What unique problems does your land cause?

Southwest Montana on the continental divide. Pros= no snakes, no skunks, few squitos, beautiful views, georgous summers, quiet winters, few neighbors, no government intrusion, no covenants on land, low taxes, no sales tax, great wildlife.

Cons- winter from oct till may often with snows in between, very short growing season, wildlife eat all my berries and trees, difficult travel in spring with mud, snow, mud, rain, mud, rocks lol. They dont call these the rocky mountains just for fun, huge bedrock deposits. no real soil- just decomposing granite. I love this place with all my heart! sisterpine

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www.MontanaSticksAndStones.com at Goshen Farm

We get no rain at all durig the hottest time of the year.

The farmers simply choose grain varieties that need harvesting during that dry time. That means they almost never have to stop harvesting due to rain or muddy ground.

Us gardeners have to water-water-water to keep our vegetables alive and producing.

I don't personally, but what comes to mind is an area not far from there. I have a lot of family in NorthWest Georgia. There seems to still be more available there rurally. It's only an hour or so from Chattanooga. It's still the "foothills" of the mountains, and the snow is minimal compared to Western North Carolina. Check Floyd County and north and west of there.

There's a big difference in the snow level NC/TN effected by the large piece of mountain near Knoxville. You can drive I-40 from the west side of Asheville over to Knoxville, and have completely different outcome after crossing the mountain. It goes both ways, one side gets more than the other, and vice versa.
Also, don't know if it interests you, but TN has no state income tax like you are used to there in FL. NC income tax is not getting any better with our current leadership.

High winds especially in the winter time that make doing anything outside miserable and where we're at, hard clay soil that is very hard to grow anything in. And right where we're at there's no water, underground or rural and so we have to haul water in a truck load at a time and so watering the garden in the summer really isn't an option. Just takes too much water. So, we usually have to just pray for rain.

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"Be still sad heart, and cease repining. Behind the clouds, the sun is shining. Thy fate is the common fate of all. Into each life, a little rain must fall." -Longfellow

Our place here in CO is at 8000 feet. That means a short growing season, it's a high desert, so everything has to be irrigated. We're fortunate to have a good, old water right for the upper pastures and we are situated along a major stream so the lower pastures are sub-irrigated. Zones don't mean much to us, due to the dry air, winter winds and alkaline soils, many things that are rated for zones 2-4 just won't survive here.

My main complaint is the summer tourists. Oh my goodness, we lose our small community, it's literally overrun all summer. And it never ceases to amaze me how rude and selfish these tourists are. So many are terrible drivers, there are more accidents here in 3 months than all the rest of the year. Many of the locals just hibernate until fall rolls around again.

But, I love these big mountains, the wildlife, the crisp clean air and amazing blue skies.

We are north of Tulsa. Our last house was great in the winter it was tucked in a horseshoe of hills and the winters were just great no wind and very mild. The hills acted like a heat keeper too. Foward to summer. Hot HOt Hot!!!! with humidity that would make your closets turn green. It was like breathing in an aquarium. Tried to go to the 4 of july w/o a/c and ruined a lot of things in the closet. The house was really old so it really only had one or two. Now I use Ac all the time :-(

Our new house we flipped. We are on top of a hill that gets great wind. The wind is always moving the hot air and I don't notice summer at all! You can sit outside all day in the shade and be really happy. The bugs have to work and being anoying w/ the wind. foward to winter. Cold Cold Cold!!!! There is nothing between us and Canada. The wind is always roaring at 5-10 over forcasts. I swear that our ag zone is a full point lower than it says. We had to buy extra stuff from companies up north for winter clothes. The clothes here in Ok will kill you in cold weather. Wool only in winter!

We are planting trees by the boat load and the new shop will help keep us out of the wind when we are working. It will get better. We have more summer/hot than cold so I am glad we swapped. This last winter was a bear. Two blizzards in one year was quite enough. I hit the one in OKC and then came back home and hit the brief one at our place weeks later. No one else had trouble but because of the wind our road was impassable in front of our house until county came by. We spent several hours pulling people out. If you got out from in front of our place the drive was fine and mostly dry. It was kind of creepy.

Each place will have good and bad. I am a fan of moving with the seasons. I want to go up north in summer and south in winter. We own property so that will never happen. We are stuck.

Well we also have Winter or frost generally 9 months out of the year, but not as severe as in Vermont mountains. Our land is in a valley and the frost and cold air settle in the valley..we have a combination of wet soil and very very dry soil, esp when we have droughts like we are having now..the last two storms missed us by a few miles.

We also have a lot of weeds that crop up..esp when there is such a drought as we are having now..they seem to love the droughty weather.

but i'm not complaining i truely love Michigan, we don't get hurricanes, our area seldom has any serious flooding and tornados are quite rare in our neck of the woods, we do sometimes reach the 100's but they don't generally last over a day or two, but we have had an exceptionally warm and dry spring with less than half our normal rainfall and lots of 90's

but i'd never move

Locating your ideal place on the planet is an enormously interesting project if one is doing it consciously instead of by default such as your family is located somewhere or your job requires you to be somewhere. I was born and mostly raised in Manhattan but from the time I was tiny, my heart and spirit knew I didn't belong in a city. When I was learning to read at about 8 years old, Ed Robinson, who was an executive with J Walter Thompson Company, moved to Connecticut. He and his wife wrote "The Have-More Plan" which JWT did a lot of early split-run advertising experiments with. That book was the first thing I ever sent away for. I got the money to pay for it by running up and down the stairs and getting returnable bottles put out by the back doors in the huge fancy apartment building I lived in.
It would be interesting to know how many people on here have bought that original book but I venture to say almost everyone has been influenced by the basic concepts!
That said, choosing where to live first includes how to best incorporate having more in terms of lower expenses and good eats!
SirDude, since you travel a lot, livestock might not be good for you to have since who would care for them when you're gone?

So you would not have to worry about wolves and rattlesnakes killing your cattle if you weren't going to have any.
Conversely, if you are interested in an automated aeroponics system, maybe You wouldn't need land at all, just an old warehouse on the outskirts of some city or town that had other amenities attractive to you.
As to what problems does my land cause? Well, I live in the woods so natural predators have been a problem. I chose all the things I wanted as to climate etc so actually my land doesn't cause me any problems, it's PEOPLE!
Since one of the wars, the Pentagon started to decentralize. A secret "spy shop" was located in Charlottesville, bringing a lot of govmint high dollar people here. Since 911 the govmint is relocating a lot of employees some miles out which effectively means a tsunami of urban people here. They buy obscenely huge sore thumb houses in vast trailer park settings. Also New York state has taxed out many citizens. There is a big developer who runs round the clock advertising for them to come here. The developers buy the prettiest land with the richest soil. They have skewed property values.
My land is the same. I live frugally and simply. So what is wrong in my situation is not the land or soil or water supply, it is that the taxes sky rocketed! I am under siege by people who want my land, not for its beauty but for their bank accounts. Not for the soil but as a big parking lot for mcmansions.

I'm in the English Midlands. It's quite warm in the summer, quite cold in the winter. We had a whole 2 weeks of snow this year which threw the whole country into chaos!Rainfall is adequate and really everything is moderate. We start sowing in March and plant outside in May.
Our soil is clay but workable. Where we were before there were only about 3 days a year when the ground wasn't either dried solid or so wet you couldn't dig it.

Deep sand that goes droughty if it doesn't rain every week. Also leaches nutrients out so that you have to be careful to use only slow release fertilizers or you are wasting your money. A neighbor tipped me off to using chicken feed of all things for fertilizer. Works great.

Cactus - not big ones, but what a pain in the butt to get rid of. Poison ivy, sandspurs, cogon grass.

Low teens in the winter kills the subtropical stuff. Garden does pretty good from last frost until the rainy season starts then mildew kills off the squash, melons, cukes, and tomatoes. Can't grow anything but the old Southern die hards from about June till sometime in October.

One thing about all this sand though is that I got no mud, no flooding, and not as many mosquitoes as I have had living other places.

I live in California...need I say more?

-=Sarah
www.beewench.blogspot.com

Terri, What part of KS are you in? Newton, KS was on my list for some time. I did some Hail repairs in Wichita a couple of times and looked around Newton area. I see all the storm, all the time, it's part of my job, but I don't notice so much is the daily weather. The 10 weeks ( May to July) I spent in Wichita got hot and with very little rain, so that stuck in my head.

6e, Thanks for that info, good points to look for.

Chalk Creek, what part of CO are you in? I keep seeing all the eBay listings for the San Luis / Alamosa Agi land, it seemed reasonable to cheap. The listings make it very clear it's dry, but seem to have well water at ok levels on some of the listings I have read. Sounds like the area is mostly ranches anyway, so that would be find. I think the elev. was posted at 7500. Checked out City-Data website for the annual weather charts, etc and it seem like it was pretty mild. That area is high on my "starter" list. At those prices and even if I don't stay, I could afford to build a small storage building for my tools and stop paying storage fees here in FL.

The little I know about CO is it's one of those place that it's hard to "generalize" some things. A friend of mine lives at 8500 ft in/outside of Boulder and the weather he gets is nothing like what the town gets. I saw the same thing last year in Estes Park to Loveland. Storms and 10-15 degree difference in temps just by 15 miles.

Okiemom, that's some good points about house / building / tree placements. It's funny, I think about those things when I am camping, but totally slipped my mind when it came to placing a house. Now it's a different storey if I was looking at a hillside lot. then natural construction laws would have kicked in. Thanks for making me think!

Navotifarm, "choosing where to live first includes how to best incorporate having more in terms of lower expenses and good eats!" Couldn't have put it more clearly and simply. That is the goal, less expenses and good food. I have been getting by or making due with what's available since I been a little boy, so as long as I have some good basic things in my life, I will be fine.

"since you travel a lot, livestock might not be good for you to have since who would care for them when you're gone?" Yes, right now I would not even think of growing something, let alone raise animals. My ex-wife beat that into my head when I talked about getting some horses some day. She grew up doing the whole 4-H, Rodeo / barrel racing thing, her dad was into Reining Horses, sister trains, etc, she made it very clear that you get animals, you don't travel without them or without finding someone to care for them.

But since my industry is going down the tubes, and even if I bought some thing today, I would need time to build my house, install fences, etc, that I will have some time to finish my exit plan from my current business. But that's whole nother post, for some other time.

"Conversely, if you are interested in an automated aeroponics system, maybe You wouldn't need land at all, just an old warehouse on the outskirts of some city or town that had other amenities attractive to you." Have you been reading my Off The Grid Blog? LOL It's not public, but it's been something more of a diary of my journey to get off the grid. I think one of the last entries I made was talking about some old warehouses I saw in the Newton, KS area and how I could do a green roof since the building have a flat roof. That was before I got interested in hydroponics / aeroponics. So yes, that does open up a whole nother set of options.

Two major down sides, livestock/town laws and the people. After dealing with all the tourist down here, I am ready to be far, far, far away from people for a long time. LOL

Live-oak, are you in north FL, as in Live Oak, FL? I like that area. Maybe some place between there and Ocala would be nice. Little cooler winters then down here, but not so cold for so long to make you want move. Very high on my list, might not be the place I move to next, but it's on the list of places to stay and settle down.

Beewench, yes, you can always say more. LOL. Depends on what part of Cali. NoCal was on my list for a while, but I moved things up to OR/WA after talking with friends from that area. Mostly due to high prices.

I could have written the post by Live Oak.
The sandy soil has no nutrients, but we don't worry about flooding.
We live in a micro climate that means we can't count on the local weather for freezing temp warnings.
If you plant anything you need to make sure you can run a hose to it or it will burn up.

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Life is uncertain, eat dessert first

Sounds like I picked a pretty good place. The only downside to my little piece of earth which really isn't a downside at all is that I'm on a hillside (I don't mind the extra work because it's certainly cheaper than owning a tractor and equipment for it). I do all my tilling with a walk behind, have to weight my riding mower wheels to get traction from the barn to the driveway and the bottom pasture stays wet during the winter so I can't use it much then. But everything grows great, the soil is awesome (the alpacas help with that), the water taste great, the winters are pretty mild (average 10-20) and the summers are nice and warm 70-80's with a couple of weeks in the 90's and a very occasional 100+.

From my vantage point on this hill I have four or five firework shows on the horizon from surrounding cities and towns. It's rather fun to sit on the roof of the car and watch fireworks.

One of these days I'd like a little more room but I kinda like being limited with my choices, it makes me think longer on them.

I could be wrong but I don't think anything poisonous lives here. My property is pretty clear of squitos too.

I like my utopia.

SirDude, actually I reside on the central coast about 45 minutes inland. I love our weather...in the hundreds during the summer and fifties during the winter. Great sandy loam soil. It's just all the other crap that comes with this state. Our schools are going downhill in a hurry, land and housing prices are astronomical and who knows what's gonna happen with the budget.

Our land is decent, we have 2.5 acres of rolling hills with nice flat areas at the tops and bottoms of the hills. Hillsides are great for growing grapes and trees and grazing animals and the flats are ideal for gardens and buildings. Our hefty mortgage is reallythe only thing I complain about

-=Sarah
www.beewench.blogspot.com

We are closer to the center of the state. I haven't spent much time in the San Luis valley, so don't know too much about it. Like all of Colorado, water is the big issue. That would be my main concern when buying property here. The weather is extremely variable throughout the state and we have some pretty amazing temperature extremes. Many times in the winter, it's in the 60's during the day and well below zero at night.

poison ivy everywhere

Chalk Creek, the weather in CO seems to be that way all year round from what I have heard, some days 60's for the high, zero at night. LOL I think this past winter I saw it was 65 on the front-range right after one of the big snow falls, then it was snowing just a couple of weeks ago. It's like the state's thermostat is broke or something. LOL

I like CO, if I had the big bucks I would live around Estes Park in a heartbeat. When I was still married the wife and I tried looking at a house up around that area, between Drake and Estes, but after about 40 minutes of bouncing the rental car up a 4WD road we decided to turn around and get some Colorado Oysters. LOL J/J

I am in the exact same shoes you are in. Also divorced from my wife (not compatible, took only 7 years and a child to find that out), and she wasn't in the homesteading mentality. She wanted the finer things in life (like restaurants, fashion, dance clubs, etc.). She spent money like I was growing it on trees! Anyway, I'm from Kakafornia, and also decided to look around for the best place to set up my homestead. After a couple of years of research, I decided to take the plunge and bought almost 9 acres of woods in southern Missouri. Land very cheap (compared to Kakafornia anyway), great weather, plenty of rain, ok soil....better if somewhat amended since it can be a little rocky and clayish, low taxes and best of all - no restrictions whatsoever!!!
Sometimes I can just dig a little and hit a spring, so water not an issue. About 2/3 of property is on side of hill, the rest is flat. Close to about 3 towns for employment, West Plains being the largest (low wages of course), but don't care, since I'm opening my own business.
My advice, take a good look at the Ozarks in Missouri or Arkansas...it may or may not be what you're looking for!!!....and good luck on your search!