Ebayed again!

[bil2054]

Well, I never claimed to not be nuts.
I just bought 10.3 acres of Texas countryside, about 45 minutes east of El Paso. Why, you might ask?  I'm asking the same thing.  Only answer I can pose at the moment is...$150 per acre.  I bid roughly half the seller's "Buy it now" price, and won.
Anybody know the area?  I know I rode a freight in, back in 1975 (?) and hopped the next one back out  [smiley=wink.gif]. It was FLAT and HOT.  My "ranch" location at least is near the mountains.
I also picked up five acres near Saint John, AZ.  I think I'm on my way to being a desert rat. [smiley=2vrolijk_08.gif]

[jraabe]

Neat Billy Bob:

Looks like you need to go on a trip and visit your newly acquired provinces!  

Send back photos.

[Amanda_931]

Oh dear, it sounds like it might be time to close your eyes so you don't see the price and buy Mike Reynolds' book on water for the earthships.  I've posted it here before, but got caught in the 2 posts in 30 seconds trying to find it.  Oops.

So I did it a different way.

http://earthship.com/secure/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=23&products_id=46

It looks like one of those expensive things the car companies put out--slick paper and all--and it reads like an ad for Earthships^tm.  But Reynolds claims that a cautious Earthship^tm owner can live quite happily on 7" of rain a year.  With a flush toilet and a septic tank, IIRC.  I'm thinking more and more about reusing water.

[bil2054]

That's pretty much what I intended, Amanda.....
Rain harvesting, cistern storage, composting (sawdust) toilet, and greywater recycling/irrigation.  
In addition to the Victoria Cottage roof "footprint", I gotta have a good sized shop building and a "hanger" for the flying Winnebago.  That should get the square footage to maximize rain water collection area.  Plus a little landscape contour work to route the runoff where it best might go.
This is  part of why I bought in Texas, since they seem to encourage conservation, while the PTB in AZ are still scratching their collective..... heads about whether it would be a good idea.  Kinda like the federal stance on petroleum..."We know there's plenty more somewhere; why conserve when we can just go get it?" [smiley=shocked.gif]
Of course, I haven't researched the depth to water table for the area yet; if it seems reasonable, I aways admired those wind driven pumps.

[Texan_lost_in_cali]

Well I was raised 285 miles east of El Paso, but there is no difference it is all desert land in most counties there are no building codes down there. Most people do not live there. (You need a gun for wild pig) and there are plenty of deer if you like to hunt. Water is usually deep.

[glenn-k]

I almost got a ticket there in my Peterbilt once -- the truck I was racing did.  That's all I know about it, Billy Bob - Wait a minute  -- that's about where my Buddy - co-driver --got a really bad reaction to a bad burrito from the El Paso truck stop.  Parking area was full so we parked on the eastbound freeway ramp at the rest area.  You don't want to know the -----rest --of --- the----- story. :-/

[benevolance]

this site always wants to know the rest of the story

[glenn-k]

Lets just say that as I pulled away from the side of the exit ramp in the morning, looking back in my rearview mirror, I could see that someone had paved the side of the road that had been under the 45' trailer with toilet paper.  Note that it was about 1/4th mile back to the restroom -- the place was solid trucks all the way back and he didn't stand an ice cube's chance in hell of making it that far.

I guess it was only fitting for him to start a biological warfare emergency for the health department since it was they that allowed the truck stop to sell contaminated food.

[Texan_lost_in_cali]

I am going that way later this week, I could snap a picture or two of the area....

[glenn-k]

That would be great -- I could send it to my daughter and she could give him a copy.  Hopefully TP and weapons of mess destruction deteriorate in 15 years or so. :-/

[Texan_lost_in_cali]

Well I tried to post some but they are too big, so now I have to find a mac proggie to shrink em before I can post em.

[glenn-k]

Photobucket will shrink them if you upload  them there.

[vern38]

Ya know after reading this post I went to eBay and found some outrageous deals in fact so good I called to the property owners association of one of the places and talked to the main office. They gave me some names and numbers of people who buy and sell land there so I made a couple of calls. Well long story short I found 5 acre tracks for $900.00 To $1300.00 "Wow" , I can afford that anyway made plans to go and look at some of the property in person (only a 4 hour drive from the house) and will most likely purchase 5 acres while I'm there and I thought I couldn't afford it.

Vern

[Amanda_931]

Wayne county TN is becoming infested with retirees (and I'm one of them) lured by the prospect of cheap(ish) land.  Unfortunately it's driving up the cost of sub-10 acre parcels of land.  And 10-50 or so acre parcels are kind of few and far between.

But jobs are kind of few and far between as well.  Or an hour away.  Or two hours away.

Our congresswoman assured us that getting U.S. highway 64 4-laned from Huntsville to Memphis would help.  And I think she she said something about making the commute easier as well as maybe bringing in between 10 and 50 jobs.

[glenn-k]

20 acres with only a well and driveway just sold about 1 mile from me on my mountain for $300,000.00  -- Nothing special either.  3 miles to town on a hillside with no special views.

[rdpecken]

Billy Bob,  I live in Arizona and have a friend at work that bought property between Snowflake and St. Johns.  The water table there is pretty consistant 300 ft. The Coconino Aquifer is what everyone taps into at that level.  That's not too bad for the high desert.

We bought our 40 acres in the northwest part of the state. Our water level is 500 - 1000 ft down...   Ouch!
Good luck in your adventure... Randy

[Freeholdfarm]

It seems like, in reading permaculture books, I saw mention of people being able to live in areas with only 3" of rain per year, with large enough water collection systems, and appropriate land contouring.  Don't know if I'd want to do that -- I like green too much -- but it did sound possible.  

Kathleen

[glenn-k]

I think that would work out to about 2 gallons of water per square foot of collection area if you got it all.

[Amanda_931]

Two is about right.  You never do get it all.  Roof washing takes some, for instance.  So I think people recommend going a bit down from the .6 gallons per square foot under roof per inch of rain (which already has some fudge factor in it).

To collect all your water with three inches of rain a year, you would need to be religious about using your water two and three times.  And maybe build a bit bigger than you actually need just to add roof footage, and, collect from the outbuildings.  I think Mike Reynolds says that you can do all the comforts of home bit with six or seven inches of rain a year--including, in that system, a flush toilet and a septic tank.  

But how do they grow enough food?  Greenhouses are pretty nice, but not exactly in the permaculture, at least the way the British seem to think of it--Australians may be different.

There are parts of Peru and maybe Chile that essentially never get rain.  Right on the ocean, so they get a fair amount of fog.

I've been listening to books by and about English naturalists recently, for instance Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle read by a man in a kind of whiny voice that I thought was going to drive me crazy.  Instead it seems to perfectly suit Darwin in his more ethnocentric moods.  Anyway, he spent a fair amount of time in Chile and Peru.