It’s been a couple days since I’ve posted; I’ve been reading quite a bit, packing up some of my stuff, and continuing to envision the forms this project could take and how I’ll make them come about. To be real, as much as I enjoy being at Hampshire, I’m quite ready to get out of here and start building this thing.

I’ve been thinking in the long term over the past week or so, really wringing my brain for some ideas on how I can make this concept be a sustainable life path for the long term. Materially, in terms of my design, it will take some “in-the-field” experience on living on this thing to really understand how it needs to be tweaked to be a comfortable way to live indefinitely. What I want to emphasize in my design is that this is not a vehicle to use for a camping trip (at least not in my case – if you build your own, have at it!). I am seriously anticipating on using this vehicle as my home.

There are, then, some large holes in this concept if I’m to use it as a life path. The most glaring ones are as follows:

1. Shit. Where on earth am I going to go, how will I dispose of it safely, and how will I keep my living area clean and neat smelling?

2. Parking. Where will I park this thing?

3. Sprouting seeds. This concept relies heavily on the concept of sprout seeds. Yet eating the entire young plant is essentially eating the seed. No seed is produced. As such, I’ll need to continually replenish my stores of seed, and for the amount of money I’d like to commit to using, this may not be cost effective.

4. Hatching Quail eggs. Quail are so domesticated, they do not set on their own eggs to hatch them. So they’ve got to be incubated. How can I do this?

5. Winter. How will I cope with cold and snow? Ice tires? Will I stay warm with passive solar heating? Micro-woodstoves? Ultralight insulation?

6. Water. Where will I get water for drinking, washing, and for the plants and animals?

7. Cold food storage. What will I do?

There are obviously other concerns – plenty of them – but I’m of the mind that if I can get these things figured out on the medium of the design I already have, I can make this lifeway truly sustainable on a personal level. These seven things are the foundation for other complex problems. Remember that I am not simply designing an inert, inanimate object, but I am designing and entire lifestyle down to every last detail. Interestingly, while I may have a deeply ingrained and regimented mode of life in terms of my trailer and the chores that go with the trailer, the backdrop for this lifestyle is quite unplanned, flexible, and impromptu. Thus the perfect balance is struck – both my compulsions towards spontaneity and routine are fulfilled.

My thoughts on adequately coping with some of these problems boil down to one notion: that at some point, I will need a place to “recharge”. I am not a mooch and have little desire to be such – mind you, I’ll be living deeply below the poverty line, but I won’t be “collecting” a damn thing, and I don’t want to ride out on the backs of individuals either. Perhaps initially, to start up, I’ll need some help – this summer, even, my friend has offered his yard – but in developing the architecture for an entire mode of life, I can’t plan on others allowing me to park it in their yard all the time.

So my thoughts have led me to one particular place. I mentioned, on April 5th, the concept of the North African Tuareg peoples planting crops in small desert gulches to return back to at the end of the season. I found it to be a very, very compelling concept with regards to my overall design. Yet here in the US, one does not simply plant stuff anywhere and expect it to be there when they come back. While I am quite interested in planting wild gardens across my route on riverbanks, vacant land, forgotten and unused corners of farmland and state land, and even volunteered back yards, I will want some security that at the end of the season, I will definitely be able to return to a bit of land that is mine, where any crops I’ve planted there will be protected from being messed with.

Yet I don’t have incredibly extensive needs. Additionally, I have no interest in purchasing land with anything but cash, or any amount of land that will cost me much in property taxes. This reduces me to odd plots of steep slope, scrubby desert, and undeveloped hinterlands which would go totally unused otherwise. I’m okay with this. I have no interests in building anything or hooking up to the grid of any kind, and don’t care about resale value. Even totally crappy soil is okay (though I’d be willing to pay significantly more for a property that didn’t have fine clay or sandy or rocky soils), as I’m willing to build up soil fertility with methods like hugelkultur, as well as through intensive composting.

A lot of this land, for most potential buyers, has something wrong with it. All the time you hear of folks getting screwed on raw land, buying land that has soil that you can’t safely build on, huge easements in the use of the property, inaccessible land chunks or spots with bad roads, and so forth. These are problems if you expect to live full time on the land, and build a conventional sort of home with electricity there. For me, these aren’t mostly concerns, especially when the property is under $5000. A loss like that is substantial, but it’s not anything unmanageable, even for someone living on minimum wage.

Take this bizzare .52 acre property in Liberty, NY, selling for $2000.

It’s being sold for “potential bow hunting for deer and turkey”. Most bows I know of would shoot across a half acre with ease. I don’t know what’s going on here, but even the dodgiest of affairs could prove not to be a hurdle to being a reasonably good option for someone living out of a bicycle microhome.

Or, from the same seller nearby, we have this weird little corner lot, .32 acres, for $5000. Obviously, such a purchase would demand I actually VISIT the property, scrupulously check the easements, test the soil, check to see if there is access, and so forth – but I’d certainly have the time such an endeavor would demand, being only a seasonal worker.

What would I DO with this land, though, why would it be a good thing to have? Well, five of the above listed quandaries could be addressed with a tiny bit of property. While human waste and cold storage are ongoing, day to day issues that probably couldn’t be addressed by a piece of land, the others could play out here quite nicely. It’d be a definite place to park, even for semi-long-term stays. I could install a small solar panel to run an incubator there for the quail eggs. I could overwinter in places like this, outfitting my camper with heavy insulation and tie-downs. And I could install a water catchment so that I had a constant stock of water while I was there.

Furthermore, I’d own numerous plots like this throughout the country. Every five hundred miles or so – just enough to make it from plot to plot in ten or twelve day’s time (providing I can ensure 50 mile per day mileage with the trailer, which I think is doable). While each of these plots on their own would be insignificant in terms of producing grains and seeds to replenish my sprouting stocks, five or six of them, cultivated intensively and with low-labor techniques like mound cultures could produce a substantial amount. Perhaps not all my seed needs, but enough to augment them so as to be worth it.

I’d want my first one to be in Central New York, so that I could be close to my family, friends, and my beloved land and river. Beyond that, though, establishing a seasonal national route based on available summer jobs, weather patterns, and growing seasons could be a really, really compelling way to live. Eventually, when my legs tire out, I could, with any luck, find the microplot I liked most and settle there long-term in a tiny house built from recycled materials. Hopefully, the additional properties would have been improved enough so as to increase in value and I might be able to sell them for more than I paid – could this be a retirement plan? As time goes on, we’ll see – it’s just an idea I’ve been floating around in my head for a while. Glad I could share it with you.

Something like this could be my winter setup!