Our two week stint in Denver has come to a close. We had a great time with family and a few friend visits which was very uplifting to the soul. But now we’re back at that nomad life because this land ownership prospect is…quite complicated.

My last post was filled with hope and enthusiasm about the prospects of finding a plot of land we loved and the dream of homesteading. But once we got back to sort out how to do all of it, we quickly poked numerous holes in the plan.

First, the county rules which are vehemently against tiny home building (so no bus work until you first build a septic system and a 600sf main home structure). That’s at least a $60k unanticipated burden from the get-go.

Second, the county rules that you cannot “camp” on your own privately owned land for more than 14 days out of three months (unless you install a septic system of course). So even on the cheaper end of land plus septic we’re not within county guidelines if we never decide to build anything more than our bus.

Third: water. We were more than okay with paying $.08/gallon while camping on our friend’s land, but once you start to factor in full time living, watering your future greenhouse plants or crops, watering future animals (which in terms of type are severely limited up here), it would add up real quick. It’s not a viable option

Fourth, the homestead-as-business idea we are cooking up is also not viable in the area we were interested in since what we are wanting is something accessible to all. Driving 15 miles on dirt roads out of San Luis which already has very limited amenities is the opposite of accessible.

Fifth, there are very few lending options for doing something this unconventional. Back to the drawing board.

So, we are back to square one in our land search, and that part is really okay. But I’m not going to sugarcoat this situation, we are houseless and it is really hard to start a new chapter of life from scratch, add doing so from a trailer and hopping from place to place, it’s exponentially more difficult. Yes, we have supports in Denver that will gladly take us in, but that feels inauthentic to our trajectory and all that we are aiming for in living a rural and sustainable off-grid life. I still have hope that we can find what we’re searching for and in a creative way, we’ve certainly become extremely resourceful in a year+ of nomad living.

With that spirit, we started looking for remote work and are doing some volunteer work through the Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. http://www.Wwoofusa.org

We paired with our first hosts near Blanca, Co. but it will be a short stay and now we know more questions to ask of future hosts…this is worthy of more words, but I’m still too much ‘in it to’ have much perspective to offer here.

Taos, NM will be our next spot if things line up right between us and the potential host there. While we do these volunteer stints, we are building up our arsenal of skills and honing in on what we want (and definitely don’t want) on our future homestead. This is good practice for the reality we face in becoming homestead farmers, we know that we are in for some hard but worthy work.

I guess I’ll end on this note, I’m discouraged (but not really surprised) that there are very little supports for this kind of endeavor. We both come from long lines of “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” stock, yet we have learned that we were not designed to figure it all out by ourselves. Generations ago, our ancestors did these kinds of things for their livelihood and survival, but not in a bubble and certainly not on their own. It’s something we as a society have long lost sight of. How do we get back to the earth and doing good for the common good? This is our current question and one that we will base our next chapter upon.