This past weekend, the lady and I were out in rural Washington scouting some properties we had found online. We were so excited that our dream was so close to becoming reality!
Unfortunately there were some major obstacles with the property. Water access in the area was limited to drilling a well into the side of the mountain where a previous “well” on the property had come up dry. The primitive road would prevent access for a few months out of the year. Our plan is to have Julie (My girlfriend) continue to work her job as a nurse, while I build our house and get the farm up and running. If the roads are impassible though she won’t be able to get to work so we decided this property while beautiful, abundant with deer, and the perfect landscape for our farm, wasn’t the right fit for us. This really took away a lot of our momentum and stifled our spirits a bit.
That being said, we are back to the drawing board. If any of you fans/readers know of a place that you think would fit our needs please send me the info.
We’re looking for the following things in a property:
1. At least 5 acres
2. Must be zoned for horses and other livestock
3. Preferably will be backed up to BLM land
4. Needs some reliable source of water
5. Must have good road access (Doesn’t require a 4 by 4 to access property)
6. Must be zoned for multiple structures on the property
7. Affordable
8. Within 30 minutes of a hospital
The goal is to build a modified Earthship out of a shipping container for our house. Earthships use passive solar technology to heat the house with rays from our most abundant free energy resource; the sun. I intend to supplement out heating needs with a rocket mass heater fueled by coppice trees planted on the property for firewood harvesting. Greywater will be used to water these trees. We intend to catch rainwater on the roof which will be stored in a cistern to be filtered and used as needed. Some small herbs will be grown indoors but the majority of our food will come from a food forest and our livestock. Ideally we will construct a pod where we can stock fish along with our rabbits, goats, and chickens.
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Sustainable Craig 
I’ll keep you in mind, as we’re also scouting and have similar objectives. Have you considered the WA/ID border? There, you’ll be near Spokane and Coer d’Alene, not too far from Julie’s family…and within a couple hours of our intended homestead. (Can she get licensed in both WA and ID?) Newport, WA looks like it has some good properties, and I’ve spent some time in the Airway Heights/Deer Park areas around Spokane.
Note…you can usually get well data from surrounding properties before placing an offer. Very helpful!
That is a bummer dude. I would hate to sound negative, but I think you ae shooting for the sky with your requests. Have you considered getting a 4×4? Or even an old truck that can support a snow plow? I think most places you are going to want to live will be somewhere that requires 4-wheel drive.
Unfortunately this place had a pretty steep drop off the side of the road, and a few cars already down in the ravine. I bought a farm truck with four wheel drive… but it broke down on the goat trip.
I always set super high standards for this kind of stuff. Why short-change your dreams right? If we fall a bit short of some of the requests I can live with that.
I want to live close enough to a hospital though and to a main road as I’d like to run some course off of the property eventually.