Where is your property?
I have ten acres in the foothills an hour north of Spokane, and a house in the city.
How did you pick your location?
"Picking a place" is 20th century thinking: "I'm going to search the whole world, find exactly what I want, and do whatever it takes to get it." My style is to go with the flow and work with what comes easily. So when I got an opportunity to buy land at the top of a watershed with a year-round spring for a low price, near my long Spokane housesits, I took it. Later, when I had enough money to buy a house, I decided to stay in Spokane close to my land. I grew up in eastern Washington, so I like the climate. Also the people are friendly, housing is cheap, and it's relatively safe from disasters. If I had unlimited money, I'd probably get a house in Portland and land in the Willamette Valley.
Are you homesteading your land?
People don't ask this, but often assume it because of powerful cultural myths. When I first bought the land I thought I was going to build a cabin and live there, but I eventually figured out that homesteading is a difficult way to have a low quality life. The closer you get to total self-sufficiency, the harder you have to work, and the farther you get from it, the more time you have to spend driving into the city to buy stuff and make money. In practice, you're likely to do too much work
and too much driving, while also being too socially isolated. Instead of going "back to the land", you might find yourself living in a remote personal suburb.
I'm now calling the land a
dacha, a Russian word for a place in the country that supplements a main residence in the city. Most of my attention is now focused on my house in Spokane, where I can see other people, get on the internet, and ride my bike two miles to the food co-op. The land is still good for summer camping, growing large trees, observing nature, harvesting firewood, possibly hunting deer, and bugging out in an emergency.
Would you ever have a community on your land?
To build a community that produces most of its own food, tools, and energy, and is large enough to meet the social needs of the members, is a massive project far beyond my resources and acreage. There might be room up there for enough cabins to house 20 people, but then 20 people have to either be independently wealthy introverts, or drive into town every day.
What I might consider is adding a few owners to my land, through some kind of land trust or cooperative. That way other people would help take care of it, and maybe I could eventually get away with not owning a vehicle.
Are you going to build a cabin?
I've learned that the only way I can get anything done is to not write about it until
after I've done it.
Why don't you build a yurt?
I'm skeptical of the yurt because it's such a good name. I suspect that if you could change history to switch around the names of the thousands of different indigenous structures, everyone would be building whichever one happened to be called a "yurt". But also, a good canvas tent is perfectly adequate for spring through fall, and I want something really solid and well-insulated if I'm ever going to spend the winter up there.
Do you use a chainsaw?
This is a hard decision. At first I bought a Husqvarna 340, but then I decided to try to cut all the wood by hand, because I prefer slow quiet work to fast noisy work, and also because chainsaws spew a lot of toxins. But then in early 2009 I found a source of Aspen 2t
alkylate fuel in Vancouver, and I also did some research and discovered you can get away with food-grade canola for bar oil. So that made a chainsaw acceptable, and I've been using it to cut wood and cut down larger trees.
Are you going to make a farm and/or garden?
Those words imply annuals, which are for workaholics and masochists. I'm much more interested in perennials. I suppose I'll eventually try some potatoes and squash.
What food-bearing perennials are you growing?
Nobody ever asks this but I like to talk about it. On my land I'm growing seven apple trees, mostly russets and crabs, four tart cherry trees, some struggling black walnuts, and also american plum, pawpaw, aronia, serviceberry, nanking cherry, sea buckthorn, goumi, jostaberry, blueberry, highbush cranberry, mountain ash hybrid, hazelnut/filbert, and blue elder. Most of them have not produced fruit yet. For my house I've ordered a big mulberry, a peach, an apricot, a tart cherry, and some raspberries and black currants.
How much land do you have in the city?
If I say 7000 square feet, people say "wow that's big", and if I say a sixth of an acre, people say "wow that's small".
Would you ever have a community in your house?
Well, it does have two bathrooms. But it's pretty small. Ideally I'll have one other person paying cheap rent to cover some of my expenses, and a third bedroom for guests.
(last updated february 2012)