What do I need to do and in what order?

[knuckledragger]

My wife and I just bought 20 acres in the Arkansas Ozarks, and we hope to retire on it someday. It is level to gentle slope, wooded except for a very small area cleared out for a rickety storage shed, has electricity at the road and a well drilled but no pump. I am not sure how good the well is. It has about 700 feet of creek running through it (the area around the creek is terribly overgrown with saw briars and stuff like that) We want to eventually build a cabin on it, (4-5 years from now) but want to camp on it until then.

My question is: what needs to be done and in what order? By my understanding (and I am new to all of this) things that need to be done include:

Clear an area to camp
Drop electricity to the property
Get well tested
Get pump for well and install it
Build an outhouse

Other things I am considering are getting the land surveyed, putting up a fence, and improving access to the creek (it lies at the bottom of a 6-12 foot sheer rock bluff)

What, if anything, am I missing here in my list? If it were you, what else would you do? Like I said, I have never done anything like this, so I don't even know enough to ask all the right questions. Any advice will be appreciated.

Jim

[bee_pipes]

Lots of good questions Jim, they deserve good answers. Some of them are going to depend on choices made - what kind of house, what you want to do with the property, etc. You'll get plenty of opinions, but it all comes down to how you and your wife want to develop the property. This is more of a research job right now, rather than questions and answers. I'd recommend taking a look at the magazine web site. There are tons of articles on-line. Just in the last year there have been articles about clearing home sites and arranging for well, electric, etc. I don't know if you're a subscriber, but the last two anthologies have a ton of good information.

Yeah, I'm with you. If I had a creek, I'd want to be able to get at it too. Maybe the answer to that one is chip away at the cliff day by day. The best part about retiring is that you have all the time in the world. You don't have to hurry a project along to get it done in weekend increments. That's a big disadvantage too. ;D

So you got a shed with a small cleared area. What do you live in while staying at the property? A tent? Travel Trailer? Pop-up camper? Is the cleared area large enough?

You'll want to spend a lot of time walking around and getting the lay of the land, picking the spot for the house. High ground is good, so is seclusion - like the middle of the property. Our place had a house already on it. The house is at a corner of the property. That's handy, kept the electric down to a short run, you can see the gate from the porch. I would rather have something buried in the middle of the property, but that's me.

Are you planning on clearing a number of acres for fields and crops? Livestock? If so, what are you going to do with the timber that gets cleared? We have wooded property, and picked up a portable sawmill to make use of the wood. Man, we've been able to do stuff that we never could have afforded to do, if we had to buy the lumber.

General Board is a good place to start, but you might want to direct questions to more specific parts of the forums. This is usually a board for rag chewing about current events and arguing about opinions. Not usually a lot of practical information here.

Best of luck to you. Man you're gonna love retirement - it is everything it's cracked up to be!

Regards,
Pat

[bgarrett]

I just bought 20 acres in Stone County. My place was very deeply rutted by logging trucks and has briars growing in the ruts. I cant walk or drive onto my property.
There is about 12 acres in 45' tall pine. They have laid down a pine needle carpet.
I think first I should get a bulldozer in there, then get a controlled burn to get rid of the briars and underbrush and all the mice and snakes living under the pine needles.
I have very good spring that has a stone wall around it, looks like a well. The water tastes good.

[torenghout]

been there done that,my advice is to prepare your holes for the orchard and get it in this fall.

if you park it out now all of the local scum will party there when you're gone.

you've got 5 years to learn about solar before you move in, I highly recomend it. look into a dc slow pump.

anything you leave there may not be when you get back.so first would be a gate and then improve the road/camp site.

[Txanne]

Congratulations!!

My ans. is always very simple.

Secure water first.

Without water you can't survive--period.

Txanne

[bookwormom]

I would recommend a sawdust toilet. Of course you can just hit the bushes for a while.

[CarolAnn]

Be a little picky how you plan your driveway; if you do the front part as just two tracks that fit your vehicle, you can prune carefully so it will hardly show from the road. When you leave, you can move a downed tree and some rocks to disguise the trail. Around the bend and away from clear sight of the road, you can do a really nice track then, to your camping ground. That will help some to keep the teenage (and older) parkers out!

It's a sad fact that anything you leave may not be there next time you come, especially if it's a long time between visits. This includes the box at the light pole! So plan on taking your tools and stuff back out with you.

When you camp, you can get by with a latrine dug for the occasion, and filled in when you go. After you get the cabin put in, you can do the outhouse! A tarp clothes-pinned to a line wrapped around saplings makes it private enough even for most city folks! (Hey, it's camping!!) ;)

Take along tape that you can use to pick up the seed ticks that can get on your clothes. It's better than brushing them off, because those can get on you again. Fold over the tape and they're stuck in there forever! "Tick Check" is a fun game for any couple that knows each other well! (If you don't, you will after "Tick Check!"

If you have poison ivy, there are some sugar pills with a tiny amount of poison ivy in them sold at Walmart. (At least, they used to carry it. Sorry I can't remember the brand name!) They help you build up immunity if you plan on rooting it out. I learned about this from the utility linemen.

They've put in "city water" in a lot of places, including where my place is up at Fox, so there are used well pumps and tanks to be had in the area! Ask around!

[DaNgEr_KiTtY]

i have watched many builders do this. first you cut down every tree, bush & blade of grass. then bull doze any remaining top soil & move it to another site to sell it back to yourself.

[Suzy]

I agree that you should get water as quickly as possible. have it tested and make sure it is safe to drink.

Also, you could consider an old camper or trailer as a temporary place to "camp" there until you can eventually build your cabin...

And if you start a solar system now, say with one panel then add on as you can afford too, by the time you move there you should be all set!

best wishes!!!!

[DavidOH]

Ditto on securing the water!

Have it checked before you start investing in the property. Got to have good water first.

[jajbellsouthnet]

Get a copy of Ken Kern's "The Ownerbuilt Homestead" and "The Ownerbuilt Home". Read them twice before starting anything. He does an excellent job of prioitizing what has to be done and giving the most efficient way of doing it. He will have a bunch of ideas that I'll bet you never thought of.

[bookwormom]

all good advice. We camped two summers on our place before we started building. keeping a wilderness look from the road so nobody would suspect someone might live back there is good policy. We hired someone to bush hog most of the open areas and are glad we did. the area that was not bush hogged is now a big thicket 10 feet high and I wish we had spent the money and had it kept clear too.

[edward_4576]

Form an LLC and consider transferring the title, that way no one can take the property from you or perhaps look in to a land patent.

[DaNgEr_KiTtY]

now edward you are thinking! very good advice but then again its pretty sad that its good advice.

[edward_4576]

Well it goes like this. One moment with a job the next wondering weather you'll be able to keep your home. Luckily DW did a lot of work saving $ and were OK till Sept. However and this is something for you all to contemplate, after fifty who will hire you? That's a scenario I didn't figure on.... >:(

[DaNgEr_KiTtY]

yeah i been thinking bout going LLC for my sole proprietorship. its always been a real stretch thinkin bout what i could get sued for but then again things are just crazy these days with lawsuits so its sounding like the way to go.

[lost1]

I assume your wife is going to go with you and help make determinations about the what and wheres, then build the outhouse first. Believe me you will be glad you did. I learned the hard way.
Oh, by the way take a fresh roll of TP every trip made.

[Txanne]

Well it goes like this. *One moment with a job the next wondering weather you'll be able to keep your home. *Luckily DW did a lot of work saving $ and were OK till Sept. *However and this is something for you all to contemplate, after fifty who will hire you? *That's a scenario I didn't figure on.... >:(

Edward--i wish i had known about that--and if it would have worked in texas?

They can take you place--TRUST ME ON THAT!!

And I didnt owe one dime on it nor back taxes---Protect yourself.

Solid advice!!

annie

[Txanne]

I agree that you should get water as quickly as possible. have it tested and make sure it is safe to drink.

Also, you could consider an old camper or trailer as a temporary place to "camp" there until you can eventually build your cabin...

And if you start a solar system now, say with one panel then add on as you can afford too, by the time you move there you should be all set!

best wishes!!!!


And I would add---add tie downs to the camper---weather can turn bad in a heart beat.
I rode out a bad tropical storm in a camper---talk about rock and rollin----


And I have thought about this thread----set up camp---plan a long stay----and imagine yourself----in a camp for a very long time.


What will be necessay for you to be comfortable---and survive?

If you really think about it--basics become very clear.

You know your family----what does it take to ease some of the stress?

I hauled drinking water for ten years--there were times I had to purify rain or cistern water---to drink.

I had an inground cistern THAT was invaluable--many times over.


If you think in terms of bugging out--a aplan will come to mind. And bugging out just might happen.

It did for us durning Huriicane RIta.

We were tested---seriously.

Priorities---water shelter.

annie

[docjered]

A lot of this has been said in different ways, but here goes:

Yes, get to know the lay of your land first, and along the way, some clearing of underbrush makes for some great campfires as you go.

Water is the thing. You really can't plan where to put your house if the water is going to be a thousand feet away. Try some dousing yourself, if you have the ability! Unfortunately, you will have to probably drill deeper than ever, because many of the shallow aquifers are either polluted with chemicals or have dried up. Once you have a wellpoint established, it would be an ideal location to locate a shed, now. Protects and houses your pump; provides a solar panel location on the roof, and provides you with a place to keep essentials.

Fortunately, you are in the Ozarks, where people are not nearly as evil as they seem to be elsewhere. The midwest is great for friendly people who mind their own business!

Since you now know your general house location, good time for selective clearing and land management. This definitely includes planting fruit trees and berries, as many of them take much time before first harvest.

What style of building are you planning? You may want to look into cordwood, since you have much clearing to do: also, in cordwood construction, you need to dry the wood at least a year to minimize shrinking and splitting in the finished product.

I talked with one friend whose home began with the initial storage shed used to cover his wellpoint, and simply grew from there.

I, too, am trying to buy 27 acres at the moment for the retirement homestead. It has a three acre field amidst the woods that is in beans right now, maintained by a neighbor. I have already informed him that when this closes, I want two seasons of clover to plow under to enrich the soil with nitrogen) and have been talking with the guys at Stark Brothers nursery regarding an orchard/vineyard plan for the acreage next spring... the house is at least three years away.