Land and Farm.com

Land and Farm.com has over 140,000 properties for sale.
Land and Farm.com has over 140,000 properties for sale.

In your search for rural land with few or no building codes, you might want to try out Land and Farm.com. Their search page enables you to narrow the search by state, county, zip code, type of property (farm, undeveloped, orchard, ranch, etc.), property size, asking price, price per acre, irrigated or not irrigated and quite a few other criteria.

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Pallet Planters

Pallet vegetable garden
Pallet vegetable garden

This blog post shows several ways of building planters with free wood shipping pallets. Be sure to use pallets stamped as non-toxic. This stamp denotes that the pallets have not been treated with pesticides. Our Natural Building Blog now has about a dozen pages of free information on almost every aspect of pallet building (floors, paneling, walls, furniture, etc.). Use the search engine on the right side of the page using ‘pallet’ as the search phrase.

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Remote Rural Land

Out of the way, abandoned homesteads in remote areas may be available at very low cost.
Out of the way, abandoned homesteads in remote areas may be available at very low cost.

Many of our readers long for building a home on their own land, but the high cost of land often makes the dream impossible. One option is to seek out remote rural land. This is not workable for everybody, that’s for sure. The conditions can be harsh, and I’m not going to give anyone the impression that this route will be easy. I’m just saying its one option to look into if you’re serious about going off-grid. There are remote places in NM, for instance, (and other western states) where land is very inexpensive. You might be able to buy a small lot for $2,000-$5,000.

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Small-scale Biogas Plants

Simple sketch of household biogas plant
Simple sketch of household biogas plant

Our blog focuses on low cost, sustainable ways of building homes with local resources. It’s equally exciting and practical learning about alternatives to costly centralized grid systems (electrical, gas, sewer, water) that tend to lock people into the system and make them vulnerable to price controls. Biogas is one of many renewable energy systems that provide greater independence at very low cost. Biogas is especially practical in rural areas where running power and gas lines are cost prohibitive. Distributed systems such as biogas and other biofuels, solar water heaters, wood stoves, solar ovens, etc. located at or near the source typically keep functioning during times of emergencies. When a whole city or region is without power, water and sewer during a blizzard, your family can be safe and snug.

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