houseless

Day-to-day life on the farm.

Fall rhythms, the leaves know what to do…

By now we’ve settled into somewhat of a rhythm on the farm. Ranchito Alegre practices Regenerative Agriculture and the soil is of upmost importance here. Our host Roger has been doing this work for the past several years, but also has a lifetime of experience in other farm work in terms of raising livestock and homesteading. His current offering is broiler chickens (they are delicious – easily the best chicken we’ve ever eaten!), you can order at www.RanchitoAlegre.eatfromfarms.com

We’ll be making a return trip to Denver the week of October 15th and will be doing some family things and other business while there for two weeks. Let me deliver a chicken to you! I so want his business to succeed.

The kids are both officially in online school full time. While not their favorite choice, it’s what we can do in this season of unsettledness, and it’s not forever. The best part is that (ideally) they can be done with computer work in less than half the day and have the remainder of their time ready to help on the farm, to do some cooking or baking, to learn about music or other interesting subjects from Roger, or riding the four wheeler to collect wood for the never ending pile.

While nothing is perfect anywhere and we’ve yet to find utopia, things work relatively well here with our shared responsibilities and we all learn from one another a little more everyday. As we gain more knowledge regarding the business end of a homestead, it’s actually quite discouraging and feels very out of reach for our near future. We simply are not willing to go into significant amounts of debt to bring this dream into reality. It doesn’t mean we won’t keep trying or that the experiment is over and we’re coming back to city life, it just means that a creative solution is in order and we don’t quite know what that looks like just yet…unless of course this IS the creative solution for the time being. Juggling with the uncertainty of it all is my greatest mental challenge for sure. When ever I find my mind wandering into the future I remind myself to stop, look around, and appreciate all that surrounds me. This present moment is all we have every single day.

We have yet to move forward with any bus work – The Home Depot in Durango didn’t have the spray insulation we needed so we are delayed a bit due to the same thing everyone doing any remodeling faces – supply chain shortages. We do have a small diesel heater and piles of blankets, the kids enjoy their solo space in Flossie which also sports three different heaters. It still gets gloriously warm by mid-day and we are loving the changing leaves and crisp, cool mornings. I’m sure there is more I’m forgetting to share but we’re heading back into no cell service zone for a bit while the ranch gets a WiFi provider update.

Where Then?

Face to face with the systems that say

You can exist there but not here

There is the scorched earth my ancestors left behind.

Here is my mansion on top of a hill. Close the curtains.

“You can’t do that here, it’s against the rules.”

“Why don’t you just get a job?”

Private Property keep away, no trespassing.

but whose land was it first?

Wasting away under a hot high desert sun.

Water is scarce but also sacred.

Where the work of just living saps all energy.

Look away if you’re uncomfortable. Keep plugging into the systems that serve a select few.

They deserved it.

Maybe they should have worked harder.

That’s too bad.

Thoughts and prayers.

They’re not contributing enough.

Enough!

If you’re not a part of the solution, you are the problem.

Why do we just discard people?

Sacred Imago Dei lives?

Hopeless.

It’s no wonder people give up.

Deeper into the woods they go.

Surviving but not really.

Perpetuating the cycle, there’s no way out.

If you can’t see me can I exist here?

*written in the pits of despair on 9/8/21 as a way to process what we experienced when confronted about our unconventional living situation. While I don’t usually feel this low or share this side of life that much in our journey, these thoughts have plagued me from time to time the whole way through, especially as I learn more about other nomads and houseless folk. Also, as mentioned in my last post we are now in a far better place.

You Gotta Work

Signs are everywhere

We’re into our third week as woofers and have found our place!

I’ll go back to mentioning our first stay that I briefly skimmed over in my last post, it’s quite a contrast to where we’ve landed and is in perspective worth telling.

We left off in Blanca, Co, where after an hour long conversation with this family (while we were still in Denver) led us to believe we had similar values and goals with regard to homesteading. We were eager to begin our work there, but knew after about a day that it was definitely not the right fit. Word to the wise, we should have done some heavier vetting of our host including asking questions like, how close are you to a major highway? What is your water situation? How will the food duties be shared or divided? What do you do with your trash? Are you growing most of your food? Because while yes, this family had the GOAL of growing their own food and water storage, etc. they were far from any of that and we were parked in essentially the desert in the middle of nowhere with very very few amenities. Add to that some brief mentions of government paranoia and digging of countless holes, or some may say “bunkers” with a mini tractor, we knew we had to get out of there ASAP. This put the nail in the coffin for our Costilla County homestead aspirations, so aside from the inconvenience and discomfort it was good input and confirmation for many of the things we don’t want for our future.

Houseless like us, but with more stuff and burning garbage in the high desert, NOPE

We didn’t have another woofing opportunity lined up that quickly so we retreated back to San Luis and our friend’s land where the bus remained parked. We had another hiccup and confirmation here where a nosy neighbor on the Mesa had been hounding us about our overstay camping a few weeks prior. Of course he was one of the first people we ran into on our way back up there 🙄. We assured him we were planning to be out in the coming couple of days. The big reveal here that we had a good chuckle over was that he might go to the county to tattle on us, but we had just come from a homestead that was essentially camping on their land in the same county, they definitely don’t have the resources to go to every person breaking the land use laws in the area. Neighbor annoyance aside, we would have likely been fine, it just doesn’t feel too good to be parked where you are not wanted.

This week of chaos at both places was profound, out of our whole year plus of being nomads – I truly felt homeless. Very much a, “you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here” type situation.

Makes me wonder where the houseless or unconventionally housed will end up in the long term. Cities don’t want us, rural areas don’t want us. That doesn’t leave many options for a vast majority of the unhoused. In the height of my anxiety while waiting here, I wrote a poem that I’m going to share as my next post. It’s going to make you squirm and that’s good.

Hasta luego San Luis, moving our whole dang circus to another part of the state

We bid adieu from those parts two days later for literal greener pastures further west outside of Pagosa Springs. We found a much better situation at Ranchito Alegre, a 120 acre homestead that has been in our host’s family for over a hundred years. Roger is the kind hearted abuelo we didn’t know we needed. He is a wise teacher and has been pouring into the kids in ways I couldn’t have ever imagined with humor, intelligence, grace, and boundless energy for a 75yo. I think the kids fill a hole for him too as it sounds like his own grandkids are often too busy to learn about homesteading the way we are able to in this setting.

So much possibility here, everything is lush and GREEN!

I have become the resident sourdough bread baker after a first batch whet the farmer’s whistle for more, he pulled out his five gallon bucket of flour and I’ve baked four loaves in a week (so far). I’m also painting signs and helping sell his pasture raised whole chickens (which are delicious btw) at the Pagosa farmer’s market. Zach has been learning about the irrigation systems here, cutting wood that the kids gather on the four wheeler, and we’re all getting well versed in the general day to day chores required for such a large operation. We’re sharing most meals together and practicing Spanish everyday, especially the first few days when Roger had family visiting here from Columbia. In our off time, we can tinker away on small bus projects and eventually need to make a run over to Durango for supplies to finish insulating and lumber to actually start building now that we’re safely in one place for awhile.

Zach and I have been sleeping in the bus most of the summer since our big cozy bed is in there, but it’s starting to get colder overnight and snow will be flying before we know it, time to get to work and get some projects knocked out in the coming months ahead. Luckily, there is no shortage of potential work here, and we’ve hopefully convinced Roger to let us stay through the winter as the homestead’s caretakers while he and his soon to be retired wife can do some traveling. I’ll definitely have more to share from this location as we get further immersed in our wwoofing adventure. Just know we are a million times better off in these parts and that we are grateful for every moment we are here.

Cycles of life on this river, the Piedra. Regenerative farming practices. Learning is what wwoofing is all about. Grateful to have found a place to pause and respect the land around us with a wise elder/host/guide.

Nothing is Straightforward

Current view from Flossie the Red Dale

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.