There are several options available to the new landowner-slash-rural-inhabitant, some appealing, some viable, some neither one. It all depends on the zoning requirements (or lack…
If you are thinking and have been reading about Alternative and Natural Building styles, this is one of those things that you see on the…
As some of you may know from reading my Missouri Journal, I have been building a house on my 12-acre Ozark paradise for a number…
“Wait. You forgot to draw in the HVAC closet”, said the young man with the product in his hair, perusing my pencil-on-graph-paper rendition of the…
One of the first concerns of new homesteaders is to provide themselves with some sort of shelter. We have all heard the advice that it’s…
Building a chicken coop, especially from scratch, can be exhilarating and exhausting, fun and frustrating. After all, a good chicken coop is one of the…
If you haven't yet, read Preparing the Homestead for Winter, Part One: The Buildings Based on a recent survey—i.e. walking around the garage and…
Who doesn’t long for their own piece of terra firma (or soil), or more specifically bonne terre (good soil), to call their own? If you’re…
Excerpted from Neil's latest book LandBook - An owner's manual for rural land (second edition) ~~~~~~~~ Some people swear by meditation; others tout the virtues of…
Like a lot of people who approach middle age, I started to wish for a simpler life based on the quiet of the country. So…
Rural areas of North America are punctuated at measured intervals by small churches, steeples rising above the farmsteads. They recall a time when the…
We have the land. We have a house we are selling. Our next step is to move all our stuff and us over TO…