Perry Way

ken finch wrote: I am wondering if there is a website that shows counties or areas of land in which do not have zoning laws and do not require building permits? I would rather not have to contact each and every county for which property I may be interested in. I am looking to purchase 1-5 acres to build an earth bag home on. I am open to any state. If you don't know of a website it would be greatly appreciated if you could tell me of a county or area that you know of. Thanks a bunch

Eureka County, Nevada. That's the only place in Nevada. Central Nevada. Surrounded by Elko County, Nye County, Lander County. It's either the lowest populated county or second, I don't know exactly. Most of the land is BLM and most of the private land is owned by one owner, Nevada Gold Mines, a partnership between Barrick Gold Mines and Newmont Mines. The county seat is Eureka, an old historic mining town. Very quaint. Well kept mining town, not a ghost town, but has I think only 1 gas station. Eureka is on Highway 50, the "Loneliest Highway In America" aka the "Lincoln Highway".

There's another town in the northern central part of the county called Crescent Valley. It's got 1 gas station, 1 restaurant, 1 "general store", and populated mostly by mine workers. There is a lot of land available to buy around Crescent Valley area. Further north on the highway that cuts through Crescent Valley is Beowawe (Bee-Oh-Wah-Way) and it's smaller than Crescent Valley but there's a few subdivisions in the Emigrant Pass area of 10 - 20 acre lots, all OFF GRID. Crescent Valley is on grid and has municipal water.

Just north of Beowawe is I-80. From Beowawe, the nearest gas stations are in Elko Nevada (county seat of Elko County) to the east north east, and Battle Mountain (county seat of Lander County) to the west. Winnemucca is about 90 miles to the west in Humbolt County. Elko has an airport. But closest international airport would be Salt Lake City, Utah about 4 hours maybe 5 from Eureka County via I-80. Add another hour or more from Eureka City which is in the south east portion of the county. The nearest town from Eureka city is Ely Nevada (EEE-LEE not EEE-LIE), county seat of White Pine County. Ely is a nice little town. It has a number of gas stations, a modern grocery store, no big box stores but there are hardware stores and such. Most everything you would need could be gotten from Ely unless you're a plant based diet person like myself with a 2-a-day minimum requirement of Avocados and a love for organic/natural grown veggies.

The only requirements to build in Eureka County are..

1. If you required water (all humans require water, don't you think?), you can either truck the water in and store in your tanks, or you must get a state-certified well. This means no DIY well digging. This is the law in Nevada. They have a state run agency that requires you work with a state-approved well digger because the State claims water rights. All water rights are taken in the state, and no new water rights are available anywhere for commercial agriculture wells. However, don't despair, there is no approval process required to get a residential well and they have a liberal 1 acre foot limit per residential well (roughly 1785 gallons per day qualification). The only regulation being that you can only have one residential well per legal lot and it has to have a residence on it. If you buy two lots, and build one house, you may only have one residential well. And since wells are dug by state approved well diggers, the only way you can skirt this rule is by DIY well digging. (not advising that).

2. If you plan to build a residence, you will need a state certified septic system. This means it has to be signed off by someone who can certify it. Here, you can DIY your own septic system, but you have to do a good enough job to get it certified (by a contractor or state inspector). If you want a grey water system, you can do that but you will be required to build a septic for black water. Who wouldn't want a good septic system anyway?

There are absolutely no plan checks, no permits required, no hidden taxes, no regulatory agencies, and no zoning enforcement anywhere in Eureka County. Lot setbacks in a town (Eureka, Crescent Valley) on lots with municipal water and roads leading to all properties have absolutely NO setbacks. Setback requirements elsewhere in the rural parts is 15 feet from property line to allow neighbors to access their properties. This is inherently a good thing since no land in Nevada can be legally landlocked. (Unlike California where I've been wanting to buy some land for a permaculture food forest. Some stinking leftist organization purchased an easement to protect this canyon. There's a road to the property and it's very historic. It's over 100 years old. But the owner/seller of the property got locked out and brought legal proceedings to get an easement by necessity and gave up because it would have cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars to get that case through to completion.)

I am sick of government. Even Montana where Paul Wheaton is located, is riddled with government gotchas. I'm sick of them. I'm strongly considering a move to Eureka County Nevada. For freedom sake. Our society is crumbling around us, I don't have high hopes for USA surviving this overstretch by the powers that be. To me, freedom is more important than convenience.

If you want to be around people, have the most amount of sunshine to heat your earthship home and gather up the most amount of solar energy possible, I would highly suggest you look into Crescent Valley, Nevada.

That said, I would stay away from the center of Crescent Valley due to alkaline soil/salted soil from the flood plain, as typical in all the basins in the Basin and Range geographical area which is mostly Central Nevada and portions of Utah.

Lastly, I took a trip last year to Central Nevada to scope the area and see if I could stand living there. I am from "heaven" on the Central Coast of California where we have Goldylocks weather (not to warm, not too cold, not too dry, not too wet). I am surrounded by incredible beauty here. And I am addicted to hiking/bushwhacking/adventuring/exploring and a bit of fence hopping. I wondered if I could stand Central Nevada. I knew there was no way I would be able to stand anywhere near Las Vegas, or most if not all of Arizona and most of New Mexico. Been to all over those places and need some good weather to grow the veggies I exclusively live on. Weather is important to me. I was surprise just how beautiful the high deserts of Nevada were. They are very green too. As far as deserts are concerned, they are full of life. I went in July. When California's central valley was 105-110, Mojave desert and East Sierras the same. I then took Highway 6 from California to Ely Nevada. By the time I got to Tonopah the weather had cooled down to 102 (higher altitude) and leaving Tonopah it kept cooling down and started getting greener. It was absolutely beautiful. I only ran across another car on highway 6 like once every 10 or 15 minutes. One time it was about an hour I saw absolutely no cars. Camped overnight in the mountains south of Ely Nevada in a campground. It was 85 when I got there around 4 pm. Very lovely weather, gentle breeze. It was nice. Overnight got down to mid 50's. Very nice. Next day went from Ely to Eureka then Austin on highway 50, the loneliest highway in America. It was so nice. Absolutely beautiful, magnificent views. Nevada has more mountain ranges than any other state in the country and Central Nevada is the least populated part of the entire country, Alaska included. Something like 2 people per square mile or less than 2. It's very low. You can see mountains almost every direction. Most of them in July were snow capped. There are no forests in the basins. The forests are only on the range tops. If you want to be surrounded by trees you will need to plant them yourself.

All in all I am very strongly considering Eureka County. My need to hike and explore, and be engulfed by nature will be unquenched in Nevada. I'll have so much to explore. Even the areas where there are private properties are checkerboarded by BLM lands typically a section at a time. But there are portions where BLM owns entire townships, and not just one but several in line. Except for say national parks or state parks, you are welcome to hunt and explore all the BLM lands without restriction. This is very meaningful to me as well. If you buy land there you stand a good chance of backing up to BLM land, so you could leave your property line into a 1 mile by 1 mile "back yard" to roam around.

Most of the basins are warm in the summer, some more other others. But they typically don't pass 95 degrees F during the days. As far as winter weather is concerned, a light dusting of snow each winter, thaws quickly. I won't be deterred by weather. I like it warm actually and not big into cccccccold weather. Off grid is very very doable there. Indeed that's how most Nevada residents live, especially those in Eureka County outside of Crescent Valley, Beowawe and Eureka towns. Apart from solar electric there is a wind component and no zoning/permits means you can erect a windmill without someone shooting you down in a planning meeting.

I have not a clue what purple means here. More than that, I don't understand this blowing rainbows out of my ass mentality. It seems to me that Permaculture is a logical straight-forward rational system that makes sense.

God bless you Geoff! Thank you so much! You're my hero I want to do the things you do, and certainly want to bask in all that food forest goodness! hehe. I think my property is a long way away from a food forest, but at a bare minimum I intend to reforest the land there.. to green the Carrizo Plain. These Cassia trees I intend as keepers instead of 100% mulchers. I'll grow others from seed to devote entirely to mulch like in your Food Forest video. I am sort of possessed with a general idea of surrounding fruit trees with legume trees, permanently, and then around a bunch of them would be Afghan Pine and Arizona Cypress as wind protection and winter microclimate creation to perhaps allow for some more temperate arid species like olives and pomegranates and figs like you did in Jordan. Without that microclimate there's no way olives and figs will survive the -5 farenheit lows which happen about once every 10 years. Don't mean to ramble on, thanks again!

Geoff Lawton wrote:Hi Off the Grid
if your cassia trees had nodules on their roots when you took them out of their pots the already have been inoculated and you can carefully check that out by digging around their root zone, you can then just add some of the soil to the area you are going to plant the new seeds. If you cannot find any nodules you can find trees that are nodulating and grab some of that soil and add it around your trees or mix with your seeds, you only need a tiny amount of soil to add millions of nodulating bacteria.

Thanks Geoff, That's good to know information. I will attempt to inspect the root area on the trees I just planted last weekend without hurting anything, but just the same I think also I discovered a source for inoculum at Prairie Moon Nursery and if it's the correct kind I'm going to buy some for the seeds. But what about if I were to mix some up in water and then irrigate existing trees with that water? Would that work or is inoculum treatment only for seeds?

Geoff Lawton mentions very briefly on the Food Forest DVD using Cassia trees for mulch.

That's about the most information I've gotten about the tree from a Permaculture perspective and I've been scouring the internet for info too.

I planted 4 or 5 Cassia trees on my property over the past few weekends, hoping I was lucky with picking the right tree. I guess I'll find out how they do with the minimal amount of rainfall that is normal for the Carrizo Plain. When I bought the trees I was told they were extremely drought tolerant and well I sure hope that's true because I don't plan to irrigate and every year is drought like conditions on the Carrizo Plain. What I wanted to know, and I guess is too late now for the trees I did plant is, do I need to innoculate in order to get the nitrogen fixation? Or does them being in a container and transplanted mean that they are already producing nitrogen?

Also, I collected a ton of seeds from the pods that were on the trees. I must have several thousand. I plan to plant them, all of them actually. Do I need to innoculate them or will they develop over time with the necessary bacteria that finish the nitrogen fixation cycle?

Also, where does one obtain the innoculation supplies? I'm just learning as I go along..

I musta spent at least several hours over the course of a day and a half before I posted my question for Geoff a few weeks ago. I spent a great deal of time just gathering my thoughts together to ask the dang question. Then the podcast came and the questions weren't asked due to time. Now from reading this I get the feeling we're supposed to increase the postings here, but no guarantee that Geoff will even see them let alone read them. I think I will get my answer one day, one way or another but it's likely not going to be this time around. Geoff is a superstar and likely there's all sorts of buzzwords and excitement going on about some things in particular but likely nothing to do with my query because not many people would choose to start a permaculture project in a salted landscape. I appreciate the gesture to set up the forum for this possibility but I think I will wait to ask Geoff in person, when I meet him one day, if that ever happens. Meanwhile I'm just going to study for clues and apply some scientific study of my own to get my answer because I have so far never heard anyone who has the answer. Geoff alluded to how the salt in the soil in Jordan in the Greening the Desert part 1 got transformed and desalted due to the fungii. Insert insoluable. He used those two words. I think he may have the most information on the planet related to that process.

Len Ovens wrote:My first thought is to fill the pond or at least part of it with big rocks. These act as shade as well as something cool(er) for any water is the air to condense on. It seems to me this is one of those things talked about in one of the podcastes/threads but I can't remember which one. Rocks are also great to encourage wildlife... like your frogs... and the animals that eat them. The less you can see of your water, the longer it should last. It is hard for me to test this as I live in a less than dry climate.

I have been considering your idea for a few days. It seems to me that the only way this could work is if there were several layers of rocks high because the sun on the Carrizo Plain is about the hottest sun I've ever felt. Honestly it's like hotter than other places for some reason the rays of the sun make it through the atmosphere more there (it's a fact actually). So I'm thinking if it were one layer of rocks then there'd be excessive evaporation during the days as soon as the first rock gets exposed to the air. My fear being it would evaporate more than it would condense. What do you think about that? Anyway, to bring rocks out there, that will cost me like probably a minimum of $1000 so I'll have to really consider this long and hard. I have maybe a week or two before they fill up. I was thinking next weekend, find the low spot in the large pond, and dig a trench in the center, going down 1 foot. If I do that the length of the pond I am thinking I will have enough water that frogs may reach maturity. That's a lot of digging bar muscles to make that work, but I'm thinking maybe 6 hours in the cooler weather... it'll be good exercise.

Jami McBride wrote:What do you think... will this mess up natures balance?

No. Nature will replenish the moisture that it wants to have in the atmosphere by recycling from somewhere else.

Fred Morgan wrote:
True confession time, I am a guy, rather large (over six foot, sort of resemble Herman Munster) and I used to knit. I would here too, except we don't need anything warm except perhaps one month a year.

I know how to knit, crochet, hook weave ... and play American football. 

Maybe I can knit me a hammock...

Fred, I'm a man and I knit too.  In fact I knit pretty good actually. I used to own 5 knitting machines as well at one time. But I got rid of them to fund other hobbies and now just content to hand knit the occasional item.  I knit a lot of hats.

Also, the word is the origins of knitting began with fishermen from having made fishing nets, the process of knitting became invented. Not sure if that's true but the general understanding is that back in the day, in the primitive technology days, the men were knitters and the women were weavers.

Argentino wrote:
aether:

For the 20 acres that I have, the property tax is very low, like $150 (US dollars) per year. The irrigation "tax" (it's not really a tax) is around $400 per year. The water rights for my property (it changes from one to another) gives me 3 hours once a week. There are a couple of months in the dead of winter with no water. I've been told by people in the area that this is not a problem as the fruit trees are dormant anyway at that time.

You won't need irrigation with this: http://groasis.com/page/uk/index.php and it's like that Ronco oven, you just "set it and forget it" which would benefit you in your position. I have some on my property now, a much more difficult piece of land than yours, and it seems to be what they claim it is, which it that it allows you to grow trees from seeds without irrigating.

One big caveat I can fill your mind with is, because there's water inside the Waterboxx, if you're not around to manage your property, you will need to bury these up to the ridge line on the side, and you'll need to wrap it in chicken wire so the coyotes or wolves or whatever you might have like that down in Argentina don't upturn your Waterboxx and ruin your plantings (and steal the water). I had that happen to me very recently thus requiring me to start over again with the first plantings.  Also I needed to protect against jackrabbits as they would scratch the top of the Waterboxx and biting the plastic leaving gashes. I'm sure over a long time they woudl eventually break through but anyway the chicken wire seems to be doing its thing. I'll be upscaling my Waterboxx plantings next year once we get past the winter freeze.  I hope to have 30 Waterboxxes set up by late February (here in California).