# New and don't know where to start looking



## themechanicguy (May 24, 2014)

Hi,
I'm new to posting on the site and am hoping to gather some information. I have been reading a lot of posts over the past year and have learned quite a bit from what many of you have shared in regards to homesteading. We currently live in the Mid-Atlantic region and due to several reasons are considering moving. I struggle with some health issues and my doctor has suggested trying a dryer climate. It gets quite humid here. Although we live in a sub-division, we have already been trying to get started with being more self sufficient. I installed a wood stove, a solar powered rainwater system, many raised bed vegetable gardens which are watered by rainwater through a system that I kind of custom made, etc..

One main problem is, we live in one of the most expensive states in the country N.J. and to own more than the 1/4 acre we have in this state is WAY out of our budget. We are longing to be in a more rural setting where we can have more privacy and less regulations. You aren't allowed to do anything here. We can't even have chickens!

We would love to start out renting a small homestead in the beginning and maybe move on to buy once we get a real feel for the area.

The problem is that even after months and months of research we cannot narrow down an area. We are open to many parts of the country but at this point I just don't know where to go from here. I can't seem to find very many options that are even close to being affordable. How do we get started? Is it even worth keeping the dream going or is it just too difficult to do unless you have a decent amount of money?

Any info or opinions will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks


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## Bellyman (Jul 6, 2013)

Have you read Joel Skousen's "Strategic Relocation"? Although there are some things in his book that I don't quite agree with, I do think he has some excellent general information on some more and less desirable locations within the US. 

I would tend to think that NJ is not the place I'd want to be either. I grew up not too far from you in southeast PA and I know it's getting crowded and expensive in that area. 

Your health issues may be a factor in looking for a place and there might be areas of the west (many tending to be dryer than the east, just look at satellite maps and note the color) that may be more to your liking. Dryer can mean more challenges for water which is an important thing to think about. 

You may also have family that might influence how far you want to go. That is definitely a factor for me and why I'm looking for a place in TN rather than perhaps ID. 

You will find that there are pockets of "better" places to be in quite a few states. Most of them tend to be away from the big cities and somewhat less than convenient but some people feel more comfortable being in "less than convenient" places. (I'm one of them.)

There are also some states that tend to be less or more restrictive. Many have a state income tax but some do not. Some local areas have horrendous property taxes while other places might be cheap by comparison. (Where my family in PA lives, their property taxes are 10 times+ what they would be for the same property in TN where I'm looking.) 

Your intended use for the property might have something to do with where you decide to go. If you intend to have large gardens and orchards, it will be a lot more difficult in rugged, steep and rocky dirt or in places that do not have the water supply for what you intend to do. 

Challenges can be overcome. Elliot Coleman has done some remarkable work with greenhouses and hoophouses. He lives in Maine. I've visited a couple of farms just outside of Phoenix, AZ that are raising vegetables to sell as well as having a pretty decent orchard. (They irrigate quite a lot.) 

I doubt a lot of that is all that helpful but I kinda sympathize. My wife and I are fulltime rvers and we could technically go just about anywhere we wanted. It can be hard to decide just where you want to be when you don't have a specific reason to be someplace in particular.

Best of luck as you get it figured out! Oh, and you might be right about renting a place for a while to check out an area. There are times when a person just doesn't fit into the local culture. Been there, done that, won't be returning to central MS. But that's just me. A "good ol' boy" would fit right in. This "damned Yankee" with the PA Dutch accent just doesn't fit in, especially since I never have learned to say, "Y'all" correctly.


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## Cyngbaeld (May 20, 2004)

You can be born and bred in MS and if you EVER leave you will never be accepted as one of them again. Not a good place for outsiders to try to fit in. You notice I don't live in MS any more?

themechanicguy, have you thought of getting an RV and traveling around a bit until you find where you want to stay? Moving, even to a rental can be expensive and if you have a lease and find you can't tolerate the area, you will have to stay till it is up or break it and pay for doing so.


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## themechanicguy (May 24, 2014)

I am so glad that you both mention rving. I was looking into this as a possibility initially. I currently have a chevy suburban in my small fleet of older vehicles, and I have set it up for towing. I was looking into getting a travel trailer but I haven't figured out if that is the way to go or just trying to find an actual motor home would be better. I was scared off from the idea due to expenses. I have read a few blogs that say that you can rv full time on $1000 per month or less but I don't know what type of lifestyle that actually looks like and to be honest, I am a bit scared of the whole thing. I often come back to the idea though. I am still looking daily at the local craigslist ads for rv's and have been going to look at them almost weekly. There is also the question of size. It would be my wife and I and maybe our college age daughter.

Can you tell me what it's like full time rving? What does that actually look like from your experience?

I am so excited to hear about this. I have only read stories but never talked to someone who has actually done it.
Thanks


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## Cyngbaeld (May 20, 2004)

You might want to start a thread on homesteading questions about full time RVing as you will probably get more answers. I've lived in an RV for prolonged periods but in one spot which is not the same as traveling around in one.


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## Bellyman (Jul 6, 2013)

I am a fulltime rver but didn't get here by either money or travel lust. I got here because hurricane Katrina make our house unlivable in Louisiana. My brother pulled his rv down there for us to live in while we rebuilt our house. We rebuild the house, sold the house and have since looked at several areas where we think / thought we might want to settle down. 

At one time, I did some work online and only needed an internet connection. My wife had more traditional jobs both while we were in Louisiana and when we bought a few acres in central MS thinking we might settle there. 

We sold our acreage in MS a couple of years ago and once again have no place to land. The regular jobs as well as the online work have dried up and we've been doing some seasonal work to keep us going.

Luckily, we have no debt so our income needs are not nearly what some people live with. We also do have some savings but not as much as we'd like and I doubt enough to buy a farm / homestead outright. 

We have family in Louisiana, family in Arizona, family in Alabama, and family in Pennsylvania. So no matter where we go, we won't be close to everybody. Looking at a number of places that seem like they'd work, we have kinda settled on the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee as being a place we like, a place where we might be able to find something we can afford, and a place that seems fairly friendly towards people that want to be left alone. Perfect, no. But a lot better than other places we've been.

As far as actually living in the rv, we have a 39' fifth wheel with 4 slide outs. We pull it with an F-350 dually. There are only two of us. Our current layout wouldn't work well for more than two people but there are rvs that would work better for more than two people. The rv has most everything we really need. We have a queen sized bed, a fully functional kitchen with refrigerator, double sink, stovetop, oven and a microwave. (Sorry, no dishwasher.) We have a fully functional bathroom with a larger shower than we had in our house in Louisiana. The bathroom sink is small but fully functional. The toilet has it's own little room that is also fully functional. (Sorry, no bath tub.) In the living room, we each have a comfortable reclining chair plus one extra platform rocker. We removed the sleeper sofa because we didn't need it and it wasn't comfortable. Instead, we travel with a 5 cu ft deep freeze that we fill with veggies as we are able to grow / buy them. There is room for a table and two dining chairs. We got rid of the other two as we don't need them. There is room for my 88 key keyboard. One of the slides has a desk with a few small drawers and the other side of the same slide has the tv and entertainment stuff. We have an extra that a lot of rvs don't have, a back porch. On the back is a slide out deck and a lift up door that becomes a "porch roof". There is a sliding glass door on the rear that gets covered when that "porch roof" is in the down position. It's not typical but it adds a feeling of roominess that I haven't felt in other rvs. 

We do have the capacity to run the refrigerator and hot water heater on either gas or electric. The furnace only runs on gas. The air conditioner only runs on AC. We could add a few solar panels and a few batteries and be pretty well self contained for electricity. (Still may do that.) Water and sewer are harder but we have something around 50 gallons of fresh water onboard when the fresh water tank is full as well as a gray water tank that will hold all of that plus a little and a black water tank that only the toilet empties into that can last us for several weeks easily without having to deal with emptying it. 

We haven't traveled a lot. We do some seasonal work, usually in Kentucky. We spend some time in Tennessee. And we have a place to park in Pennsylvania where we can hook up and it won't cost us anything to park there. We also have a little room for some gardening so we're doing that right now. (Just put some peas and strawberries in the freezer today.) We tend not to take the rv with us when we go to visit the family in Louisiana and Arizona. Just too much driving and not staying long enough to make it worthwhile. Others travel a lot more than we have.

I have visited a good many areas in my travels but not been in every state. A lot of the east is really heavily populated. But there are still some pockets of open space. Out west, the population thins out dramatically but there is also a lot of territory that to me seems a lot like wasteland. I tend to like "green". Others have ways of bringing water to where they need it and can make the desert bloom. I guess my being raised in PA Amish country has spoiled me with lush green.

Anyway, there are probably a good number of others who can give you more insight to rv living. If you want, you can check out the Escapees forum. That's the only one I check in with regularly. Lots of rv wisdom there and quite a few fulltime rvers that have blogs and websites. 

Thing of it is, there is no real right or wrong way to do it. And there are almost as many ways to rv as there are people to do it. Some travel very little, some travel almost constantly. Some spend a LOT and some live on very little. Some have investments. Some workcamp. Some volunteer. Some have online businesses. 

Best of luck with the explorations!


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## themechanicguy (May 24, 2014)

Wow Bellyman,
I'm sorry about your experience regarding Katrina. Our area was devastated by Sandy. Thankfully where we live wasn't damaged too bad but 5 miles away was bad. 

I appreciate all of the info. Have you seen any places that are decent in PA? Or is the whole state pretty expensive? I have heard good things about outside of the state college area. 

I have also heard good things about the Asheville NC area but it seems that there are so many differing opinions. 

It would be nice to find someplace that wasn't crazy far from our family here but I realize that for it to be cheap enough and have more of what we are looking for it might be quite far.


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## Bellyman (Jul 6, 2013)

Hey mechanicguy,

No worries on the Katrina thing. It was pretty dramatic, and something I don't really think I want to go through again. But it wasn't as bad for us as it was for some people. Maybe some of it is perspective.

It was a lot of work and there were definitely frustrations along the way. Yes, we lost our house, at least for a while. But on the other hand, the storm converted a lot of our junk to... junk out by the curb that we collected a little insurance money for. It helped us to get rid of things that would have been hard to part with but we were really better off without. It got us out of a neighborhood (and homeowners association!) that we really weren't too fond of. It got us away from the gulf (once we finally sold) and away from the yearly hurricane threats. 

And so, when I look back, I don't really see it all as a bad thing, at least for us. I also gained a lot of experience both with our own house and with a few others I helped fix up. We ended up with a lot more freedom than many other people. We got out of debt when the house sold and have never gone back into debt. 

Things haven't always worked out quite like we'd have liked them to. But that's ok. We're ok. 

PA is pretty different depending upon where you go. In Lacaster County, it's pretty expensive and crowded. Heading west for an hour or two, over towards Gettysburg, prices drop pretty dramatically and so does the availability of good paying jobs. Parts of northern PA are also quite a bit cheaper and less populated but where it's cheaper, the jobs tend to be fewer. I think there are some people here who live in PA so they might have more detailed perspective from where they are.

I haven't spent much time in NC but have a friend there that loves it. Parts of western NC and eastern TN kinda blend together geographically as the mountains run through. 

Even TN is pretty diverse depending upon where you are. The mountains in the eastern half seem almost like another country when compared to the MS delta area. I love eastern TN. You couldn't pay me to live in Memphis. 

I still think you might enjoy "Strategic Relocation". It's got maps of states with his idea of "preferred" areas in those states. The visuals are good to my way of thinking. You might be able to find one at a library if you don't want to spring for the $25 or so to get one of your own. 

I hear you about not wanting to be too far from family. That's important. If it were not for that, I might be seriously looking out in the panhandle of Idaho. I spent some time out there a few years back and it was a place I can imagine calling home pretty easily. The winters were a little tougher than most of the places I've been but I think it would definitely be a place I might enjoy living. A little farther south in Idaho might also find some pretty decent farm country, which I would enjoy. Some people are "woods" people and some are "meadow" people. I used to think I'd like living in the woods but to be honest, I kinda like the "meadows" and fields of farm country better. Hey, we're all different. 

That's just rambling opinions from this little corner of the peanut gallery. LOL!! Others might disagree with my ideas, and that's ok. I have had several ideas that I looked back on after a few more trips around the sun and though that maybe they were kinda stupid ideas. LOL!! Live and learn, aye? 

Good luck!


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## themechanicguy (May 24, 2014)

Thank you Bellyman. Good info. I appreciate it. It's always good to get input from those with experience.


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