Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Off-grid life in the high desert?

First, do a rain dance......

For the last 150 years, minimum, people have roamed the desert trying to make a living in it, including the most unlikely places. Every place has been evaluated, and just about every place has seen homesteading attempts. There are abandoned homestead, even abandoned towns all over the high desert in these parts. And most of those were abandoned in higher rain periods than we are seeing now.

If you are so stone poor that you can't buy a little better tract of land than pure desert, work a second job for a few years and upgrade. There are still a lot of old abandoned mining claims and in holdings in the mountains that are available. With curretn solar power technology, they are much more liveable than they have ever been.

Next he'll be promoting the shot.

We have lots of "cedar rats" around here, very few make it more than a year. Most cant make it 6 months. They think it would be cheap to live in the bonnies but it is not.

Most have to make 2 or 3 trips a week to town for water. There are 2 pay by the gallon water stations. They have traliers with one or two tanks on it. You know water is a problem when the ranchers have to haul trom town.
The county requires a septic system....
Very expensive to get reliable power.
The dirt roads get very rough when there is high traffic on them. Kills vehicles and lots of tires.
Roads turn into a muddy mess when it rains makes getting to town difficult and sometimes impossible when it floods.
Lately the meth monsters have found it fairly easy to raid the home/cabin/RV/tent when folks leave. They take anything not bolted down, sometimes the bolts dont stop them.
No fire/EMS service
Can get very cold in the winter and hotter than hades in the summer.
Predators WILL get to small livestock.

It is not impossible, the old time homesteaders did it, but without reliable water your chances are slim. A person needs a written plan and adequate money to make a decent go of it.

Mud, oh s*t I could never live there, but then on second thought mud and floods could be a good thing in the desert.

You are looking at the wrong end of the country, if you can't afford the mountains out there. There are plenty of hollers in Appalachia and the southeastern US that a man could more or less disappear into, live on squirrels and bluegill and sweet potatoes, and only go into a small town whenever it suited him.

Hard to survive on 2-3 inches of precipitation a year.

High desert can be Washington to Arizona! More information on where, or everything is speculation!

Are you a realtor, or trying to sell land? Your absolutely right, the only drawback around middle Georgia is the summer heat and negros. The Georgia - North Carolina line due east a 100 miles or due west for 500 miles a person could make a pretty good go of living off-grid and not just trying to survive.

That is so true!

I lived for almost four years in a golf community here along New Mexico's Turquoise Trail (Rt 14) between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, that had relatively unpleasant water piped in at some expense from over ten miles away. It was a pretty location but with many issues besides the water. Later, the lease owner wanted me to buy it, so I looked for something better and closer to town.

Instead, I found a very special place on a quite hilly five acres, just a minute off Interstate 40 and Route 66, backing up against a national forest, where a wealthy doctor had built himself a pretty fancy log cabin hunting lodge 75 years ago.

Best of all, since it was on the eastern slope of the Sandia Mountains, which caught all the rain as clouds came over the top from Albuquerque, it had an arroyo running through it, two rock ponds and a well with its clean water source only 18 feet deep! Talk about a rarity! They can be found, but one has to look for them.

Norm

Hahahaha!

You fugger.


Dead horse.

Do you own the water rights to collect the rainwater? This is going on in OR right now. People can't have rain barrels because someone else has the rights to all the runoff from their property. It doesn't matter how long your cistern has been there. It's who owns the water rights on the land that matters. If this western drought continues, many people are going to get bit when the rights holders send in the sheriff to shut down their water collecting systems. It's not theirs to collect.

Many desert homes were broken off from ranches that sold off land that wasn't good for grazing. They didn't sell the water rights along with the land.

I understand the legal requirements here, but the sad part is I doubt many of those ranchers have an effective way to retain the water runoff from heavy rains. I mean it's pretty obvious the most effective retention system is immediate capture with retention in an enclosed cistern which greatly limits losses. If the home owner uses the water it is almost certainly discharged back into the water table through drain field leaching or garden watering.

I don't think people are thinking very deeply about this subject.

Slappy Hampster will be along shortly to tell us how he used to do it....

if you spend much time in these areas you quickly realize the same now as then people put up homesites based on available water in the area. much of the natural springs are private with BLM land surrounding them. I come across some of these homesteads from time to time. some are active, some were dreamed of and never happened, ie they took out stuff to the land to do it, and many are long abandoned. none of which is a way I would want to live. I also have a friend who sold his house bought land in remote utah to setup a homestead. I haven't talked to him in a while but he quickly burned through all, most, or even beyond that in cash he had set aside to build his homestead. meanwhile the 2 houses he owned in the city have doubled in value over the last 3 years, but he sold them to move and doesnt' have the equity.

the problem is the same problem that has always been out there. earning a living. his finances basically dried up due to remoteness, and his being busy trying to build things himself. I think he basically lives in a shack that is partially complete. this is why its not more common, the old timers were better suited for life out there, they could raise a few animals and eek out a living but it was still tuff. nearly everyone with enough means to make it work, will not trade their life. Instead I would recommend just having a place to go, but not plan on living there long term.

Where are you currently located?

A major problem with the high desert is not the climate, but that you are only a tank of gas away from hordes of fruit and nuts. If I were a young man again, I would take a serious look at the Aleutians.Seriously, all the reasons people will say you are crazy is exactly why it is an awesome spot in a troubled world.

I can't see living in the middle of nowhere where it's so hot in the summer all you do is camp out in a trailer and so cold in the winter that you do the same.

I Also think you're better off just getting out of the city, live around like minded people with similar beliefs so that you can setup a relationship with them of mutual defense and trade.

Reads like the tin foil hat brigade is out in force. Slow day at Infowars, fellas?
I, for one, enjoyed the topic and concept, but around here no good deed goes unpunished.

Agree with the non-conspiratorial comments here.......water, or lack of it, is *the* issue.

Lots of good advice here.