I’ve mentioned a few times that I dabble in ‘the market’. A bunch of those investments spat out some dividends Friday and about half of that amount gets funneled into the Land Purchase fund, and the rest gets reinvested. So, as a result, I’ve got a little bit more money to put towards getting a chunk of nowhere.

Unfortunately, this late in the year, it is unlikely I’ll be able to actually go walk any potential acquisitions. I cannot imagine that buying a piece of property that you viewed when it was under a foot of snow is a good idea. It does, however, give you some information on how accessible that place is in the winter, but I need more info than that before plunking down a hundred grand.

While I like western Montana for its mountains, and disdain eastern Montana for it’s flat-as-a-cookie-sheetness ( you can watch your dog run away for three days over there, its so flat) there is lots land between those two extremes. I’ve seen quite a few listings just west of Great Falls in the Cascade area that look interesting, and even some up near Choteau and Augusta, but nothing that ticks off enough boxes on my want list to make a trip there to look. Closer to home, the Helmville and Drummond area have some stuff but now youre up in the 5000′ foot range and snow is a bit of an issue at those higher altitudes, along with a shorter growing time.

I did see a very nice chunk up north of here but it was, unfortunately, on the reservation and I am not touching that with a ten-foot pole. Regular local politics is a clown show, tribal politics (and its racial overtones) are just pure anarchy.

Ii don’t mind waiting until spring to get ‘more serious’ about a purchase. It gives me more time to put together more money, and it also gives me time to explore more possibilities online. However, I’m getting older and I don’t want to be too old to enjoy a piece of land when I finally get it. I really hope that next year is the year I take this step and then can get started on the headache of infrastructure.

Speaking of, I did see a piece of property that was almost a contender. It was in an area that a fire had gone though and wiped out. The trees had started to comeback, and the property already had a well and septic on it, as well as a couple foundations where the buildings used to be. I passed on it for reasons, but here it is if anyone is curious…

Before you say anything, I fully recognize that it is unlikely (but not impossible) that I’ll find a piece of property that is 100% of what I want, and I’m okay with that. I can live with 90-95%. Or if theres an outstanding feature that makes up for a lack of another, I might even be okay with 85%. But I can only really afford to do this once, so I’d like to get as much of what I want as I can on the first go round. So..the hunt continues.

A while back I looked at a piece of property that had the acreage and distance that I wanted in a piece of dirt, but one of the tings that queered the deal was the road.

See, I don’t mind a piece of property that says in its listing “have to snowmobile in in the winter”. I have no problem with that. I have a fantasy of taking a week off over Christmas and ensconcing myself in my cozy little casa and watching the snow pile up outside as I listen to the fire in the woodstove crackle and I enjoy the utter lack of people.

But the problem is, while that sounds awesome there are other things to consider. If youre buying a piece of land with the intention of building on it, you need to get things there. And while a barely-a-road is great for keeping the Golden Horde at bay, it works against you when it comes to things like well-drilling rigs, propane trucks, cement mixers, prefab concrete septic vault flatbeds, cranes, and a bunch of other rather large and cumbersome vehicles that youre probably going to want to have to make things easy.

Could you build your dream bunker using just supplies you haul in on a small trailer on the back of your four wheeler? Sure…I’m sure it’s been done. But your expenses are going to multiply at an exponential rate. A dozen ten mile round trips to haul what could otherwise have been done in one fell swoop with a large flatbed truck  is an expensive way to do business.

And so, we are back to the survivalists dilemma – you want remote enough to give you privacy and keep folks away, but you need it to have a level of accessibility that directly results in the opposite.

I suppose one tradeoff is to lower your expectations – either on the privacy and remoteness, or on the grandeur and scope of what you plan to build.

Of course, people will start mentioning in the comments how there are super 4×4 trucks that can navigate a 90-degree incline and climb hills that would freak a yak. Well, that may be true…but the odds that Billy Bob’s Well Drilling or Guido’s Concrete Pumping in the middle of Sheephump MT has those is….slim. Now, another option would be that you have a decent road to get in the vehicles and equipment you need and then once thats done you make the road indecent. There’s a thought.

And let’s not be confused…a simple dirt road is fine. There’s a lot of equipment that can be brought in on a regular dirt road. I’m talking about a road that is rutted by cattle, poor drainage, and a host of other factors…in addition to being narrow and bracketed at points by trees right up against the edge of the road.

So, what I’m saying here is that something I hadn’t thought about factoring into the decision process was the accessibility of heavy vehicles and equipment. Look, I love the idea of being far enough back in the sticks that every yahoo without a 4×4 is gonna look at the route to my place and go “Yeah, no.” But I can’t afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars doing some logistical workaround to a problem that is avoided by simply not having a goat trail for a road.

That property I mentioned in the previous post? Its now under contract. (Not me, btw…)

So….

Which one of you savages snapped it up?

I’d mentioned a while back that someone I know was living in a not-quite-tiny-house. The interior dimensions, I believe, were something like 17’x15′, including a closet and bathroom. There was a sleeping loft upstairs and despite the small size, I thought it was rather adequate and comfortable for one person. A small enough footprint that you could tuck it away somewhere ‘just in case’ but if you had to spend a winter in it you’d be comfy and not get claustrophobic. They were nice enough to send me some pictures, so I thought I’d share. Keep in mind, this doesnt really meet the definition of a ‘tiny house’ but it is very compact and, in my opinion, efficient.

The kitchen sink doubles as a bathroom sink, which works surprisingly well. There is no stove, which I thought was odd, but a couple electric conduction hotplates (as well as a microwave or instant pot) bring up the kitchen features.

For someone like me, who doesnt really care about aesthetics or decor, its enough space for me to line the walls with wire shelving full of supplies and gear and still have space to live and sleep. For two people…well…they better be pretty close.

This particular place has no basement. If I could, I’d build something like this as a hidden getaway but build it on a basement for storage purposes. But, still, I rather like this little place. It’s in someones backyard in town so it has sewer and electric, but I would think a small place like this would function in an off-grid environ as well.

This is the only house like this I’ve gotten to actually examine close up. For one person who doesnt want anything glamourous it seems pretty nice. Its inspiration for future projects, methinks.

I’m continuing to try to find a piece of dirt that meets my anticipated needs and desires. It’s been a bit of a slog, but I am noticing prices are coming down. Also, the markets (stock and metals) have been nice to me over the last six weeks so I have about 10% more to spend on an acquisition than I previously had. As I peruse the various real estate listing websites I do come across the occasional piece of property that makes me wonder what the previous owner was thinking. One such piece is this guy. I am really curious about this piece. The description says that the whole 11 acres is, to some degree, fenced. Okay thats kinda nice…a bit unusual but nothing really eyebrow-raising. But then theres an inner perimeter fenced with chain link. Ok, it’s bear country and maybe they wanna keep the deer outta the garden. Totally plausible. The three strands of outward-facing barbed wire atop the tall fence, on the other hand….. Barbed wire does nothing to deter deer and bears will go through it like it isn’t even there.

I get the impression this was either someone’s bugout location or there’s a serial killer out there who couldn’t meet his mortgage.

Regardless, its a hard no for me….$20k per acre, even with a well, is absolutely ridiculous. But its certainly an interesting piece of property and rather interesting to ‘read between the lines’ with.

From what I read, a ‘tiny house’ does not usually exceed about 400-500 sq ft. I was in a cottage this weekend that might be considered a ‘tiny house’. I was so curious, in fact, I measured the thing out. The main room was 14×17, which translates to around 238 sq. ft. But, it also had an upstairs loft with the same footprint ( although the sloping sides of the ceiling limited the amount of usable space.) To my surprise….it was quite livable. It had most of the amenities…real toilet, real shower, etc. Deficiencies were that there was no room in the bathroom for a sink, so the ‘kitchen’ sink doubled as a bathroom sink. But otherwise….surprisingly livalble for one person.

I wouldn’t want to live there for five years, but as a weekend or vacation kind of refuge it would be rather nice. What really caught my attention was that if I wanted a small, unnoticed, little ‘lifeboat’ to retreat to if I had to beat feet somewhere, it would actually be a very serviceable situation.

Of course, I’d deck it out in a more survivalist theme….heavy on storage options and off-grid resources. But I could very much see a smallish place like that working out quite well for a backup location.

As I said, it had an upstairs sleeping loft but it had no basement. If it had a basement, that would probably have made it pretty much ideal….plenty of storage while still maintaining a fairly small footprint.

At some point, I’m going to get my 20-40 acres of Montana and when I do, a small, well-equipped and well-appointed place like that might be just the thing while I set aside the greenbacks to build a more substantial palace at a later date.

It was interesting to look at such a small place with a survivalist’s critical eye and think ‘how could I better make this place fit my needs’.

Now, I will say that, as I see it, this was a tiny house but not a ‘Tiny House’ if you get my understanding. This was a stick-built-on-a-foundation sort of building (albeit looking like a gingerbread cottage) rather than the tiny-house-on-wheels that most tiny houses seem to be. And this had genuine grid power and water/sewage. No composting toilets, no water tanks. Real deal house. And the whole thing could have fit into the living room of my present day house.

Not my first choice of a place to live, but if I needed to go to a secondary location and spend a winter there or however much time until things calmed down, or I got back on my feet….well…it would actually be pretty nice.

So, maybe I’ll do some research and draw up some ideas for that day I finally get that acreage in the Middle O’ Nowhere.