Planning the Homestead Shelter
Planning the Homestead’s Temporary Shelter
In planning the homestead shelter, a temporary shelter will need to be chosen. This shelter must provide protection from the elements, wild animals, and insects until the permanent structure is made. The options are a tent, a shed, a trailer, or a motorhome. In my case, I would need to house a husband, two teenagers, and myself. After much consideration, we chose to get a motorhome that we found for $5,000. It was an old motorhome that we found out later had a bad shower and a not-fixable heater. The roof was old and leaky as we found out later when it rained. If you can’t afford a trailer or motorhome, then your best option would be a sturdy canvas tent. Two suggestions are given below.
As an Amazon Affiliate, I earn commissions on qualifying purchases. If you use my links to go on Amazon, anything that you buy will count. This is at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting my blog.
Planning the Homestead’s Permanent Shelter
When planning the homestead permanent shelter, thought must be given to the expense, the materials needed, and what disasters are common to the area. In some areas, a mobile home would be a quick and easy solution, but not with fires or tornados. There is the dream to have a lovely log cabin in the mountains, but we had to consider the fire risk with all the trees around our building site. A friend recommended putting up a metal building and making a home inside that. So, that is the option we chose knowing it would be less flammable, but it could still melt in extreme heat. To be legal, check with your county for building permits.
Planning the Homestead Water
Planning the Homestead’s Temporary Water Source
Once the temporary shelter is chosen, a temporary water source must be considered. Is there flowing water like a creek or spring on the property where you can get safe drinking water? If not, you will have to bring in your water in 5-gallon jugs. Our property has a creek with clear flowing water, but we weren’t too sure about drinking from it. What were people doing upstream? We found a spring-fed waterfall that emptied into the creek and so we used it initially for our drinking water. Later, we got a Brita Filter Pitcher to filter the water. Think about wilderness survival. How many people boil the water they find? Choose your source wisely.
Planning the Homestead’s Permanent Water Source
An important part of planning the homestead is choosing the permanent water source. In planning this, we considered a time when we could neither buy nor sell due to Biblical reasons, disaster or poverty. Consequently, if we chose to pump our water from the creek, we would be dependent on gasoline. A well would also require power to pump which could be provided by solar power, but it wasn’t the best option. Our property was said to have several springs, so we planned to develop them for our water needs.
Planning the Homestead Toilet
Temporary Toilet
When you homestead beside any source of water, it is not a good idea, nor is it legal, to just dig a hole to relieve yourself. Legally, some counties want you to rent one of those portable toilets. That could be costly if you don’t have a lot of money to spare. With a motorhome or trailer, you will have a toilet, but you will need to find out where the closest dump station is located. A composting toilet made with a bucket and a toilet seat is another option. We watched videos on people doing this and decided it was our best option. A hole has to be dug for dumping and burying the waste away from the water source. You can also invest in a self-contained composting toilet.
Permanent Toilet
Of course, we all would love to have a permanent toilet. This does involve a lot of planning. A visit to the county will reveal that a percolation test will need to be done before a septic tank with a leach field can be put in. Someone had already had this done and it passed the test. There was already a plot map stating where the leach field should go. Having a home with a real flush toilet is the goal and sheer luxury to look forward to.
Planning the Homestead Shower
Temporary Shower
When starting your homestead, you will need a place to shower. If you have a creek, you can take a dive or wash up from a bucket of cold water in the summer. If you have a motorhome or trailer, you will hopefully have a nice shower. Water in the tank will be limited and it will have to be refilled. When it is warm, you can use a solar shower bag as we did for a short time. It helps to have a privacy shelter for your shower. My husband made one with tarps. You can buy one premade also.
Planning the Homestead’s Permanent Shower
Of course, you want your permanent shower to be in your completed home. In my case, I fixed the motorhome shower and am still waiting to finish building my home and have my permanent shower.
Planning the Homestead Power
Planning the Homestead’s Temporary Power
Power is so nice to have and we are all used to living with it unless we were raised Amish. Power comes in handy for lights, power tools, running appliances like washers, driers, refrigerators, and anything electrical like computers and cell phones. If you buy a trailer or motorhome, it will most likely come with a generator. Ours didn’t last very long. I think it was poor maintenance. My husband didn’t seem to have a clue that the oil needed to be changed. Learn your generator maintenance and it will last longer. A generator provides good temporary power. Use it to power a battery bank and your lights will last longer.
Planning the Homestead’s Permanent Power
Permanent Power often means hooking into the grid. It would be easy for me to hook into the grid with the addition of one power pole and the power box for $10,000. Being off-grid is preferable in my area because when there are high winds in fire season, the power gets shut off. My dream has been to do hydro, but the speed of my creek isn’t fast enough. Solar is an option, but sun exposure is limited in a gulch. Both options cost around $20,000.00. The high cost has kept me on temporary power longer than I would have liked.
Planning the Homestead Refrigeration
Temporary Refrigeration
Temporary refrigeration will come with a motor home or trailer. If that isn’t available, you will need to use an ice chest. We started out with a nice small refrigerator in the motorhome. I had to really plan and shop more often with less space than I had with my regular refrigerator. The RV-type refrigerator will run on propane and will be on all the time.
Permanent Refrigeration
Looking forward to permanent refrigeration, you will want to save your refrigerator and bring it with you. When we did eventually move to the homestead we brought ours with us. After a few years, my motor home refrigerator died and I found that I could use the electric refrigerator and just run my generator a couple of times a day with the temp on a high setting. Recently, my refrigerator died and I bought a smaller one until I decide on a permanent larger electric refrigerator or a gas-powered one.
Planning the Homestead with a Two Week Visit
Plan to Move What You Can
Everything needs to be thought out when planning to homestead, especially if the homestead is 660 miles and an estimated 10 hours and 30 minutes drive time. You need to move what you can on each trip. We planned to move the motorhome and I would be the one to drive it. My husband would drive the truck pulling the tractor. The tractor would be needed to level the area for the house foundation. We would leave the motorhome so my husband could come back later with a car and work on the foundation and metal building for a month without the family.
Plan to be Surprised
If you saw the first video and blog post of the 332-acre property that my children and I visited https://healthyhomesteadingadventures.com/my-first-visit-to-the-332-acre-property-that-became-my-homestead/, you would be surprised by what we found right by where we were going to build our home. We found two women camping there in a tent with their two little chihuahuas. Apparently they had been camping in the area during the summer for years. One woman had recently had hip surgery. What should we do? Well, we decided to let them stay, at least temporarily, but they had to move down to the other clearing. We figured that they could keep an eye on the motorhome while we were gone.
Plan to Order the Metal Building
One important thing that we needed to do was visit Metals Direct and order the materials for our metal building. We chose a hunter green color to try to match the trees. My husband wanted to design a two-story home with 1000 square feet on each level, so it was a big building. We decided that all our stuff would go into this building rather than pay for storage.
Plan to Visit Local Churches
We were glad to have the opportunity to visit the local churches to consider where we might like to attend and move our membership. Being in the area for two weeks allowed us to visit two churches.
Conclusion
Planning the homestead requires a lot of thinking and action to make sure that everything will run smoothly. During our two-week visit, we had fun and enjoyed getting to know our creek and the beauty that surrounded it. It was my husband’s first time there and it allowed him time to see the land and form his plans. These first two weeks living on the property were truly the start of our homesteading adventure.
Watch the Video
Today’s video is going to show videos and pictures of our two weeks on the property and how we did some of the things listed in today’s post.