Searching for a Homestead? A Wise Homesteader's Advice

so now I want to sit down with you Daryl because you've lived in many different properties you've developed many properties you've done all sorts of different things here with your Gardens and animals ponds bamboo gourds you've had a lot of different farming experiences and so I thought it'd be really valuable to hear your advice on maybe choosing some land how to look at the land in the beginning like you know how do I develop it what do I do things like that okay sure you want to make a list of of things that you really want on a piece of land and then you need to prioritize that list and know that you're not going to get everything I don't think you know no matter what your list is it's going to be so hard almost impossible to find a piece of property that checks off every single box so you got to pick the most important ones and concentrate on those and you'll be lucky if you find your first five all in one place you know and the other five or ten you had you know you got a little bit that's not so great and you know you're going to have to compromise and sacrifice for sure the perfect piece of land is just not going to be out there for you probably um I'm not saying it doesn't exist but you might spend the rest of your life looking for it you know so what you're hunting for if you want to have a homestead I mean you got to think about what's necessary obviously you need enough uh cleared land or land that you could clear uh to grow a garden or raise animals and have a pasture or something like that you can grow you can have pigs out in the woods if you fence off you don't necessarily have to have cleared land for that but you know most of your farming operations you need good Sunshine a South slope would be an excellent setup maybe then you could take advantage of solar more on your house and maybe you have a solar pump on your well or you know whatever and but they're mentioning the will to me always at the top of my list no matter where I was moving or what I was thinking of doing next was water and for me I wanted a spring a natural spring that I could just drink from and second choice would be a will okay those are to me that's your two best sources of water other than that you're drinking chlorinated fluoridated who knows what out of a plastic jug who know where that came from and you know I I just I think water is very important and on a homestead a supply of water for you and your animals and your Gardens is real important you know there'll be droughts you need to run Sprinklers and so you you know when you look for the piece of land if it doesn't have a spring or a pond or any kind of water know that you're probably going to be faced with drilling a well which you know it's up in the air what you're going to end up with or how deep you have to go and how much it costs so the best thing in that case would be if you're thinking about a piece of land and you're going to want to drill a well go talk to the neighbors see if anybody else around there has Wells is it good taste in water How deep did they have to drill yeah you also can call the state they have records of all the wells and how deep they are how much they put out and so forth so you could find out for your area and they'd tell you oh no you know that's real brackish water in that whole area you probably wouldn't want to do that okay you know a lot of places have that you know so you don't necessarily get pure clean water to drink out of a well it just depends uh and test it you got to get it tested and the same with the spring now I have nothing but forest and mountains all the whole Watershed there's nothing to pollute my spring you know it's all natural Forest land and stuff so but I got it tested just to make sure you know and it it's real clean water like I figured it would be so that's important and then you know you you want a good house or a good location to build a house so some level ground and and a place where I think if you're going to lay out Gardens they need to be as close to the house as possible that's going to be a good Garden for you if your garden is way out that way or you got to jump on a four-wheeler to go do some gardening it's not going to be as good a garden as the one you stare right out your window and see all the time and walk a few steps out your door and you're in it and that's how I've set my place up I I'm getting Gardens the whole way around the house and I just started developing out in front I grew a nice corn crop out there this year which that was just a slopey Bermuda grass slope that I put soil and compost and fall leaves and just build up a nice level bed to change the slope you know yeah yeah and man I'm I grew Great Potato crop there last year a great corn crop there this year so I'm going to do that so I'm trying to get all my garden beds close and I have one down along the creek and I mean I grow a lot of stuff down there but it's not as well cared for as the ones I see all the time right or put some crops off down far away that you don't have to really manage they just grow like you said your sweet potato sweet potatoes yep yep as long as you don't have deer coming in on them or anything sure deer like to eat sweet potatoes and rabbits yeah and another thing I'll just mention this but you know it's not in your original search maybe but as you start to set up your homestead and most people are thinking this is the place and I'm going to spend the rest of my days here and develop this and turn it into something for my children and all you know if you're thinking along those lines when you lay things out you know when you decide to build a barn over there and put your garden there and all don't be thinking about how you feel and operate now as a 20 or 30 year old think about what's it going to be like when you're 60 or 70 you're still going to want to Garden but that Barn's a long walk out there now when you're 70 you know like it was when you were 20. so be thinking about that kind of thing you know if it's a permanent place for you and of course if it's a permanent place you know be planting fruit trees and long-term things that'll give you food every year and you don't really have to do anything you've got time to make that happen if you're going to stay somewhere a long time you know the old saying the best time to plant a fruit tree is 20 years ago that's what they say about bamboo too best time to plant bamboos 20 years ago but the next best time is right now so let's see if about searching for a new place okay so a couple things that I always I liked to have when I come off the county road and I enter my property I want to own some Road Frontage along the road on both sides of that entryway I don't want a house sitting on the corner and I got to drive right past it all you know they're monitoring all my movements I mean maybe they're going to turn out to be great neighbors and it's not a problem but maybe not and and you don't want them knowing when you come and go so so along Road Frontage where no one would really be paying attention they're not going to hear the car go by or something that's important and for your water source I had a property one time where I had to share a spring I will never do that again interesting do not do that yeah they might think about things differently than you do and and you know just there's going to be issues uh so I just you know if you have a spring make sure it's on your land entirely it's your spring others maybe there's not some person up above you that could pollute into it or well that's yeah I mean that happens uh put in a big chicken operation you know up above you and that's oh yeah so yeah you got to watch that you know you want to drive around the property and check the neighborhood and study Maps uh to see what the the Watershed looks like and where things are coming from so you know get to know your area if you can stop and talk to some neighbors get to know neighbors you know really check the place out before you commit to it there's a lot to think about just don't expect to get everything on your list that's the main thing and I experienced that too as we were looking for our Homestead and a lot of the states that a lot of people want to move to it's gotten even harder to find this ideal property because so many people are now coming and looking and so that may cause you to lessen your expectations a little bit more or you may have to expand your budget a little further to get the property that you want um yeah it's probably not the easiest time in America to buy land and and do everything but there's still plenty of time to to get your home set and start setting it up well this time reminds me a lot of when I was 20 years in my early 20s in the early 70s okay and and we were having hard Economic Times then it was Jimmy Carter and yeah they had the gas lines we had the gas problem you know and and the economy they had well I guess it was Nixon that did a wage and price controls and things I mean things were pretty you know we have bad inflation we went off the gold standard right and so a lot of people got scared back then like they are now and there was this big backpack land movement back to the land actually land movement I was part of that okay and uh so people went out in the country and of course you know a lot of times they have the attitude right they're getting out of the city I want as far away from civilization as I can get you know and they'd go by some place just way out in the boonies on some back rough road and and that's where they're going to do it well they live to regret that later I mean it's a long rough trip to town and you do that more often than you really think you're going to and you know you're not going to just go out there and never leave you know if you can set that up then that's fine but uh you know you need to be close enough that it's not crazy to get to town and get things you need you know you don't want to go too far out but obviously the further out from the amenities you go the cheaper the land gets and the bigger Parcels that seem to be available if that's what you're looking for okay another thing you might people like to live along the lake which or along a river you know that is a nice thing to have available a caution okay I live along a little small Creek and it's way downhill from my house there's no flooding issues I'd have to worry about I did live along a pretty good sized River once and it it would flood you know from from normal flow to flood was pretty astounding okay and it would flood a lot and came close to the house even so you know when you when you go and you look at a property and you know maybe it's summertime and you see a nice Meandering little stream down there just realize that it's not always going to be so peaceful and calm after big storms and that thing's raging it could be a whole different scene there you know that field you had down it might be underwater right okay so so you know you can ask Neighbors about that and find out you know how that goes uh but but all those you got to take all that into consideration and try to go visit the property at different times a day uh you know just camp out overnight if you can see what the night sounds are around there you know is it is there a barking dog just over the hill that you just can't stand or you know I just some guy works on cars and revs engines all the time maybe it bothers you you know so I mean you know try to see what it's like there in the wet weather and the dry weather um you know don't make a quick decision necessarily although I shouldn't give that advice because when I found this place I made a real quick decision it took me about 10 minutes to realize this is where I wanted to be I love it yeah and I mean when we bought our house there we couldn't wait you had to put an offer down because yeah and within 24 hours somebody else is going to put an offer yep and hey and since it's that kind of environment it wasn't that kind of environment when I bought this yeah however this as you know I'll tell this story is this unique uh this property was on the market for something like 10 months and they had no buddy offering anything wow and one of the main reasons is this property the house is set up on a natural spring most people don't like that they don't trust that they want City Water yeah what they want the safety of city water oh yeah maybe they like fluoride a lot I don't know yeah but you know after drinking gets so long here maybe it starts like you Daryl you're my kind of guy so it was listed for 10 months and they had no offers the day I came to see it there was another real estate agent parked over by the garage talking on her phone and um it made me really nervous because I wanted this place and I thought you know somebody else could make an offer today and I wasn't in a position to just offer cash you know I'll pay it I had to get a loan from A bank but back then that's when if you had a heartbeat you got a loan you know if you if you made ten dollars a week but told them you made a hundred thousand a week they wrote that down and you got a loan wow that's how it was back then they were given loans away to anybody knowing that I was coming in with a disadvantage because if this other person was going to make a an offer the same day as me and they were offering full price and cash dang I was going to be out but I wanted this place so bad that I over bid six thousand dollars and back then that's a lot of money that was a lot of money and I thought that would be enough to make them raise their eyebrows a little say okay we can go with a sure thing but we know loans are easy to get we could go with this guy and make an extra six thousand and that's what they did but that day it wasn't just me and this other guy a third offer came oh wow after 10 months with nothing on the same day they got three offers oh my gosh there was one the first person was trying to get them down lower the next guy had cash for what you're asking yeah and then there was me I need a loan but I'll give you more nice and I got it so nice good strategy yeah that's the other part of it is that you um it was kind of tricky sometimes you would get your hopes up for a house and you'd go see it you really like it you think about putting an offer down but then some you found out oh it's already gone yep um so I guess it's hard but you gotta like not try not to get too emotionally invested so you don't you know and I'm hot market like this you know it's and if you're online looking at Zillow or someplace like that to study property I mean you can learn a lot about a property and see pictures of it and all but they always look better online than when you go out and see them I completely agree I I yeah I was blown away by that the difference when you're actually standing there because you can't you can't get a sense of the slope and the all these different things that you need to pay attention to on a property you've got to step foot on the property I mean I would never buy anything without right they just didn't show you the junkyard across the street that's the other reason you can get some you know especially if you're I'm an unrestricted area I know I could literally have a slumlord set up in my my four acre field instead of sheep and they couldn't stop me or I could put a chicken farmer anyway so if that is for me I want that I don't want anyone to ever be able to screw with me and I'm willing to take the risk of some having a neighbor that does something weird but it but you need to know yourself you may not want to take that risk maybe there's certain Parcels that'll have some restrictions like no chicken farms or no junk yards or something real gnarly but I would stay way away from obviously an HOA or anywhere that's gonna have too many building permits or things like this right because that that also is going to bring in neighbors that want to micromanage and typically when I see stories about people getting in trouble on their properties we're not having building permits or they didn't follow all the rules it's because a neighbor reported them the government find out on their own right you're getting reported by some bad neighbor so neighbors are huge and I when I was finding my property I went and I knocked on the door of a couple neighbors and talked to them and asked them some questions and I'm good are you cool with me shooting guns next door or whatever like yeah things that might bother them or right that's excellent to do that that's you should do that what is I guess as an as an older guy a little bit older guy now what are some things that um you appreciate that you've done on your property now that you're a little bit older in age right well um you know it was a pretty rough place here when I got here just rock out croppings and all that so I've smoothed all that out and made nice Trails I can get up all of my Terraces with just a nice little ramp sort of thing and you know the the beds that are built up at least at that front edge where I have the rock walls that's a convenient thing when you're older you don't have to bend over I can stand on the path outside the rock wall and harvest my broccoli or you know whenever I'm growing along the edge so that's nice um let me see and you know recently I purchased oh yeah this is cool it's a battery power electric uh wheelbarrow and that's made a huge difference for me because there's a lot of I have a lot of slopes and Hills to negotiate here and it's an amazing thing it the hopper on it is probably two or three of my regular wheelbarrow loads I can just fill that thing up and it's effortless the battery the motor does all the work I just kind of guide it where it needs to go and that has really helped me and you know a lot of people can make use of that even when you're young it saves you back oh yeah so especially if you have to go uphill you know pushing wheelbarrows loads of stuff uphill I have done a lot of that around here over the past two decades yeah but I'm I'm liking this thing better yeah are there any perennial crops besides bamboo that you've planted throughout your years that you really have appreciated and enjoyed or fed you well or yes there is one I'm thinking off right right off the bat and it's also being accused of being an invasive but it is um Japanese wine berries wine berries okay okay it's sort of a raspberry like cane I grew up with this thing in my childhood it grew it it was brought here in the 1800s from Japan because it's a real good Berry and they made wine out of it and you know you can eat them they're delicious and sweet and uh when I was a kid I noticed they would always grow at the edge of the woods they liked a little bit of sunlight but not all full day of it and that was sort of their Zone and so I could wander around and if I wanted some wine berries if it was in the season I just knew I needed to go to the edge of the woods and I could probably find some so I grew up eating those things and they have a distinctive red colored cane and little fine Jaggers you know Thorns sticking out of them uh so one time this was a pro right before I moved here so a little over 20 years ago on another property I had a load of soil brought in I was going to use and I ended up leaving that pile sit there for a while before I got to it and I noticed this little three inch cane coming up and it was red and I hadn't seen that since I left I grew up in Pennsylvania that's where that my experience was from in Pennsylvania and I hadn't seen those things since coming to Tennessee and uh as soon as I saw I was like wow I know what that's I Barry from my childhood so I you know cultivated that and grew it and took cuttings in the future and it's all I have a big planting of it down there I like a you know I have trellises set up and I get berries every year off of that and the reason they call it invasive see these yellow leaves right over here that's that's some of it right there the the animals the birds and the critters will eat those berries and spread those seeds around and so it just comes up all over the place and I have some coming up even deep in my Woods where it's it's they're not getting much sun at all of course they don't do much they might make a few berries but to me that's like yeah you know that's what the woods used to be like you could walk in the woods and eat as you go there's all kinds of food available so I'm happy that that's invasive on my land yeah right you know it's a food crop you know so and it's not that hard if you don't like where it is that you know you can pull it up pretty easily and but anyway that's that's that's a perennial that I value very much all right Dale that was super informative I learned so much and I'm really thankful that you let me come over to do this and thanks for um I think you contacted me through email a couple years ago and I was looking in Tennessee and yeah we've been chatting back and forth and I finally was able to leave my Homestead and come visit it's hard to leave a homestead it is yeah especially in the beginning when you're setting things up absolutely well I'm glad you could come it's been great hanging out with you yeah I finally got to meet you yeah thank you so much for for teaching us so much and I know it's going to help a lot of other people get started in bamboo and right so yeah I want to encourage you guys to start growing bamboo because it's you know one of the best if not the best plants in the world to grow I think I think America needs to become a bamboo culture that would be pretty amazing we're one of the few places that's not a bamboo culture huh interesting I mean it's pretty common around the world yeah that's true and see bamboo sort of had a stigma against it because poor people worked with bamboo and built little huts and you know shacks and things for their animals and I was out it was just something for poor people to work with but now everybody's realizing what an incredible material it is how strong it is and you know they're building whole giant houses multi-story houses out of it they've they've come up with the metal connectors so you can connect it and make geodesic domes or all kinds of stuff oh yeah using bamboo you know yeah it's it's pretty incredible so it's sort of being rediscovered yeah and uh we need to turn into a bamboo culture here absolutely all right well let's uh we'll be the first ones to get started in that great all right thanks see you guys later

Channel: Nature's Always Right

Views: 40,971

Keywords: homesteading, homestead advice, homestead lessons, how to choose land for homestead, homesteading for beginners, how to find a homestead, kaye kittrell late bloomer, steven cornett, darrell luck, nature's always right, the best land for homesteading, choosing land for a homestead, 6 mistakes to avoid when buying raw land, choosing homestead land, choosing a homestead, searching for a homestead

Id: jcWqNEvEWzc

Length: 21min 22sec (1282 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 14 2023