Our New Place

So we signed on a new place about a month ago. It's all woodsy, filled with huckleberries and wild grapes, among other things, Huge oak trees, yuccas, and even a few snakes and gopher turtles.
There is nothing on the place yet, just woods. We have done a little bit of cleanup, but not much. I'm going to use the back part as an annex for my apiary, to raise up weaker colonies in a place with less competition. I've talked to the nearest neighbors about allergies, etc. and they are excited to have managed honeybees coming around to help pollinate their gardens.
The Front of the property is open enough for some gardening (but as of yet we have no way to water). The plan is to pull through the front gate, go past the garden, past the thick part of the woods, and home will be back in there where you can't tell from the road that anything is there at all.

Rather than bore you with details of what isn't there yet. I'll share a link to the whole album, and just post a few of my fav shots of the place. We have great hopes for this place, as it's only a short walk from one of the nodes on our OSP.

http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/g...e/DSCN7173.jpg

http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/g...e/DSCN7179.jpg

http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/g...e/DSCN7182.jpg

Future apiary site
http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/g...e/DSCN7186.jpg

Front end of the property
http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/g...e/DSCN7190.jpg

http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/g...e/DSCN7194.jpg

http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/g...e/DSCN7199.jpg

The whole album is here.

That's awesome, do you plan on moving there?

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Originally Posted by Randy

That's awesome, do you plan on moving there?

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DOH! There must be a marble in your T.

Good for you, YCC. I'm glad you guys found a place that will work for you. Looks like a nice piece of woods. It's also good to know your neighbors appreciate what the bees will do for them.

ya, ya I know what you mean but some folks have two places, one where they work and primarily live then a get away. Look at Hunter, he has that nice cabin but lives somewhere else.

Well, we're not all RICHEY RICH like the Hunters. In my next life I'll be born with a silver spoon, too.

very nice I'm glad you found a place

WOW!
Neat plot of land, so many possibilities. So glad for y'all.
Can't wait to see the transition.

Nice place. Glad you found what you were looking for.

Looks to me like the land is going to be the lucky one.

Another "Place"....LOL, Outstanding.

YCC very cool, you gotta start somewhere.....seem a good start.....Now the fun begins!

Boils down to priorities, any one can do it, but must be high on the list of what you and your family want to do.....and if you stick with it, it comes true.

Congrats, man.

Looks like ya have a nice patch of ground there.

If water can be worked out it has all the makings for a decent homestead.

And bees, I'm hurting for bees over here in Alabama. Mr. Roberts (the local bee keeper)is like 80 something and says he is quitting after this spring. He is the fellow I gave two swarms to last year, and I just found another this morning out near the little barn that He came and got this afternoon. He swears I have some sort of bee summoning power. 3 swarms in two years, That is pretty amazing, and I did not go hunting for them, just happened all near the house and small barn. Go figure.

Anyway he is offering to teach me to keep em, but I'm hoping I can convince someone else in the area to keep em so I don't have to mess with em. Bees are important, and I may have to take it up, but I'm just not really wanting to take em on at this point. I keep hoping that my buddy, Rip, will take it on. He does some side butchering for me, and gardens, but bees would have a lot of pluses for him. He would have a nice product for the market stand, would be able to do things like put hives out at farms I guess, and it would get him interacting with people again. Ever since his Mrs. passed on and them no kids, he is pretty much a hermit. I try to keep him coming over to our place, but more and more stuff will keep him from just giving up. We been friends for 40 - 50 years, I'd hate to loose him to soon.

Oh, and if he takes up bees, I get honey. He can trade it to me for meat and such and still butcher for me also in trade. I get out of taking up bees. I win, he wins, Mr. Roberts gets to retire and can still trade for honey and help Rip out with the bees, he wins.

Anyone fool enough to not want bees near their land is silly. Good on you for talking with the locals, some city folk can be real strange sometimes. (I do keep a few epi-pens in the big first aid kit. One just never knows if they will come in handy.)

If I was to offer a suggestion it would be to get water first ; then put in a root cellar / storm shelter on the place. You can store food from the garden in it, make it into a cool place for the summer heat and winter cool and just all around secure stuff on sight when you cannot be there.

Water and a root cellar were the first two things I put on my homestead.

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ETA: I just thought of something I have been meaning to attempt this year, and I ought to get some honey pretty soon in trade for that swarm. One word: MEAD!

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Thanks guys. Great suggestions and our next move is to get a hand-pump well installed, whether we drive it ourselves, or if the price is right, We'll let Sonny (a local we've known all my life) drill it for us. A water source will definately be at the top of the list. Right behind that, will be a small garden area. I'm thinking I'm going to have to learn to keep a few carpenter and/or bumblebees around for all the huckleberries. We hope the front end will be productive with huckleberries muscadines and bullaces for jellies, jams, and (eventually) wines for the farmers market. The back end will be a small apiary next to our campsite. Honey and wax are great barter items. The front has the most open sky to the south, as you can tell, most of the rest of it is under canopy of those huge 60-80' tall trees.
Ultimately, this is where we intend to build our earthen dome home, so the garden will be the roof. We've been looking into designs but so far can't turn up any contractors who know how to accomplish it.
Right now, our long term goal is to move out there, unless something even better comes along. When we camped out there, all you could see at night was the neighbors security lights WAAY off in the distance, and they shed absolutely no light into our camp. Wooded, Secluded, Canopy, and lots and lots of wild foods already growing.

Just so we are clear.. we have no intention of cleaning this up in the traditional way, where there is nothing but grass left. That's just not the kind of folks we are.
I hate cutting grass.
We feel really blessed to have found a place where we can let the wildflowers grow, eat squirrels and rabbits, and even sight in our guns without being in the middle of a neighborhood. It's 9 miles from the town where we currently live, and about 5 from the closest store. Not many neighbors and none of them are close by. I can't speak for my wife or kids, but I'm ecstatic!

YCC - When I was a kid we had a couple of older Italian brothers that were neighbors. Their passion was roses. Bumble bees frequented the flowers all the time. These guys would hold their hands next to the flowers and the Bumble bees would just walk onto their hands pretty as you please. The brothers said the Bumble bees licked the salt from their skin. I don't know if that's true but I've seen them do this hundreds of times and they never got stung. They tried to get me to do it but being a kid I was just too scared. But I thought it was cool as heck. I actually tried it last year but couldn't get a Bumble bee to hold still long enough to try it. It's on my list of "to do's" this year. They just held their hand flat and the Bumble bees would hop aboard. They would hold their hand next to a flower when they wanted to get rid of the bee and it would walk over to the flower. Just thought I'd share that since you want to raise them.

I take it you have no water source on your property since you are driving a well?

YCC, Congrats!!! The place looks great. That ear to ear grin on your faces says it all. Sounds like you need a GA Jamboree............ I'd put in a few days to get stuff done.

Is this the kind of house you are talking about?

http://www.simondale.net/house/images2/front.jpg

http://www.simondale.net/house/images2/candle.jpg

www.simondale.net/house/

Our original plan for our 'south facing hill side was to build a earth-ship, earth bermed home.
Articles in Mother Earth News back in the 1980's had a series of called My Mother's House;
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green...lar-House.aspx

We saw this house at the Mother Earth Village, in 1984, was built as a demo of a lot of methods to be self-sufficient....including the hassle of getting a permit....They did it by pulling a permit for a "basement".

In the end the log cabin won out because of cost (didn't want a second mortgage) and permit issues.

So does the new place have a "perk"?(septic)....Electric access?

No water, Rick. not for human consumption anyway, but there are several ponds and 2 Creeks nearby that the bees can use. Sounds neat with the bumblebees. I do my honeybees like that in the garden when they visit.

Not sure I have much room for many people yet, Gryff. There's barely enough room for our 4 tents at the moment, but we put them under the young trees that weekend and while the wind was blowing 25+ mph that night (a storm came through) we barely noticed a breeze blowing because we hadn't cut out our edge cover. It was splendid!

Sparky, that's exactly what I have in mind, just maybe a little bigger!

H, We are hoping that all we have to get is a "storm shelter" permit. Our code enforcer used to be a carpenter that I did a lot of roofing for, so we might get a few strings pulled.
The biggest "perk" for me is that there is absolutely nothing but woods out there. No water, electric, or septic. There was some land down the road from this spot that has no trees or anything, just open dirt, and they wanted more for that than the one we got. So I guess we got it cheaper than dirt. We don't mind if it takes a few years to get it like we want. Hope to go Friday to check water-tables and figure out whether we want to drive a tap, or have one dug.

Thanks for the links guys, I'm going to show it to the Fam tonight and see what they think!

I've always thought a house like that would be cool, I call them hobbit houses. Congrats on the new property and good luck in your future endeavors there!

Oh it's beautiful! Have fun building!