One thing many continue to ask me about is how to have land that is productive even if seldom managed. The true dyed in the wool, off grid BOL. As you might imagine Permaculture is part of the answer.
The key with land like this is it must be able to provide many of your needs but do so in a way that looks very natural. Anyone passing near it must see it as mostly just scrub and woods like everything else around it.
The good news is the best land to do something like this with is often the cheapest land you can buy. Generally you find “problems” that others don’t want to deal with and either you don’t care about these problems or you have a creative solution to them. What I will lay out today is an almost perfect system and piece of land. Odds our neither you or I will ever get anything up to this level of perfection. We look at it only so that we can figure out how to get as close as possible based on our resources, our budgets and our region.
Join Me Today As I Discuss…
- Why you would want to have a BOL like this in the first place
- Shopping for land and thoughts on owner financing
- Four big must haves for others and why you don’t want them (may be)
- Electric Grid Access
- Telephone Service
- Grid water or easy well installation
- Serviced road frontage
- What land like this really needs to have
- Guaranteed right of access
- Surface water or the ability to create it
- Decent soil
- Trees and other on site resources
- Reasonable terrain
- Good solar access
- Minimal regulations and no restrictions
- Wildlife
- The Perfect Piece of Land
- River or stream on it
- Natural spring on it
- At least the perimeter is heavily treed
- Native plants that are edible
- Good population of wild game
- Large the larger the better think 10 acres minimum, 50 is ideal
- Some ideas for setting things up
- Swales and ponds then more swales and ponds
- Plant food forests and do so heavily
- Set up some sort of hard building with a metal roof
- Set up at minimum 2500 gallons of water catchment (potable)
- Use coppicing and pollarding to harvest wood
- Set up earth walled structures
- Put in an underground structure if at all possible
- Store as little as possible on site, hide the hell out of what you do
- Set up high capacity wild life feeders (including for fish)
- Build functional things that can’t be removed or easily vandalized
- Create an “earth fence” and plant it with the nastiest stuff you can find
- Have one way in, one apparent way out and many actual ways out
- Use a compound approach
- Consider “tiny houses” on tailors
Resources for Today’s Show…
- Lifetime MSB Membership (limited time only closes on Friday 11-30-12)
- Members Support Brigade
- Copper Bullion
- TSP Gear Shop
- Join Our Forum
- ShelfReliance.com – (sponsor of the day)
- The Berkey Guy – (sponsor of the day)
Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.
