Lance and Lyss and their kids (current ages 21, 17, 14, 12, 10, 6, and 4) gave up city life in Colorado to build an off-grid homestead in the mountains of southeastern Tennessee. After several months of packing and preparing, Lance and our oldest son Isaac worked on the homestead from 4-30-12 through7-28-12. Lance returned to Colorado for two months, and in September we reunited in TN and worked on a permanent shelter while our family in a tent on the property. After 3 years of living in a 200 square foot cabin on a portion of our future house's footprints, we have expanded into another 700 square feet, but there is still much work to do. We love living mortgage- and debt-free on a homestead we are improving each day!
We bought the TN property after a couple of years of looking hard for economical, productive land in Colorado. We found nothing we could afford (and are not willing to borrow anything past 7 years, and prefer to not borrow anything we can't pay off in under 2). We also won't take any unsecured loan (credit card, signature loan, etc.), nor do we believe in co-signing debt. That leaves very few obvious options if you're poor, but we were fortunate to be able to borrow what we didn't have from an elder of our home church and live with Lyss's parents while we repaid him.
We are building our house for around $5K. It can actually be done cheaper, but we are trying to accommodate some long-term design features so we can benefit from them now. Also, our house will be something of a show-piece for a peculiar alternative building niche, so we wanted to achieve a pretty "normal" level of finish as a display. This process has been the culmination of our 20+ years in the building trades and several years in planning. Alternative building and consultation is one way we plan to provide for our needs in the future. In the meantime, we plan to make a living by doing just that: making it. We will build our houses, greenhouses, and gardens with our own hands using a mix of well-tested and experimental techniques. We have built our own solar panels (not an easy task, mind you, involving a fair amount of research into material properties and building a good understanding of the fundamental electrical and material problems). We have worked with others to solve the basic system problems in home design in manners that are safe, clean, affordable, and sustainable.
Basically, we are launching a venture in super-affordable housing and self-contained living systems with no government "support", conventional banking, or any form of long-term debt or wage slavery. We hope to bring this to the poor for free, specifically in the U.S., but applicable abroad, as well. Our "living" will be earned by the sweat of our brows, building and working soil that we steward. Our country no longer offers the opportunity once provided by the Homestead Act, but we can work to create other opportunities. We don't have much, but we have enough to help our own families and a few others and hopefully encourage many more.
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." -Hosea 4:6a