Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
What would you do with three hundred acres of desert?
I'm thinking about buying a lot of land because:
I'm not all that wealthy though, so it doesn't make sense to get started with it right away unless I can make the land productive in the meantime.
A few ideas:
None exciting enough to pull the trigger, though I'm researching solar farm subsidies and shrimp farm economics just in case.
EDIT: It's this parcel for those who are curious. I'm pretty much for sure not buying land for another few years but it's fun to think about in the meantime (and possibly prepare/plan).
I'll probably do a larger writeup on this at some point, but the dream would be to buy an enormous, fairly productive piece of land such as this one and then pretty much turn it into a colony for my friends and family. Alaska has its own major problems of course, but in the long run I'm trying to make enough money to get myself and those I care about out of the culture war entirely.
Everyone I know who's bought cheap desert property to develop as an off grid compound has ended up abandoning it. If you can find Ian from Forgotten Weapons' old channel you can see how much money and effort he put into building his Arizona desert bunker-house before selling it at (presumably) a heavy loss. The wife might have had some say in that, I'm not sure about the full story.
I was talking to a farmer the other week, saying how jealous I was of people with much better land off in the sticks. She said "yeah, the land's better elsewhere, but we need to live near rich customers who'll pay ridiculous prices for Organic Small Farm produce to be profitable at our scale."
(She's actually profiting by buying things like garlic and potatoes from farmers with better land and no markets, and reselling them at local prices)
In a desert you have neither good land nor good customers.
Good points. I'm not interested in being off the grid per se, except inasmuch as parcels that are totally off the grid are way more affordable, and the grid will probably come to them eventually. It's more of an economic question than anything--what does it take to make bad land productive without too much up-front capital?
The answer is, I think, that it's not really doable--you need either lots of capital, or to squander valuable human capital developing the site that would be better off elsewhere. But I was hoping for a cool idea I hadn't thought of.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link