Mini Homesteading Property: what to consider and mistakes we made

in #homesteading7 years ago (edited)

There are a lot of blog posts and videos out there addressing what you should look for in a homestead property. They cover a lot of the basics like water, land access, and regulation. All of these are important but what about those of us who will not be homesteading in the middle of nowhere or working with a raw piece of land?


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(our fixer upper)

Why We Did Not Buy Raw Land

The most important thing you need to know is that this is not our forever homestead property. If you read our introduction post you will know that we had a few limitations to where our property could be and how we could finance it. We are young, even if we sold everything we own we would not be able to buy property with cash. Because of this limitation we financed our home. Most homesteaders will frown upon this method of starting a homestead. While it is not ideal, this is what worked best for us at this point in time. I choose to look at it as an investment. Not only is our mortgage cheaper than rent in our area but our house can be worth more than we bought it for once some renovation is done.

In our case we were not able to choose the general location of our property. We have to stay near my husband’s work, his stipulation was that the property be within a 30 minute drive. Even with this limitation we were able to buy a property in a relatively rural area. It is unincorporated and there is little regulation on what animals we are allowed to keep. We are actually zoned agricultural because nearly everything around us is, which allows more freedom than if we were on a 1 acre plot in suburbia.

We are investing in our future. I mentioned in our introduction post that we do not have any experience with any skills even remotely useful in homesteading. Because of this we were not willing to just up and move to a large property, for my husband to quit working and hope we would make it. We aren’t that adventurous. We also have debt outside the house that we would like to take care of before buying our forever property. It is more important to us to test out the waters, get some learning and pay off our debt than it is for us to have the ‘ideal’ homestead property. This might sound a little counter intuitive. Buy a house (debt) to help get rid of debt. In our opinion mortgage debt is a lot different than say credit card debt or student loan debt. If you don’t plan on keeping the house you can make back what you spent if the market is good, if not you can rent it. It’s an investment in a way credit cards are not and we were willing to take the risk to be able to start homesteading.


Finding Our Property

So what did we look for? Our monthly mortgage payments had to be covered by my husband’s housing allowance. It had to have at least 1 acre. This is a number we felt comfortable with, that we felt would allow us to have some outdoor living space, chickens and a large garden. A private well was a must! City water is treated with chlorine, fluoride and various other chemicals to keep down bacteria growth. This is not something we want to be consuming. (Bottled water also contains chemicals and really, who wants to buy water?!) Be within 30min drive of my husband’s work.

We pretty much got what we were looking for!


Oops

However, we made some pretty big mistakes. We are surrounded by agriculture. This may seem like a good thing and we thought so at first, until the first time I saw the pecan farm across the street spraying pesticides. I felt so dumb. How could we have not thought of that? Here we are surrounded by conventional farmland and I completely forgot about pesticides! Not only is all the property around us farmland but before 1980 our property was actually part of the farm behind us until a section was sold off in 3 plots and houses were built.

We didn’t test the well for nitrates. Because we have so much farmland around us it is entirely possible our well water has nitrates in it which can be very bad for your health. A few years ago there was actually a woman in the tri county area whose entire family got cancer and they found high levels of nitrates in their well water. This is something we will be testing for soon!
We didn’t check for the property markers. Rookie mistake I know! We have only been able to find one stake so far, though we haven’t devoted that much time to the endeavor. Hopefully we will find the others and we won’t have to pay a surveyor to come out and mark it. Those guys are expensive!

We have no idea where our septic is :o. This is a really big deal. We don’t know where the lines are or the tank so we could dig and hit something and it could get expensive. We already checked county records and they don’t know either, in fact they told us to let them know if we find it.....

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(just one of the many issues that have popped up)

Our house needs a lot of work. We didn’t exactly realize how much updating the house needed or how many issues we would run into. Please look at as much as possible yourself or ask the inspector to walk you through the entire house and ask every question you can possibly think of. If you know someone who has experience with plumbing etc. have them walk through the house with you. We literally did not know anyone so we had to trust the professionals we hired and let’s just say there have been a number of issues that our inspector should have noticed or mentioned.

All in all our property is pretty well suited to our needs. Is it perfect? No but no property will be. Some issues have come up but we also recently found out that we can keep almost any animal we want on our property except a horse! Our homesteading opportunities have expanded because of the location of our small property and we are very excited about that!

I really hope this gives those of you who are not looking to purchase raw homesteading land some ideas of what you might look for and help you avoid some of the major mistakes we made in choosing our property. Good Luck!

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Count these homesteaders out as looking at you in a bad light for financing your home! 😊 Homesteading is as much a frame of mind as a physical infrastructure.

Everyone has to do what they can, when they can. We used to live on 0.4 acres in a neighborhood, but still used that home as a great learning curve to get some 'steadin-skills! Chickens, garden, fruit trees, canning, food storage, off-grid trials, etc. So many things can be done just as well in a suburban home as can be done in a remote cabin!

Septic 💩

Go into your basement or crawlspace and look for where your sewer pipe exits the foundation. This will get you in the right direction for knowing the general area. Septic tanks are generally within 15 feet of the home. Grab a piece of rebar, or metal stake and begin pushing it down into the ground--probing for the septic tank. Tanks are generally only 6" below ground as they need to be opened for pumping.

Once you know where your tank is, look at the lay of your land. Your drain field will not be above the tank, so anything uphill from it you can most-likely discount. Only in rare cases will the drain field be uphill from the tank, and then a pump is needed and you would see that in your yard.

Drain lines can be anywhere from 40 to 100 feet long and from 2 to 8 rows thick. Take into consideration your property lines and that there are usually setbacks for putting septic systems close to property lines.

Other hints can be your grass--thicker, greener, or darker grass can indicate your septic area, or your land--dirt will settle differently on the drain lines than the other un-touched land. This may or may not help in your older system though. Especially if someone had worked to re-smooth the land in the past.

Well 💦

This is a flashback for us! The same home I mentioned above, also had pesticides in the well water. It was unknown to anyone in the area when we purchased (mortgage) the home, but was identified a few years into living there. In our case, we had dieldrin--an insecticide. Eventually, the local city ran water lines out to the neighborhood and connected everyone on city water. I would suggest paying for a water test that goes above the normal one your county will do for free or low-cost. I pray you do not have anything in your water, but if you do, there are filters and systems you can put in place to be safe.

Fixer Upper 🚧

Gotta love 'em! If you have any questions or issues, post them here and I'll help as I can. :)

We don't have a basement or a crawl space (insert crying face here) We are on a cement slab which makes everything difficult! Never ever again. We have a general idea of where it might be based on info from the neighbors who have lived here 20 years. We just have to actually go out and make sure it's where they think it is. Of course we didn't think to ask them until after we'd lived here a year and a half.

The well water was tested when we bought the house but I don't think they included pesticides and insecticides so that is a definite to do! Until then we are filtering it twice once right after the pump and a zero water filter in the fridge! Hoping to upgrade to a berkey eventually. I will definitely be taking you up on that! This house far exceeds our abilities!!

Oh.. that's a bummer. I was hoping you wouldn't say slab! LOL If you get desperate, you could try a septic dye kit, but those are only used to spot leaks or issues with your system, so hopefully you're not (nor ever) in that boat!

oh jeeze I hope not. According to our neighbor it's on the side of the house and we don't plan on doing any digging anytime soon so it's a project for another day!

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