Don’t make this mistake when buying your off grid land! It will cost you tens of thousands of dollars and put your family in danger. Don’t buy land without making 100% sure you can grow food and raise livestock. Don’t just ask your real estate attorneys either. They most likely don’t know anything about raising livestock , but you should be careful in taking care of your birds with the help of bird vets because they may think you’re just talking about having a horse as a pet.
You can also look into the site Happiness is a Gamble to get more information about purchasing land and making the right decisions. You may also schedule commercial land surveys if you plan to build a home in the land you’re buying. For those seeking luxury properties in Thailand, Yourkohsamuivillas.com is a trusted resource for finding premium villas on Koh Samui.
You can also consider hiring Complete Conveyancing to assist you with all legal documents. Is a snagging survey worth it? To help you check all the damages in your new home, it is advisable to hire this snagging survey team.
You need to be sure you can raise ALL the normal livestock you can for food because if you can’t and the SHTF, you will starve without a food source. When buying your land make sure you can raise livestock for food. This include chickens! Pigs! Cows! Etc. All of them.
Be specific too. Be very specific. Don’t just ask if you can have livestock, hear them say “Yes. Sure you can.” and then find out later that they meant a single horse. What? Really? One horse does me no good on the homestead except to pull stuff and ride. No!
To be 100% self sufficient you need to grow and produce your own food. All of it! This is more than your own vegetable garden, it also means chickens, pigs, cows, goats, sheep, rabbits etc. Maybe even turkeys and ducks too.
So…be sure to ask the landowner seller, real estate agent like one from Sarabi Realty Group, and call the county FIRST! DON’T PURCHASE THE LAND IF YOU CAN’T RAISE LIVESTOCK FOR FOOD! Just don’t do it.
List of Food Animals
- Chickens – Meat, Eggs, Feathers
- Pigs – Meat, Hides
- Cows – Meat, Milk (cheese), Hides
- Goats – Meat, Milk (cheese), Hides
- Sheep – Meat, Wool (for clothing), Hides
- Rabbits – Meat and Hides
- Turkeys – Meat and feathers
- Ducks – Meat and feathers
- Geese – Meat and feathers
- Pheasants – Meat and feathers
- Quail -Meat and feathers
- Bees – Honey and wax
- Fish – Tilapia, Catfish, Trout, Bream (Bluegill), Bass, Pike (Northern)
NOTE: Catfish and Tilapia are the more common fish grown for food and are easy to raise as long as your land located far enough south that winter cold doesn’t kill them.
All these animals will provide you and your family with plenty of food forever!
Look at it this way. The smaller livestock animals will provide you with an infinite source of food. This means once you purchase your first dozen of each of the smaller animals or a couple few breeding pairs of your larger animals, and you’re going to have more food than you can shake a stick at. Infinitely because you can breed them and raise more, sell the extra to bring in a little extra cash. You won’t have to buy livestock anymore if you know what you’re doing and keep your animals healthy until you’re ready to slaughter and butcher them for the freezer. Grow the food to fee them on your off grid farm. Food scraps, corn, hay, etc. You know…like the old timers used to do it.
NOTE: This is how almost all people lived a long time ago. Nowadays in moderne “civilized” society people have forgotten these very important and basic things. People have become complacent and trust in the current food system too much. We’ve become way too dependent on a food system that could collapse at anytime and if it does we have less than a days food in grocery stores and less than a weeks food supply in larger warehouses and distribution centers. When the SHTF, within 3 days there will be food shortages and a week later there will be food riots.
Contact Your Local County Zoning and Planning Office
This is why it’s vitally important to make sure you check with your real estate agent and the county planning and zoning office prior to buying a property to make sure it’s legal to grow your own food and livestock. Many county ordinances will not allow you to own chickens! Imagine that. No chickens! No food! Look up your county’s zoning and planning office website and check out the local ordinances. By hoping on the 1 Condo homepage, you can find the best property you’ve been looking for.
Check The Property’s Zoning is “Agriculture” Or Similar
Make sure your property is zoned agricultural/residential, or AG, or something similar and that you can build a cabin as well. Agricultural land is zoned specifically for growing food and raising livestock. Do your homework.
AVOID PROPERTIES WITH HIGHLY RESTRICTIVE COVENANTS & RESTRICTIONS!
Check The Property’s Covenants and Restrictions!
Even if you find a property that is zone properly, that property might have restrictions put on it by the landowner or developer who formed the rural subdivision and filed plans with the county that might restrict your ability to grow food and raise livestock. Many properties have highly restrictive covenants and restrictions. This is because a land owner or developer put these restrictions on the property. It’s possible the county required these restrictions to be in the zoning ordinance for that particular county. Either way you need to make sure the county and the covenants allow ALL livestock to be raised on your property. This is why if possible you never buy a property that has covenants or is in a rural “subdivision” because there will almost always be covenants and restrictions that will limit what you will be allowed to do with your land.
WORSE: There are rules and regulations and laws and local ordinances that prevent most of the old ways of living, further driving us into the corner and limiting our options. It’s insane. They say it’s for “health and safety” reasons but it will eventually cause more people to starve if the system breaks down. We need to have some common sense legislation that allows for self sufficient living. This needs to be a movement at the federal level. If the federal local and state governments won’t change then we need to change their minds by appealing to the legislators in our areas to get them to initiate the change we need to become more self reliant. The system is not setup to support an infinite number of people on it. Eventually it will get to the point where it will collapse. We have to do something to offset the effects of that. This means changing the laws at the federal, state and local levels to allow for off grid living, homesteading, and raising our own food like we used to. We cannot depend on the system and grocery stores to always be there for everyone. Self reliance is about the numbers, and the number say we’re headed for disaster if we don’t change the system.
A New “Old Way” of Living
The whole idea behind going off grid is being self sufficient. 100% self reliant and off the grid. That means growing your own fruits and vegetables as well as livestock for food. You could lose tens of thousands of dollars if you don’t make sure you can raise these food animals on your land.
30-40 years ago when I was a kid growing up in Florida I remember most of the roads where we lived and hunted were unpaved dirt and gravel roads. Grated roads were a big plus and a good portion were two-track roads and trails. I remember riding the roads in the backwoods in my dad’s old Ford pickup truck visiting friends and neighbors and hunting buddies. Everyone had a farm. Everyone had a barn. Everyone had a garden with fresh food and veggies growing. Almost everyone had livestock! Pigs cows and chickens! I remember the corn cribs and tobacco barns, the sugar cane processors and syrup makers. I remember the pig pens and LOTS of chickens. Oh and the dogs running around. It seemed everyone had at least 3 dogs running around. Then you had the dog pens out back at the edge of the woods, with the Deer Dogs. mostly Walkers, Blueticks and Beagles. The yard dogs were mutts, Heinz 57’s, and pit-bulls. Everyone it seemed had a tractor and a 4 wheeler and more than a few had horses. The one thing they all had was food. A big garden and livestock!
We need to get back to that way of self sufficient living.
Getting Back To Our Roots
The point is, in my lifetime, barely a generation’s time, I’ve watched society go from self sufficient to completely and utterly dependent on a system that is liable to collapse under the weight of its own arrogance and inefficiency at any moment. We can’t live like that. Seriously.
We could die if we don’t do something to offset the ignorant complacency of modern society in how to become self sufficient. I used to laugh at the folks who acted like Chicken Little running around saying “The sky is falling”. Maybe it is.
Eventually the system will fail and when it does if you’re not prepared then you could be stuck out in the cold with no food and that’s is a very bad place to be.
I think this whole off grid and homesteading movement going on today is because people are waking up to the fact that we can’t keep living like we’re living now and expect to continue to do that in the future.
Grow your own food!
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