Someone in the forum asked us this question: "So if you had to make a top ten list of what not to do, what would it be for this latest endeavor?". This was a really good question, and I spent so long writing an answer that I decided I would have to post this as actual content, as well as a reply in the forum.
SO here it is, a top ten list of what NOT to do when quitting your life to start a remote homestead. This is, of course, coming from our experience, and based on our resources. If you have something like $25,000 to sink in to a project like this, you will probably be fine, although a lot of this advice will still be applicable.
1) Don’t blow a bunch of money on the way down. You have to understand, we quit our jobs and our lives to do this, and we wanted to have a fun trip down. So we didn’t take a direct route. This ate substantially into our funds. Although, it was an AMAZING road trip.
2) Don’t make an attempt until you have a SOLID budget. This was our largest problem; we sort of left creating a budget as an activity to do once we got to Texas. And then we pushed it back further, since we had to wait for the land surveyor to get started building, anyway. By the time we had our land surveyed, we were a month and a half in, and the damage had been done. Research building materials and have clear idea of costs beforehand, and put these into your budget. Have a food budget, an a gasoline budget. Plan your budget by conservatively over-estimating costs, and only try to cut costs once you are actually on the ground. Look up as many prices as you can on the internet; for prices you can't find out online, just CALL.
3) Create a way to earn revenue BEFOREHAND, don’t just assume it’ll happen. Unless you’ve saved up SIGNIFICANT cash. We had a plan to start up an internet store relatively soon after landing on our property, where we would sell crafts and things online for a profit. We didn’t really have a solid plan, just this concept that it would all come together once we were there. It didn’t, so we’re not going to go back down until we actually have a source of revenue in action, and then we can expand upon it greatly once we’re there.
We had also been warned by a number of homesteaders that found the Texarrakis webpage that this sort of project generally takes tens of thousands of dollars to accomplish. I don’t see myself having that sort of money, at any point, so we will be dependent on some sort of income.
If you don’t have any sort of income, you will probably suffer the same fate that we have.
4) Do not plan to start the project without having already spent a significant amount of time in the area. We had done extensive research on the area before hand, and had spent a week there years ago, but this was not enough. You can only find out so much about remote areas on the internet. You need to actually spend real time where you are setting up your homestead, especially if you are on a very tight budget. You need to know the community, and know the environment. Our most recent trip served this purpose quite well, even if it wasn’t exactly what we had set out to do.
5) Don’t assume that the land is all set up to build on before you get there. This was a large problem for us. I had spent a long time trying to get the only land surveyor in the county out there before we got there, but he wouldn’t get back to us. Once we were actually there, it was only until I was unwittingly behind him in line at the post office that I was able to get him to nail down a time. He turned out to be extremely helpful and friendly, I just don’t think he took us seriously at first. He's not to blame in this instance, we are, since we counted on him being able to work on our schedule. He is a very busy man.
Also, don’t expect there to be easy access to your property. Our property is in a huge, fenced and locked in area that a local rancher controls. It took a better part of an afternoon just to get his phone number. He was very friendly and helpful, but only gave us limited access to one of his gates, as the roads went over his property in a lot of spots; we had to repair about two miles of road to a different, more public gate that we could actually get in and out of, which took time.
This same rancher wasn’t keen on us building without our land being surveyed, but we decided to start a project a few days before the surveyor came out. We were fortunate, one edge of the structure we started turned out to only be about ten feet from our property boundary.
If we had all this taken care of BEFORE getting there, it would have saved a lot of time and energy.
6) Don’t show up with out something solid to live in, living out of tents doesn’t quite cut it. It’s fun and adventurous, but hardly creates a suitable living environment when everything you own is on the floor of a tent. Sleeping can be difficult some nights when the wind slams into your tent all night, creating an excess of noise, making you worry the whole thing is going to collapse on you. The tent will start to disintegrate in the sun and wind after a time, all of a sudden just keeping your tent standing becomes a whole project in and of itself.
Our original plan involved dragging a trailer down, but the amount which this would affect our gas costs was way too high. Next time, we will be showing up WITH a trailer, so we can have proper shelter right off the bat. With a travel trailer as well, we would have a dry, dust free environment that already has a water, electrical, and propane infrastructure, which could be expanded upon once we have other structures set up.
7) Don’t underestimate the power of making lists. Can’t say this enough. Everything we successfully accomplished, was thanks to well crafted lists. When you’re living in the middle of the desert and only visiting town once a week, you only have one shot at getting all the supplies you need the next week. Forgetting something as simple as another pound of nails will set you back.
8) Don't assume you can get all the components you need for a specific project upon arrival. For instance, we had all of the components to set up a working wind generator, except for the specific kind transmission wire it needed. Which turned out to be impossible to find, we ended up ordering it online, but it never showed up at the post office, at least while we were there.
9) Don’t let days simply happen as they will. Organize your time carefully, and prioritize different project components. Set yourself deadlines.
10) Publicity is not necessarily your best friend, you probably don't want to seek it out, until you are established. Sean Cole of Marketplace is an amazing person, and it was a pleasure to have him recording us as we planned. The Marketplace story is actually a condensed version of a much more fleshed out story which will be the pilot episode to a new Canadian Broadcasting Company program called “Money Changes Everything”. I have no regrets about that.
But when the Boston Globe contacted me after I posted an ad for our yard sale on a local Livejournal community, I really should have flat out said NO. The resulting article got linked on Something Awful (which I always used to enjoy, but now I have to evaluate what I find enjoyable on the internet). A few errors on part of the reporter got blown into these insane assumptions about who we were. The biggest example of this, was the article saying I put the land purchase on my Mom’s credit card; it was MY credit card, but one that I wasn’t supposed to use ever, and that my parents monitored. This was nearly a decade ago. That got turned into us being called a bunch of wealthy trust fund suburbanite hipsters. The webpage we had set up and was intended for our friends and family turned into this huge weird thing.
The amount of hate and bashing we then received was ridiculous, and hard to combat from a cell phone with limited 3g connectivity, in the middle of the desert. People thought we were out to prove something, and talked about us as if we were in some reality show with other off grid homesteads as the other contestants. They certainly didn’t cause our failure or anything, but occasionally after some really mean or nasty comment, we would feel demoralized and less motivated. A huge population of internet people making things up about you and making fun of you, as much as you tell yourself it doesn't matter, can actually hurt.
THERE. There's the list. I've written this as much for myself as I have for you. I think #4 is the most pertinent. You need the experience, to get the lay of the land, before you can jump right in and set up shop. The trip is seen as a failure by a large portion of the internet, and admittedly, we did fail to reach our goals. But, I sincerely doubt our goals could have been reached before having this experience, even if it is just because of how little experience in all of this we initially had.
It must be said that a huge amount of planning went into this; the problem was just execution. We planned a great deal, but left a lot of execution of our plans until we had already landed in West Texas.
