How We Bought Land to Homestead Off-Grid

Our family doesn’t come from money, or the knowledge of how to handle money. In fact, prior to buying our land; there was only one other person in my family to buy a house, and they eventually lost it to foreclosure. If we weren’t living in subsidized housing, we were renting something that likely should have been condemned.

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Our Family’s Motivation to Move Off-Grid

Least to say, we struggled. Living paycheck to paycheck. Always dreaming and hoping that one day we wouldn’t have to sit down and decide, do we pay the rent, put gas in the car so we can keep going to the dead end job that isn’t getting us anywhere, or put food on the table? Although, I will say I had gotten really good at how far I could make a gallon of gas last in my car.

One day I woke up and said that’s it! I’ve had enough! We are buying something. I don’t care what it is, or where it is at. We are buying something. I am done packing up everything we own and struggling to figure out where our kids are going to sleep next month!

When I said that, I really honestly didn’t care if we bought a fixer-upper in town that was next on the demolition list, or an empty plot of land that we put a camper on. I had enough faith in our skills that we could manage doing the work. Besides, what we didn’t know we had YouTube for the rest right?

Although, honestly, I was a little biased. I was rooting for the empty plot of land that we put a camper on. Eventually, we would build it up to being the homestead I had always dreamt about. If I am being completely honest, I would have preferred to buy 500 acres with an old farm house in the middle, but that wasn’t in the cards for us. Instead, we had to build it ourselves. Where there is a will there is a way!

As a child I would listen to my grandmother telling stories of her life growing up on the farm in Missouri, that had been lost before I came along. Her stories put a passion in me that I wanted to live that life. At this point in my life I had only known go to work, pay your bills — or rather try your best to pay your bills and maybe you might be happy. I knew there had to be a better way of life than this.

Most of my free time was already spent watching homestead channels on YouTube and daydreaming about the life I would someday have of my own. Convincing my family wasn’t extremely difficult, but to be honest it did take some work to get everyone on board. 

I suppose I was brutally honest with the potential of what this life might look like, Eventually, they all started talking about what they wanted on the land, and ideas began flowing, the days started getting marked off on the calendar. We were all excited for this journey!

The Journey to Find Our Dream Homesteading Land

My neighbors think we “stole” this land. To be honest we got really really lucky with what we paid for it. Personally, I believe (although I didn’t know it at the time) God was directing us here for more than just a personal passion to play with chickens everyday.

My grandma used to always say you ain’t got nothing if you ain’t got land. Personally, I have to agree — well sort of. 

"A (wo)man’s worth is not measured in possessions but his/her relationship with the land, for it is the faithful steward who finds abundance."

— Mary Warren

It is a bit more of an elegant way of saying it isn’t just the land that measures your worth, it is how you care for it. But she was right, how can you homestead without land? Yes, there are ways that you can prepare yourself for this lifestyle while living in the city in an apartment or a trailer park — like we were.

Off-Grid Homestead talks about it here: Apartment Homesteading: How to Homestead in a Rental

Land is an eventuality, regardless of where you start out. So how do you find it? Especially when your credit is shot, and you can barely pay the rent?

Search! And search some more! Don’t stop looking, and praying. I knew that year we were going to get a fairly decent income tax return check. It was enough money to pay cash for the land, and a 24 foot camper, and several breakdowns moving here. When we moved onto the property we had a single $100 bill in our pocket. Whew! That was tight, but we made it work.

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Essentials for Selecting Our Homestead Location

Everyone has a path put before them by God, and it is certainly not for me to judge what he is intending for them to learn. However, I do see it happen quite a lot. People will post in our Facebook Group complaining when the city, or county makes them move off their land because they are trying to do something they are not allowed to do. 

I knew with absolute certainty that I didn’t want there to ever be a reason for anyone to ever tell me we had “X” amount of days to vacate the property. When we made this purchase it would be the last address we would ever see on our drivers licenses. This would be our forever home!

We started with a really long conversation about what we knew we would need. What did we envision we would likely do, or would ever possibly want to do on the property.

Have to Have’s:

• Legally allowed to live in a camper, with no time constraints.
• Must have a source of water already on the property pond, creek, spring, or city water access.
• No building codes. We can build what we want. Earth bag house, straw bale house, so on.
• Surrounded by woods so we can hunt, and possibly buy more land at a later date.
• Short distance to a recreational water source for boating and fishing. We knew once we had the homestead up and running we likely couldn’t take off for a weekend to go camping, and boating. So it needed to be close enough that we could go for the day if we wanted to.
• No restrictions on what animals we can have. We might want to raise Girffes. Yes, one of the kids wanted to raise all kinds of crazy things like that. Once we were asked if we could have a pet tiger!
• No more than 30 minute drive to jobs and shopping.
• Hassle free homeschooling

Don’t Wants:

• No native wildlife that could eat us! (Bear, alligator, and so on)
• No Hurricanes: Being from the Midwest, and what is known as tornado alley we were used to tornados, but we did not want to deal with hurricanes.
• Snow is ok, just not all winter, and several feet of it at a time.

Navigating the Challenges of Land Search

I first started with a spreadsheet with each of the things from our list in a column. As I found a property we were interested in I would enter the details into the spreadsheet. First, I would pull up the property on Google. What did the terrain look like? Where was the closest grocery store? Could he find a decent job? What wildlife was native to the area? Most of our checklist could be done utilizing Google.

Then I called both the realtor who listed the property, and the county where the property was, and asked them every question from our list. Yes, I even asked if we wanted a giraffe on the property would we have someone show up and tell us to get rid of it? Some of the reactions I heard were quite hilarious. Others thought I was ridiculous. I was merely being thorough.

Purchasing Property Rights

Let’s be honest, we all say things like “own” or “mine” but the truth is all land within the boundaries of the United States of America is owned by the governmental system. We never truly own anything, technically speaking. 

We pay the previous deed holder for rights to the property and we pay the government a tax every year to continue to hold that right. It is also up to. The government to decide what is restricted on said piece of land. This is done at any of the levels of the governmental system.

The city can refuse someone within the city limits from having backyard chickens, and the county can refuse a property owner from having a tiger in their backyard. While the state can require a government designed septic system to be installed if you want access to public utilities. 

This is the part that most people either skip, or don’t think about when they seek to purchase property rights. While we may be the land of the free, we are not free to do as we choose without checking with the government first.

"Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves"

— Roman’s 13:1-2 (NASB)

Discovery of Our Dream Land

Early February 2015 we had a list of 12 or 13 properties across the states of Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee. We had planned to start out in East Tennessee, and work our way back home from there. We left the kids with a sitter, and ventured off. Before getting even an hour away from home the realtor for the property that we planned to look at last in Tennessee; called.

Someone else wanted to buy the property sight unseen. He refused to sell without them looking at it first. He knew that this one was the one I liked the most. I had scheduled it for last on purpose. I didn’t want to purchase the first piece of land we looked at. The other potential buyer had scheduled a visit that coming Monday, but we wouldn’t be there until Friday; if we kept our original schedule.

It was a no brained for us. We changed the address in GPS to his office and went there first! His listing had a video where he walked through the property, and flew over it with a drone. It already felt like we knew the land before ever getting there. It made sense why the other buyer wanted to buy sight unseen.

I already had a feeling about it, but it wasn’t until we stood about in the middle of it, overlooking the holler and the creek between that I felt an overwhelming sense of home. This was it! I wanted it. I don’t even think I asked my husband’s opinion. 

The realtor called the land owner and told them our offer on the ride back to his office. They had accepted before we even signed the official paperwork!

God’s Grace in Finding Our Homestead

In 2015 the cost of an acre was just over $3000. We scored 4 acres for less than $6000! That is less than half the going rate per acre at the time. Currently land is going for $14,000 per acre. (2023) How did we manage finding such a score? God’s grand design is the only way to explain it.

This parcel was previously purchased at a back taxes sale by a lumber mill. Ordinarily he worked with much larger parcels of land. Some how he ended up with something much smaller than he normally would have. He harvested the land for the timber he used in the mill and asked his realtor friend to list it as a favor. 

Normally a realtor charges a fee to list a property, show it, and handle all the paperwork for the sale. As a favor, he didn’t charge any of that to his friend so he could keep the cost of the land intentionally low. In his mind a low selling price would generate a quick flip. Therefore, he wouldn't have to deal with the clean up of tree tops and ruts that were created in the harvesting process. 

Had he not sold it by the end of March he intended to begin the clean up process, install services on the land and would have hiked the price of the land up far beyond what we could have afforded. Personally, I choose to believe that God’s intervention was at work the entire time. He wanted us here for a reason.

The Emotional Rollercoaster of Closing the Deal

We didn’t close on the property for a whole month after we signed the offer. I was ready to move onto the property right then! But the lawyer needed time to do a title search. I remember driving my friend crazy signing the song “I Wanna Go Home” by Bobby Bare. Every time I would begin to think of the reality of the situation I would just start singing it.

Understanding the Importance of a Warranty Deed:

It is absolutely imperative that you pay the extra to the lawyer for a warranty deed. Essentially this protects your purchase from any potential claims to the land. Let’s say that Grandpa Joe died and left his land to some distant relative who happened to be living in England. Little Jimmy doesn’t find out about this until 30 years later. Jimmy has a legitimate claim to the land, and guess what? Now you’re in court fighting over your home, and a judge decides who gets it. And that is to say that you have enough money to pay for the lawyer to fight the claim. 

A warranty deed checks public records, wills, and a whole list of resources to ensure that there are no potential claims to the land that could creep up. He then puts a warranty on the deed saying that there are none, and in the event that there is one that managed to make it through the cracks, he takes care of it. The land is yours! It is absolutely worth the up front investement.

Closing Day Is Here!

We closed on our land on my oldest son’s 13th birthday. It was a very bitter sweet day for me. You see, I had promised that child when he was born he wouldn’t live the life my cousins had lived, bouncing from house to house, and school to school. That I would provide him with a home! It took me 13 years to do it, but I kept my promise. The sad part was that he didn’t even get to go with me the day we signed the papers. We moved from Missouri to Tennessee, the day we sought to leave a snow storm, well rather ice storm came through. 

We decided it wasn’t safe to travel with the camper and the kids. Since we didn’t have enough money to pay for a hotel room we would have to sleep in the car the night before to make the 8am appointment with the lawyer. So we left the kids with family and made the drive alone. That was definitely a trip to remember, although every trip of the many we took getting down here over the course of a month after this was just as memorable.

Home

The most memorable was the day we went to pick up the official deed to our land. After leaving the lawyers office I passed the deed to each of the children educating them on what the blue bound papers were that they were holding. “This piece of paper says we never have to move again!” There is still a Cheetos stain on the back of it to this day.

As we left the city, and headed to our little piece of land in the woods; one of the kids asked where are we going now? I stammered as I tried to say H - Ho - Home. The tears fell from my face as I stumbled through that word. I blubbered like a baby! None of them understood at that time what that meant. But the word home couldn't’ have been more powerful at that moment! I am fairly certain I cried the entire way HOME.

Summary

The blog post “How We Bought Land to Homestead Off the Grid” narrates Traum Ranch’s journey from financial instability to purchasing land for off-grid homesteading. It covers their motivation, the search and acquisition process, and the eventual realization of their dream. The story highlights the challenges faced, including financial constraints and the importance of legal diligence, and celebrates the fulfillment of establishing a permanent home.

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Additional Resources

For readers looking to delve deeper into the themes of our blog post, here are three invaluable resources:

• Homesteading.com’s Guide to Starting Your Homestead: This comprehensive guide offers practical steps for beginners on the homesteading journey. From planning your land use to raising livestock, it’s a must-read for anyone inspired to embrace self-sufficiency. Explore their guide
• LandWatch.com: An essential resource for finding and purchasing land across the United States. This is the site where we found our land; maybe your future homestead is listed there right now. Start your land search here.
• HomesteadingFamily.com: Things to Consider Before Going Off-Grid. This resource provides thought provoking considerations for a successful transition to off-grid life. Read more about what to consider.

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