Exploring Phase-
Lessons learned
Our quest for our homestead can be seen as progressing through several phases.
Discerning a vision
In the first phase, before retirement, I discovered permaculture and developed an idea, a desire, to see the possibility of a new rewarding lifestyle. live among green growing things, able to grow my own healthy food and extend my retirement dollars. A place that would provide myself, my children and grandchildren a safe place to get away from urban stress and pollution, and appreciate nature. A place to live a meditative lifestyle.
This place would present some challenges but provide ample rewards as well, especially when permaculture systems mature and provide a sustainable return on my work to provide for me and my family as I get older.
Preparing for Transition
In the second phase, we retired and began preparing to make a transition. We got our retirement finances in order, and renovated our townhouse, moving our possessions to storage and putting it on the market; and finally going through escrow and selling it. Now our principle is in the bank, and we have a loan pre-approval letter to show a potential seller. This took us over a year. In the interrim, we began the next phase of exploration, but always had to return to the tasks need to complete our preparations for transition.
Homelessness
When our house went on the market, we finished moving all our possessions into storage and became free to engage in the next phase in earnest. Our homeless began and our exploratory trip started at dusk on July 4, when we locked our keys and garage openers in the house for our realtor and pulled away from our home for the last time. As we drove north through the city, people were setting off fireworks and sky rockets, and tears were shed.
Exploration
Exploration has been a learning process for us both. It has been a time when we could start to understand what we were looking for, and what it would cost. It's been a few weeks since the end of August when we returned from our trip to the Northwest in search of the best region for homestead shopping, combined with some social activities like the Evans reunion and side trips to see Gloria and her family in Nanaimo, Q in Portland, Shawn and the Gunthers in coastal NW Washington, Willis and the McNabb clan in Carbonado, Nancy in Oakland, and Chad and Susan in San Francisco. It also included a trip to Raintree Nursery in Morton, Washington
We were looking for property close to transportation corridors like I5 and airports with rainfall from 30-50 inches average rainfall over the last 30 years, a longer then average growing season, and summers that weren't oppressively hot (less than 60 days >85°F ) and latitude higher than the Columbia river, to avoid extended dark hours in winter.
In addition, other regional criteria came up as an outcome of our search: Were there parcels of land divided into an appropriate size (3-15 acres)? Could we afford it (200K-400K)? Was the land too far off a major road? Was the contour of the land workable? (Ideally not too flat (uninteresting) or too steep (We need some gently sloped areas to hang out in and establish groves and gardens, and we're not mountain goats)
Our search included special emphasis on many sample regions:
Oregon:
- Linn County (Lebanon, Brownsville, Waterloo Camp, Sweethome)
- Douglas County (Roseburg, Winston, Green)
- Lane County (Eugene, Sutherlin, Cottage Grove)
California:
- Siskiyou County (Fort Jones, Etna)
- Trinity County (Weaverville, Hayfork, Lakes Shasta and Trinity)
- Lake County (Clear Lake, Lakeport)
- Nevada County (Grass Valley, Nevada City, Auburn)
- Mariposa County (Mariposa, Bootjack)
- Humbolt County (Eureka, Arcata)
Add to this some preliminary research done in the prior year either jointly with MM or alone:
- San Diego County
- Temecula
- Ojai
- Beaverton Or
- King County WA (Enumclaw, Carbonado)
- Pierce County (Yelm)
- Spokane County (Spokane, Tumtum)
- Lewis County (Chehalis, Centralia)
The outcome:
California:
Although we have been strongly motivated to find property close to our roots, prospecting in California has been disappointing. Northern California is just reachable in a single day of driving, but we had limited success finding anything that might work, and always at a sacrifice.
Most of the areas we checked in California adjacent to the central valley were too hot in summer, and too dry. In California the game has to be searching for pockets on gentle slopes downhill of steeper moisture collecting west-facing slopes not too far inland or high enough to limit the heat in summer, while not so high as to bring on an early frost. Places not yet discovered by the hipsters and with prices jacked up beyond our reach.
As high in altitude as Yosemite, pines are dying in large swaths, due the recent warm winters not cool enough to kill pine bark beetles, leaving standing dry trees by the hundreds. Once a spark finds its way into such areas the result is huge fires, an expanding threat in the California hills. Perhaps in the best outcome the susceptible pines will be replaced in time by cedars or something else- burned over meadows there show bright green regrowth of some kind of trees- but an ecological change is in process and it's too soon to know what the outcome will be.
Property inexpensive enough to be affordable in a brisk market require a financial and lifestyle sacrifice, because if our resources are exhausted just acquiring such a property, there can be no remodeling to make the fit more comfortable. Added to this the difficulty in finding a suitable plot size and finding a suitable long term water supply, considering recent rainfall trends, and this is an area where it becomes difficult to find suitable properties on the market. Barring a miracle, such a search might take many years.
Washington:
Shorter winter days and a three day drive time puts this area at a disadvantage.
Eastern Washington's rainfall averages are nearly as low as southern California, even though there are rivers and lakes that run through; as a casual observer I would expect water distribution rights to become a major issue in the future, fought out by mega-farming conglomerates. I have seen mile after mile of dusty naked soil in September, with a freshly tilled look, in the rolling hills around Spokane, waiting for the winter rains. What of the water table, and energy for pumping? As a very minor potential player in this game, I want to stay away from Big Ag. Around Tumtum are a number of charming areas with small ponds and lakes; and also some very dry land dominated by Douglas Fir and dry pine. Fires are a chronic problem and may be a sign of a shift like the one going on in California.
Western Washington is dominated by the Olympic peninsula and Mount Olympia, which gathers enough rainfall to create a rain forest on its western slopes, though there to the north and east in its "rain shadow" there are some lush areas which are not inundated by rain; long, often bright, summer days make gardens more able to take advantage of the growing season. There are some possibilities here, but probably not compatible with our need to make travel to the south more practical.
Oregon:
While I did find some possibilities in the Northern half of Oregon in my preliminary exploration in 2015, we found enough areas of interest in the Willamette valley near Eugene to hold our interest. With the pull of the south a strong influence, this area can be reached in a two-day car trip. Google says driving from San Diego to Eugene would be about 16 hours, 6AM to 10PM, quite a marathon, but doable over 2 days.
After all the prospecting around the West, the Eugene area seems much more possible. During our travels we saw several properties with the appropriate lot size, good rainfall, contour, livable houses, and even some with fruit trees and gardens already established. Summers are tolerably warm, with fewer days over 85°, and the amenities of larger cities are available in Eugene.
All in all, there is a better chance of finding a place we can fall in love with in the Eugene area, so we have decided to end Phase II and make a base here to look for our new home.
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