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You are here: Home / Off-Grid / Buying The Farm: Finding Our Off-Grid Homestead

Buying The Farm: Finding Our Off-Grid Homestead

June 3, 2017 by Ashley Adamant 29 Comments

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Like many young couples disillusioned with the modern way of life, we dreamed of owning our own homestead.  A place to stretch out, raise our own food and reconnect with the world around us.  

Too many years of office work had worn down our resolve, and we wanted something better.

Off Grid Home From the Woods in Vermont

Our initial qualifications were:

  • Minimum of 10 acres
  • House not visible from the road
  • Wood heat & a sufficient woodlot to sustainably harvest for heat
  • Land suitable for agriculture
  • Within 30 minutes of a small store to acquire the essentials
  • Access to water
  • No easements, right of ways, or snowmobile trails running through the property
  • Located in Vermont

After looking at the options in our price range, and determining most of them would better serve humanity and the community by being burned to the ground, we were discouraged. 

Patience.  Continue to save.  Stay the course.

Greenhouse at Off Grid Homestead

We continued to watch the market, checking real estate sites daily.  Over the next few years, our savings grew, along with our budget and we began to see plausible homesteads.  

During our 3rd summer of shopping, we began to see 8-10 plausible options a month.  After initial calling and background research, that list shrunk to 2-3 actual home tours per month.  Each one, not quite right.

Crumbling foundations. Floodplains. Dumpsites.  Junkyards.  

Google earth became our best friend.  Scouting the neighborhood via satellite maps and street view saved us a lot of time and mileage.

Finally, we found it.  Our dream compound.  

A former organic farm with a beautiful timber frame home and greenhouse on 20 acres.  I called the agent immediately, only to learn they’d just accepted an offer.  

It was listed for a total of 12 hours.  We’d seen it.  So close, and now we knew it was out there.

Patience.  Stay the course.

Off-Grid Homestead

A few weeks later, we finally found it.  The perfect place.  Multiple structures all almost 1000 feet from the road, dense woodland, 30 acres, attached greenhouse, super-insulated, wood heat…but…it was off the grid.  

Were we ready to move off-grid?  While we were both experienced with agriculture and animal husbandry, we knew nothing about solar and wind energy.

What does a charge controller do?  Aren’t the batteries expensive?  How often does it need maintenance or replacement?  

Will we be able to have computers?  How about modern conveniences like a washer/dryer?

We knew nothing.  After a few long nights up mulling it over, we decided to jump in with both feet.  What better way to learn than immersion.  

In hindsight, it was crazy.  The first three years off-grid had a steep learning curve and a few near disasters, but we’re loving every minute of it.

We’ve now been here for nearly a decade, and we wouldn’t trade our slice of heaven for anything.

January Full Moon Homestead

January full moon. So beautiful it looks like daylight, doesn’t it?

Since moving to our forever home, we’ve learned a lot about off-grid living.  We’ve since mapped out our full system and made a lot of improvements (click here for tour and specs for our power system).

These days, we both work as independent contractors and earn a full time living off-grid without ever having to leave the property.

In hindsight, there are a number of things we wish we would have budgeted for before the move, but all in all, we never regret making the jump.

If you’d like to hear more about our journey, sign up for our newsletter.  The blog talks about all things self-sufficiency and gives you the benefit of learning from our mistakes before you make the jump.

 

Buying the Farm- Finding Our Off Grid Homestead #offgrid #preparedness #survival #shtf #homesteading #prepper #selfsufficiency #selfreliant #offgridhome

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. JETHRO PAUL RAYMER

    July 12, 2017 at 8:36 am

    Can you please sign me up for your newsletter

    Reply
    • Ashley Adamant

      July 14, 2017 at 8:46 pm

      Sure. Done.

      Reply
  2. Heidi Villegas

    July 20, 2017 at 2:11 pm

    I love this! Our home is situated in a village far from Las Vegas, the nearest city. We wanted so badly to get out of Vegas. We are off grid too! It was a huge leap of faith, but we love it! We are currently searching for our forever retirement home, and for us , being off grid is now a big plus! Good luck to you!

    Reply
    • Rita

      December 2, 2018 at 2:57 pm

      Where is this community? We are in vegas and want out.

      Reply
  3. Patsy Mims

    July 24, 2017 at 1:28 pm

    I have sighed up please let me know if it took. Thank you so much, Patsy Mims

    Reply
    • Ashley Adamant

      July 24, 2017 at 9:02 pm

      I’ve added you manually to my mailing list, thanks for checking! It didn’t go through before. I was having some issues with the signup box, but it’s resolved now. Thanks for subscribing!

      Reply
  4. Darren

    July 26, 2017 at 9:08 am

    Yep like to go on your newsletter please.
    Darren

    Reply
    • Ashley Adamant

      July 26, 2017 at 2:22 pm

      Added! The form above is fixed, so that works too.

      Reply
  5. Tracey Colgrove

    September 14, 2017 at 1:13 am

    I would like to get your newsletter. Thanks

    Reply
  6. Martin Longhorn

    September 18, 2017 at 4:25 am

    Thank you for your posts.

    Reply
  7. Kathy

    September 22, 2017 at 2:57 pm

    Please sign me up for your newsletter!

    Reply
  8. MacKenzie

    September 27, 2017 at 2:26 pm

    I just stumbled upon this on Pinterest. I also have an off grid house in central Vermont and your house looks very familiar. I think we might be neighbors!

    Reply
    • Ashley Adamant

      September 27, 2017 at 2:46 pm

      Neat! Send me an email at Ashley dot Adamant at gmail dot com if you want to connect =)

      Reply
  9. Tara

    January 24, 2018 at 2:52 pm

    Impressive! My husband and I talk about this quite a bit but the thought of actually doing it makes gives me butterflies. I think it’s incredible that you are living so independently. What a dream. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  10. Maria

    February 12, 2018 at 11:18 am

    Really Great Post. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
  11. Charles

    April 18, 2018 at 6:28 pm

    Hello,

    Are there special websites for off grid homes? The big sites like realtor or Zillow don’t recognize off grid as a search option. Do you know any realtors who handle these sort of things? Thanks. Great blog.
    Charles

    Reply
    • Ashley Adamant

      April 19, 2018 at 11:20 pm

      That one’s tricky. I’m just starting to research a post on it, because I get that question a lot. I know mother earth news has a home listing page, and there’s a site called survivalist realty that has a lot of off grid homes. I think there’s also a facebook group for off grid land available. Our find was more or less accidental, but I’m going to put up a post about this soon.

      Reply
  12. Charles

    April 19, 2018 at 12:20 am

    Hello, if you don’t intend to have animals and don’t intend to heat with wood how many acres do you think is needed for a homestead? Thanks

    Reply
    • Ashley Adamant

      April 19, 2018 at 11:23 pm

      Without needing wood heat, your land could be quite small. An acre of land, managed intensively, could feed a family. That’s assuming you’re willing to buy in things like oils and flour for cooking. If you want to grow grains and oils things get complicated.

      Reply
      • Charles

        April 26, 2018 at 2:30 pm

        Thanks so 10 would be more than sufficient?

        Reply
        • Ashley Adamant

          April 26, 2018 at 7:45 pm

          Yes, totally sufficient, provided the land was usable. We looked at one property that was 50 acres, but it was all north facing ledge, about 2 inches of topsoil over rock. Ten good acres is plenty though.

          Reply
  13. Charles

    April 26, 2018 at 2:28 pm

    Hello,

    If you aren’t using wood to heat your house how many acres do you think are needed for a homestead in VT? Thanks.

    Reply
    • Charles

      April 26, 2018 at 2:33 pm

      I think you answered this already. Sorry!

      Reply
  14. Charles

    April 26, 2018 at 2:38 pm

    So how many acres for a wood lot is necessary to heat an average size home? I never understood how many trees make a cord? Thanks!

    Reply
    • Ashley Adamant

      April 26, 2018 at 7:57 pm

      It really depends on how good your insulation is, and how you’re heating your home (woodstove inside, external boiler, etc) and what your climate is like. It also depends on the type of wood as some types of trees have more heat energy (BTU’s) in their wood than others.

      As a rule of thumb though, in Vermont, the old timers say you can sustainably heat an average home on 10 acres of well managed woodlot. It seems about right to me, but I don’t know for sure.

      Reply
      • Charles

        April 27, 2018 at 6:07 pm

        Thank you so much! Sorry about the repeat questions, I’m new at this and wasn’t pulling up your answers.

        Reply
  15. Gary Santee

    June 24, 2019 at 12:47 pm

    More and more thinking people are looking at your way of living. My Grandparents in West Virginia lived on 30 acres with ponds, woods, gardens, bees. Wonderful place to grow up. As retiring someday looms ever closer, all of your conversation makes more sense. Thank you for making these options available to more of us!

    Reply
  16. john

    February 6, 2020 at 7:56 pm

    in the process of buying an off the grid house in Walden VT and like to install a greenhouse attached to the front of the house 8′ x 36′ southwest facing and wondering if you have any other tips as I read your article on attached greenhouse pro and cons. Thanks signed up to follow you

    Reply
  17. Jeremy

    November 3, 2020 at 4:41 pm

    This story is beautiful; it is the modern-day adult equivalent to everyone’s childhood dream of “running away from home and living off the land”. It is fantastic that you managed to acquire the agricultural and animal husbandry skills, and are able-bodied and resourceful enough to make a successful run at this lifestyle. Not everyone could.

    I liken this to Dick Proenneke’s “Alone in the Wilderness” undertaking in the 1960s, in which he decided to homestead in remote Alaska by himself. He was already a master woodworker and decent outdoorsman and gardener when he set out. It would be naive for the average layperson to try what you, or Mr. Proenneke, did, without acquiring the prerequisite years of skill and knowledge.

    Thanks for opening up this window into your world, for those of us who dream but don’t yet have (or may never acquire) all the fundamental skills and abilities to experience it for ourselves.

    Cheers.

    Reply

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Meet Ashley from Practical Self Reliance

Ashley Adamant Author Bio

I’m an off-grid homesteader in rural Vermont and the author of Practical Self Reliance, a blog that helps people find practical ways to become more self-reliant. Read More…

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