Self-Sufficiency

maybe what you were listening to wasn't your intuition but your brain. brains can be wrong sometimes. My tendency is to be trusting and idealistic about people, so I always have to watch that because that's not really intuition, it's more an automatic way that I operate. I've had a few disillusionments in the past that made me wake up and start really tuning in to my intuition. I'm not at all down on people, but realistic that most won't fit with us in what we're trying to do.

By the way I meant to ask you, I noticed you're in Ontario... what's farming like there? One reason we moved to Washington is we were seriously considering Canada. Right now we're a spitting distance away from the border... close to Vancouver, and we go over there periodically. But since moving here we've reconsidered the whole Canada thing. Land is cheap (depending) but immigrating is a bitch.

 

About the farming... hard question to answer, depends where you go.

Actually, same applies to land values as well.

If you stay in southern bc, you will get the best growing season in canada. The rest varies from one place to another. Where we are in northern ontario, we plant in june and harvest in aug/sept. Hardiness zone 2b.

Land values differ as greatly as they do across the states.

In this area is all I can talk about for values, but you cna check mls.ca for official listings across canada, but searching for a private deal is better. Check out dignam.com.

The place we are making a deal on right now, is 32 acres with a cabin, for 40 k cash.

I know of some others in the area that are nice places...

if you got the money, I know a beautiful 287 acres chunk of land, 3 lakes on it, one totally enclosed on the property, one half on, half off (on public land), with just the tip of the third, which only has two seasonal cottages on it. all three lakes are spring fed. 8500 feet of shoreline in total... 350k, minumum of 80k down.


Or 160 acres remote bush for 35k, but its been selectively cut.

Name your price range and I can tell you what is in northern ontario that you want..

As for brain vs intuiton... doesnt matter, they're both fucked... lol

 

I can totally sympathyze with you guys, HHB and Chronictom. I've been talking with friends about doing this for around 3 years and so far haven't gotten much help with any part of the whole process. one or two people will sporadically help a lot for a few days and then just fade back into no help at all for months. And all this in the planning phase! I wonder how many will put in the work and actually help when the deal goes through in a few days.

thankfully I decided after hearing a lot of stories like those to buy the land outright myself, that way when people don't work, or take advantage I can say get the H#%% out. If things do work out and everything just flows into place then we can get the co-op thing going and I'll sell or rent the property for the communal use.

and about land prices Chronic is pretty dead on about prices, and growing season, here in the prairies we usually plant late may early june and harvest before frost in late september or october.

 

northern ontario is a nice area but loooong ........i drive through it twice a year ...come through via kapuskasing and hearst etc ...may try going through sudbury this year just for a change

 

If you were heading straight through, it would be better for you to hit north bay, sudbury sault st marie route...
the northern split, east west is just nuts, nothing but trees for miles and miles and miles...

 

at least on the northern route i know where all the tim hortons are..

 

lol, true, but I should point out that they are easy to find, they are everywhere...

It is a damn nice drive up that way though... once or twice during the day in summer...

I've done it in the middle of night during a snow storm... there comes a point when you wish a truck would appear out of nowhere and take you out of your misery... lol

 

And the price of tea in China went up today!

 

Well, I guess I just grew up in a "lucky" family...the large bank account was nonexistant! Self-sufficiency...I believe we lived it.
SELF-SUFFICIENCY=
Hunting...Never a winter without deer and moose meat, rabbits, fish and even bear meat filling the freezer.
Gardening? Thier was always a supply of canned vegetables to go the winter.Cukes pickled, sauce made from garden fresh tomato.
Fruit? Wild apple orchards with a variety of different apples gave us all we needed for apple pies and mincemeat. The strawberry jam/jelly would last all winter. Not one berry came from cultivated land.We spent days in the fields picking small, wild berries. The result unlike what most have tasted. Blueberries, that still grow wild, filled the freezer also.
Self-sufficient? My mother bought material and sat a few hours a day making clothing for my two sisters and I, and our dad. Hats, mittens, and socks for winter never came from a store. Everything was knitted or crocheted.I can think of a few other things I consider self-sufficient...my dad reloading his own bullets to do the hunting that supplied the meat. Or even the fact that he worked on his own vehicle when broken down that got him to his favorite hunting grounds.
So, no, I'm pretty sure a large bank account isn't required, just survival instincts.
By the way...I had some friends that were given a piece of land for thier wedding. They had no money. They did, however, end up with a nice log cabin built with thier own two hands, with a little help from some friends, out of trees cut from thier land.
I really hope this post was sufficient.

 

I agree self-sufficiency = hunting, farming ect.

But my point was…. It is hard to BUY land and be self sufficiency while paying it off.. Yes it can be done but it is very hard…

Usually land payments take cash for that most people need a job and gas to get there, car repairs ect so the vicious cycle of working for the man starts and never ends for 25-40 years until the mortgage is paid.

Most of us won’t be “given land for a wedding present” so that means land payments. It is hard to make land payments with a basket of tomatoes or a pack of deer meat. Land payments are like paying rent when you don’t make a payment you are homeless.

I know a few people who do make a living off of their land, farmers and ranchers they were lucky and had money to invest or inherited their land. Would they be able to make a living and still make land payments? Probably not.

Again I’m not saying it is impossible just it is extremely hard to MAKE LAND PAYMENTS and be self-sufficient.
Like I said earlier I know people that have done it with a lifetime of hard work.

A lot of hippies come from rich families and go out and buy land and have a inherited bank account to invest in tools, building materials, ect.
Is that self-sufficient or is it living off of an inherited bank account invested in real estate?

Farmers and ranchers are self-sufficient but can you go get a loan on a ranch or farm and turn enough profit to make land payments and still survive? Or can you sell enough hemp jewelry on ebay to pay off land?
If you can you are one of the skillful lucky few…

It was a nice post about self-sufficient living methods but it doesn’t take into account having to pay rent or land payments.

 

I guess I didn't say quite enough. You are under the assumption that my father didn't work his whole life in the woods to make those payments. The way I understand life, money is needed for most anything material.
We didn't have alot of land, and anyone is capable of this if they are willing to adjust thier lives to the lifestyle and live those changes. WORK being the key word.
Peace and love!

 

I didn’t assume your father didn’t pay for the land you just didn’t mention it or how he did it..

So what did he do to make money in the woods?

Money is a key part of survival with out it self-sufficiency is just a fantasy.

 

I just wanted to say buying land is difficult. I don't know how things are in the states but in canada the cheapest land is completely vacant land. the banks and the credit unions won't(extremely rare where I am anyways) give you a mortgage on land. You have to get a loan with a short repayment period and higher interest that's beyond most people's incomes.

My tips for buying land/saving up for land is as follows.

live simply and well within your means
reduce all non positive debts
save money each paycheck in an account for land
if you rent, buy a house that's within your means and get a long mortgage.
after a few years(depending on your income) between savings and equity in your house you should be able to buy land.

this is pretty much what I did. i'm sure that there are plenty of variations but...

oh and needing money doesn't stop after you've paid your mortgage or loan on the land. you still have to pay for property taxes, insurance, upkeep...

that means it's important to have your own source of income. Selling stuff from the land (trees, fruits, veggies, animals...), making stuff for sale, renting out part of the land or your house(if you have), doing odd jobs for neighbors/nearby town, having investments that provide income...

Also what zihger said about a lot of people inheriting land or the early hippies being mostly from wealthy families is true. most of those also were not sucessful in their endeavors... the people that made it were the hard working bunch that knew it was a struggle and kept on. the ones who had to devellop a plan, had to figure out how to make money, how to work with "authorities"...

one last note: people were able to work on their vehicles and fix things more easily in the 50's and 60's, well even into the early 80's. Things were made to last and give you value for your money. The things that could break from wear and tear were designed so that the part that broke was easy to fix and not expensive to buy, now it's cheaper to buy new than to get something fixed. back then you could buy things with the knowledge that it was the last time you ever had to buy that thing in your life as it was built to last longer than your lifespan(assuming you took care of it).
Now we have these cheap, plastic, poorly designed(can be argued) things that are made to be disposable and that break the first time you use them. cars and such have so much electronics in them now it takes computers to tell the mechanics what's wrong. For other things like electronics themselves, the tech has improved so fast that a lot of people have gone through several different incarnations(better, faster, brighter, lighter...) or types of media(which the corps try and change every couple years).

 

Just an added thing in regards to buying a place while you are waiting to get enough to buy land.

It is a simple fact that 95% of any place you rent, you are paying the mortgage for the landlord, the taxes, insurance and other costs associated with owing it, as well as a profit for them.

If you can afford to pay rent, you can afford to own a home. It may not be what you picture as a great home, but if it livable and you can make the payments on it, you are building equity that you will get out with profit when you sell.

If you stay in the low to medium end of the market, and always make sure you buy places that are being sold below their market value by at least 25% (happens all the time), you will make money doing it. That is in addition to the money you are not paying for a landlords profit margin.

If you have bad credit and can't go to banks, that still doesn't mean you can't buy a place. The first place I bought was 2 blocks from the downtown of a small city (50,000 people). In good condition the house would have been worth 60-70k. The person who owned it, had a property manager working for him and the guy was going through a divorce. The tenants who had been renting this house moved out and turned the heat off, all the pipes froze, and in the spring flooded and destroyed the interior of the house. It was listed at 35k to get rid of it. I offer the owner 35k; 25k as a second mortgage that he held at 9%, and 10k as a first mortgage at 12% to cover a 'down payment'

I had an extra 20 or 30 dollars each month after all the bills were paid. With that, I cleaned the place up, painted and made the upstairs look presentable (wasn't flooded). Stripped all the garbage and destroyed stuff off the main floor. I lived there for a year and a half while doing this. Then I sold it for 50k. It paid off the mortgages, caught up my debts and gave me money to go to the next deal, which was a similar situation, except I put 5k down and had 5k to play with.

After each of my failed starts on Lost Acres, I was back at zero again, and I went out and did the same thing.

You have to be willing to give up comfort while you do it to be sure, but it gets you where you want to be, which is in the position to sell a place and have enough to start on a remote property somewhere.

A couple of specific things though.

-Don't do a rent-to-own situation, they almost (not always) always screw up, either the place has increased in value and the owner decides to sell it to somoene else for more, or it has decreased in value and the buyer would rather go by something better for the same money.

-Make sure any mortgage you get is open to being paid off early, with no penalties or fees on extra payments.

-The interest rate, the principal (amount you borrow), the amortization period, none of them matter in the slightest. Can you afford to make the monthly payments if you lose your job, get sick, etc? And is the term long enough for you to flip? That's it.... nothing else matters...

-Oh yes, and before I forget... never... let me repeat that for emphasis... NEVER get an ARM (adjustable rate mortgage). It is gambling, plain and simple... you have nobody to complain about if you take one and the rate goes up so much you can't afford it, that's why its called gambling.

If you wish to start this.. start by going and meeting every real estate agent you can find. A good question for them is are they willing to work on deals with extremely creative (but legal) financing. A lot will say no. Point out that most of your buys and sells wil be 50k or less, a lot more will say no. Weed through the ones that are left til you find one that you trust.

Same goes with a real estate lawyer, although its a little more difficult. Once you find a place you want, talk to as many different ones as you can that will give you a free consultation. Same questions apply. And as the agents, find one you trust.

And on both, keep them happy and stick with them, it is well worth it.

 

I know people who live in northern and are completely self-sufficient in fruit, nut and veggie. Completely, and they have a unique micro-hydro system that gives the ample electricity.