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Archive for the ‘Movin Out’ Category

6.8 acres in the Ozarks. It’s about 10 minutes from two different small towns of just over 2,000 in population and 30 miles from a small City with a population of about 12,000 and just under 2 hours from a larger city with a population of almost 160,000 and just under 4 hours from a city with almost half a million people, major sports teams etc. Location, location, location. The property is smack dab in the middle of a few farms/ranches that are 100s of acres each. We have elec and phone running on the 320′ of frontage.

The surrounding area has lots of springs that ran major mills in the 1800s. We’re talking BIG springs that pump out millions of gallons of water a day and feed the many rivers in the area. It sounds like having a well drilled there should be fairly easy compared to some parts of the Ozarks. The rivers and springs are 1-200 feet lower than our elevation so we may even get away with a 250′ well. Wells run $12-15 per foot so it’s still going to be a few thousand dollars and it’s not going to happen immediately but we’ll manage. We’ll be collecting some of the 40″ of rainwater that fall on average per year. The first order of business when we get there will to be getting some large water storage tanks. Potable water can be delivered for 10 cents a gallon and we’ll have a filter of some sort for drinking and cooking. Most likely a Big Berkey.

The property has an approx. 10% grade aka 5-6 degrees on the back 2/3 so it won’t be too hard to work with and I’ll be taking avantage of that grade including a pond. No gaurantee that it won’t dry up in July, August but it will help for irigation and critters when it’s not dry. There is a year round creek just behind the property but most of it sits fairly high and we will have a view to the east and the road frontage is to the west.

N.E. corner of property is part way down the hill. There’s probably close to 6 acres out of 6.8 that are usable but the non usable part leads to one heck of a view.

Get rid of a few more trees and “pretty soon I’m singin’ do do, do do, do do, lookin’ out my back door.

That’s the County line signs a few hundred yards South of the property. That County has all the conveniences and taxes to go with it. This county has zero restrictions, no code enforcement and a whopping 5 Sheriff’s Deputies to cover 1,00+ mile of roads, most of which are gravel. Location, location, location.

Very approximate lines. I think it’s actually a little further South which in this pic is up. Google earth sure make buildings and trees look flat.

Well, I’m going to miss my antique truck but by selling it and some other things we’ll be able to make it in one trip rather than two. After figuring out what fuel is going to run for 1,000 miles one way, it only makes sense so out of all this stuff below I’ve crossed out some things. It will also save me a ton of work and put some more money in our pockets.

• 1973 Cobra 5th wheel travel trailer (multiple roof leaks, interior ruined, floor solid, outside intact aside from roof, tires fair)
• 1974 Tow Truck (Lots of body rust, winches non functional, engine and transmission seem solid, all else unknown, been sitting 9 years)
• 1987 Ford E350 14 foot box truck (lots of rust, needs carb, been sitting a few years)
• 1964 GMC pickup (my personal vehicle and daily driver, mechanically sound, body 50% restored)
• 1997 Chevy Blazer (wife’s daily driver, mostly solid, transmission questionable, needs one steering part)
• 1987 Subaru GL10 (4wd wagon, turbo 4cyl, bought to fix, has oil pressure drop out, replaced oil pump, no fix, 81,000 original miles and in real nice shape)
• 16 foot car trailer
• Lots of tools
• Two vintage garden tractors (both run but need minor engine rebuild, both have mower decks, both have plows, one rear grader blade, disc harrow-single tine plow-rake harrow-seed planter available for $400)
• Lawn and Garden hand tools
• 4 bdrm house worth of furniture
• Thousands of pages of how to information
• Thousands of garden seeds

We’ll be keeping the real wood furniture like dressers and one tall desk/shelving combo unit, our kitchen table and maybe the chairs that go with it, all kitchen items, 4 computers for the four of us plus my tablet which is a tool (automotive scantool) and one TV but not the big screen.

It’s tough to get rid of some of these things and keeping 5 computers may seem excessive but we’ll be homeschooling the kids and they will be necessary for our program.

The rest of the plan is building our own house, veggies, fruit trees, chickens and goats.

I’ve been wanting to move back to Missouri for a couple of years now. We lived there for two years once and liked it but came back for family reasons and to give Florida one more shot. We’re getting nowhere. When we came back we lived in a travel trailer for two years while we arranged our job situation and figured out what area we were going to live in. We finally got out of the trailer and rented a house. Since then it’s been one step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back. Stagnant.

I’ve been hinting to the wife for a while now about going back and sometimes it borderlines nagging. We’ve been watching the news and I get a lot of that from the internet and relay it to her. She finally confirmed the other day that she’s ready. She’s sick of us working our butts off and not getting anywhere. She also has come to the same realization as me, that with the way things things are going it’s only going to get worse for us here.

Property here is 10k and up per acre and we want 3-5 acres or more. There’s lots of extra costs involved in owning property here. High property taxes, impact fees, permits etc. We know of some counties in MO. that have zero restrictions and taxes as low as a dollar an acre. Land out there can be had as cheap as $1500 an acre. I’ve recently seen two different properties with mobile homes on them for 25k on 5-7 acres. I’ve always been interested in being self sufficient and my wife kind of likes the idea. She confirmed she was ready but I noticed she didn’t seem too sure until a couple of days later when Glenn Beck said, very seriously, “you must become self sufficient”. Now the deal is sealed. Thanks, Glenn.

As per the name of the site, we’re JustPlainPoor. On these pages, I will chronicle our preperations for the move, the move and getting set up on our little homestead in MO in the hopes that it will hope some other people looking to do the same thing but also lack means.

We have zero savings but we have managed to acquire quite a few items in the last 5-6 years. We plan on leaving in the Spring a week or two after getting our tax return. The lease where we currently live is up at the end of Sept, just over two months from now. We plan on moving to the cheapest possible living situation here to be able to save some money and/or put money into our vehicles and 5th wheel. Below I’ll give an overview of what we’re starting with.

• 1973 Cobra 5th wheel travel trailer (multiple roof leaks, interior ruined, floor solid, outside intact aside from roof, tires fair)
• 1974 Tow Truck (Lots of body rust, winches non functional, engine and transmission seem solid, all else unknown, been sitting 9 years)
• 1987 Ford E350 14 foot box truck (lots of rust, needs carb, been sitting a few years)
• 1964 GMC pickup (my personal vehicle and daily driver, mechanically sound, body 50% restored)
• 1997 Chevy Blazer (wife’s daily driver, mostly solid, transmission questionable, needs one steering part)
• 1987 Subaru GL10 (4wd wagon, turbo 4cyl, bought to fix, has oil pressure drop out, replaced oil pump, no fix, 81,000 original miles and in real nice shape)
• 16 foot car trailer
• Lots of tools
• Two vintage garden tractors (both run but need minor engine rebuild, both have mower decks, both have plows, one rear grader blade, disc harrow-single tine plow-rake harrow-seed planter available for $400)
• Lawn and Garden hand tools
• 4 bdrm house worth of furniture
• Thousands of pages of how to information
• Thousands of garden seeds

I’ll be adding pages for all the larger projects above like the vehicles and 5th wheel. I paid very little for all of these because I have the ability to fix them up myself which saves me money in the end. In fact our (my wife’s) desktop computer cost more than any one item at $750.00

As you can see we’ve got too many vehicles to make the move in one trip. I’m still working on figuring that out.