteries if you want to expand your energy-use options.
It gets hot inside for several days a year. No AC. If it's really hot, we go to the river 1/2 a mile away, or go shopping or to the library.
There's a little apartment-size washer with super-useful spinner that gets most of the water out of the clothes, but the machine isn't good for bedding or muddy farm clothes, so the laundromat is your friend.
We only get satellite internet, which isn't probably fast enough for work-at-home situations. However, the library is only 5 minutes away, and has high-speed internet.
As with any untamed forest, there are predators like eagles, hawks, owls, weasles, bobcats, coyote-wolf hybrids, bear (it seems like just one, actually). We've beefed up our chicken yard and it's stopped almost all predation on the chickens, but if you let chooks roam the property all day, you may lose a few. Goats must be locked up for the night. Pigs are usually ok with a simple shelter for the night. We've never lost a cat to a predator, though--or to traffic, because the road is distant and not a high-traffic thoroughfare.
So anyway, we'd like to rent the homestead. A one-bedroom apartment around here is anywhere from $950 on up. You can have an entire extremely-private homestead with established gardens and freedom to experiment, grow whatever, run around naked, etc, but near all services and shops, for only $1600 a month. If you love it after you've been here a while, we can talk about owner-financed purchase or lease-option.
Zillow link is what it looked like before we happened to it.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/292-Rexleigh-Rd-Salem-NY-12865/216017872_zpid/
Now, most of the yard is taken up with fenced garden.
