For many preppers, having a piece of property they can bug out to in the event of a disaster is a long-term goal. This could be a house, a cabin, or simply a place to park a trailer or throw up a tent. It might start as land with the possibility of building a retreat to meet their personal needs when time and budget allow.
A similar goal is to move and live full time on your prepper property. Maybe it’s a homestead with livestock and a large garden. Perhaps it’s a compound, with a gated entrance, dug-in positions for defensive use, and a bunker. It could be a repurposed missile silo, a property with an existing home, or acreage upon which you build. There is no wrong answer; it just depends on what you want and can afford.
Whichever way you go, my advice would be to get moving.
I say this not because some terrible emergency lies right around the corner, although it may, but because getting settled in and up to speed takes time. Not weeks or months, but years. The sooner you start, the better. Especially if you are building or renovating.
Make a Five-Year Plan
We moved to our prepper property, which had an existing home and not much else, five years ago. We didn’t have a five-year plan, but we’ve benefitted from having five years to enhance our preps, add to our infrastructure, acquire tools and gear, and build relationships with locals. It also gave us time to fix many of the issues with the house, from giving it a complete paint job to addressing electrical issues.
While we didn’t have a five-year plan, we had a list of things to do in year one, and we did them. That included internal renovations to create more storage space, setting up fencing, building the chicken coop, building raised garden beds, and starting our apiary (bee yard). We accomplished all of that in 14 months.
Of course, having a chicken coop doesn’t mean we got eggs right away. It takes four or five months for chicks to grow up and produce eggs. The garden was completed in August, too late to plant that year. Our first harvest wasn’t until the second year.
Still, with one year of hard work under our belt, we were far better prepped than we were when we first moved in. We are even better prepared today.
Every five year plan needs a budget, even if you revise it. Know what you plan to spend on your property and then what you can afford to spend to improve it.
Unexpected Needs
When we lived in the city or suburbs, even when we had several acres, we didn’t accumulate the tools needed for living on a rural property. I’m not talking about things like paintbrushes and crescent wrenches, but post-hole diggers, fence post drivers, fence stretchers, rock bars, spear-point shovels, hydraulic log splitters, water pumps, etc. If we had bought the property as a retreat and visited it only a few weekends a year, as some of our neighbors do, we would have bugged out here only to lack the tools and infrastructure needed for survival.
It also took a year or two of full-time residency to realize some of the limitations we faced and to put into place ways to address them. For example, we didn’t know the water supply would freeze in the winter. We learned that in the first winter, addressed it manually in the second, and spent money to cure it in the third. We made further improvements this year.
If you spend little time at your retreat, you won’t know what you face until you get there in an emergency. Then you’ll have to address it during a period where the stores may not be open, there may be limited fuel to run heavy equipment or power tools, and possibly limited communications and banking.
Gaining Experience
When we first moved here, we learned many things by doing them. This included some trial and error. For example, it took three years to determine how much firewood we needed to store to get through the winter. We are still optimizing what we plant in the garden and how much. (This year, we have a surplus of cucumbers, so we are making lots of pickles.) We learned we like frozen green beans better than canned ones, and the best dehydrator settings to dry our herbs.
This body of knowledge and our experience makes our days go by easier. For example, I am a better beekeeper today than I was four years ago because I have more experience. I’ve also built up my beekeeping equipment and gear.
We have also learned about our surroundings, including neighboring lands. We have walked them and, since we now own a UTV, we have driven through an array of old logging roads, some of which go several miles through wilderness areas. Just last week, I drove an elderly neighbor over his land and beyond to places I had never been, accessible only on dirt roads originating on his property. He pointed out where old homesites and springs were. I now know the general lay of that land.
I have also set up caches so we can access resources if we are forced to retreat into the woods. All of this took time to do, time only available to us because we live here.
Rural Issues
If you move from an urban or suburban area to your prepper property, expect things to take longer than you are used to. Leave time in your five-year plan for delays.
This is not because people don’t have a sense of urgency but because there is a limited number of contractors here and nothing is nearby. Many contractors have to travel long distances to our location, and they are not as interested in doing a job an hour or two away when they have work 20 minutes away. For example:
- The painters who power-washed, sanded, and stained our house were located an hour away.
- Our mason also had to travel an hour to get here.
- The appliance repairman came from 90 minutes away. (We have since found a closer one—and we like them better.)
- Both the chimney sweeps we have used had to travel at least 45 minutes, although they came from opposite directions.
- Our solar power installer was more than two hours distant, so the crew stayed in a local Airbnb while doing our install. I’m sure this drove up the cost.
When we run an errand, like going to the store to get more nails, we are looking at a 90-minute round trip. I’m not complaining, just explaining why things take a long time. There is no “running out” to the store. We plan our excursions to include four or five errands on one trip to be as efficient as possible with our time and gasoline.
Starting from Scratch
If you are buying land, there is even more to do. You may need to improve the road, find or improve a water source, or post the property boundaries to prevent trespassing. You might need to clear a camping spot, dig a pit toilet, or arrange for a container or shed to be placed on the location so you can store some items there. Unless you have your own excavator and bulldozer, putting in a road can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
If you are building, then you have to consider picking the site, getting a perk test and permits, installing the septic system, and drilling a well. You may need to contact your local electric utility to get an estimate for the cost of running electricity to your future place. Based on the estimate, you can decide if it makes more sense to put up an off-grid solar system.
You also have to design the home and outbuildings, find contractors and subcontractors, and then be on hand enough to check up on them. Depending on how far you live from the cement plant, you may be able to have trucks deliver cement, or you may have to hire a crew to mix and pour it onsite. Those cement trucks can only travel so far, something people building here often find out the hard way.
All of this takes time. Not just months, but years. Figure two to three years before you can move in, if you work at it. This is why we considered putting up a steel building as a shop and living in it while the house was built. Luckily, we didn’t need to do that because we found a house that addressed most of our needs.
Invest the Time
Whether you plan to buy or build, the sooner you get started, the better. Even if the place is move-in ready, you can’t just show up and expect to be up and running in a few weeks. You need time to learn by doing, to make mistakes when they are not life threatening and you have resources to fix them, and to practice. There will be holes in your planning you will need to fill. There will be things you didn’t plan on because you are new to the area, the environment, and the situation. Time will help you overcome those issues.
If you plan to buy or build a retreat, the sooner you can get started, the better.
If you are planning to move to or build a retreat, here are some earlier posts that may be of interest:
