is it time for you to get out of dodge are you interested in having your own plot of land
so you can grow your own food have your own animals and be self-sustaining
today we're going to talk about homesteading in south dakota
everybody's chris neiman with mindful living realty a realtor right here in rapid city
south dakota the gateway to the black hills so homesteading in south dakota
let's talk about first the definition of what i'm talking about what i'm mentioning home setting
in south dakota it's having your own spot of land in south dakota where you can grow your own crops
you can have cattle you can have chickens you can do whatever you want maybe even
have mom and dad move their home on your lot as well so let's talk about the possibilities and
the challenges of having this in the state of south dakota first of all let's talk about the
state of south dakota in itself about the middle of state the missouri river runs all the way down
so that separates us from west river and east river and it's kind of a little bit different on
each side of the state east river very much of a prairie area considerably flatter than west river
and much more humid you see a lot more farms over there there's a lot more corn sorghum some
sunflowers a lot more crop growing on that side of the state as you cross the river into west river
it's a lot more dryer not quite as humid and the land gets a lot rougher as you get closer to the
badlands and closer to the black hills so you'll see fewer farms and more ranches there are hay
fields and wheat fields but certainly a lot less crops growing in west south dakota than there is
in east south dakota now as we go through this talk about the different subjects we'll talk
about the difference between west and east so you can get a better feel for where might be the best
spot for you and your family the number one thing we need to talk about though when it comes to
this subject is covenants restrictions and rules now you would think that south dakota the
agriculture state we are the state that has 3.5 cows to every person that you'd be able without
a problem to buy a piece of property and pretty much do whatever you want grow whatever you want
raise whatever you want have a bunch of pigs so you can say that'll do a pig
but that's not necessarily always the case now the first layer to talk about is the state level
the state isn't going to be too big of a deal it's pretty standard you want to have your well
a certain distance from your septic that's kind of general 101 right and aside from not doing
anything illegal on your property that really kind of sums up the state side of it then we drop down
into the county regulations now every county is going to be different on their rules and
regulations based upon well basically the type of county there are if you're looking at a property
in a county with a larger city on it chances are they're going to have a little bit more
rules and regulations because they're also trying to control the city as well but if you're looking
into a county that is significantly smaller towns you'll probably have fewer rules and regulations
because it's more of a farming community for example kudoka south dakota in jackson county has
a population of 660 people that county will have a lot fewer restrictions than site brown county
where aberdeen resides aberdeen is a city of 28 000 people and as you can imagine as you get into
pennington county with rapid city and minnehaha county with sioux falls it's a whole different
ball game because the majority population is in the cities now the county is going to regulate
such thing as subdivision you see a lot of them say you have to have so big of a acreage you need
to have 40 acres before you can subdivide you can't subdivide anything smaller than 40 acres
per sec and if you do subdivide then there's you know these rules and regulations all going within
the whole subdividing process the other thing that they're going to talk about is the number of homes
you can have on a property on a legal description shall we say honest on a tax id typically speaking
in the bigger counties that's one and some of the other counties that have no zoning that
might be however many you want then they're also going to regulate how big that house might be
for example i had some buyers that were looking at a property for their tiny home we found a lot for
them but realized that pennington county requires a thousand square foot minimum square footage
on any property so their tiny home would not work within pennington county every county
also has its own zoning regulations that will regulate what type of property this is
so we have like business commercial or we've got agriculture or single family now every county is
also going to be a little different in this regard pennington county has got zoning up the wing lane
but meade county knows owning fall river county to hot springs also no zoning now they're going
to have a few general basic things again like the water of the well the septic all those things but
it's going to be a whole lot easier to do what you might want to do in counties such as mead or fall
river than it would be say in pennington county and the other thing we need to look at is mobile
homes and rvs of course it makes a lot of sense if you can just take a prefab mobile home just drop
on the property start your little farm and off you go but then we got to look at the next layer down
and that would be the covenants every acreage may or may not have covenants but it just depends
upon when they were subdivided into 48 years or 160s or whatever they were sub-divided in
if the developers at the time put in covenants on those properties the covenants will tell you
if you can have a mobile home on the property a modular home owner property or not can you operate
a business out of your home on the property or not can you run a vrbo out of your property or
not can you have chickens on your property not all the different livestock can you have
livestock on your property you'll be amazed by the number of properties within the black hills that
horses are okay but you can't have chickens or any livestock of course dog and cats within limits are
also okay but a lot of times you can only have a number of cats and dogs so i think what happened
was back in the day when property in the black hills was subdivided into neighborhoods and the
acreages were divided into even whether it's a 1 acre parcel or a 30 acre parcel
then they decided you know what these properties are for me to come and relax in i want my big log
home here so i don't want anybody farmer friends to come by and have chickens and pets and dogs
and all that kind of stuff i want to make sure it's quiet for me to relax and enjoy myself so
a lot of properties within the black hills have covenants attached to them that says yeah you can
have horses but you can't have chickens you can't have goats you can't have no cows so we'll really
make sure that you look at all the covenants all the rules and regulations for the property that
you want to buy before you start dreaming of putting in your fences number two on the list
access and utilities i want to make sure that we do mention this because it does play especially
into the cost of setting up your property so when you buy that acreage it's very possible you'll
have no water no sewer electricity is just to the line or maybe a little bit this distance away
what about internet what about access so all these things you need to think about if you need to
build in a gravel road that's 50 feet up to your house that's going to have a certain expense to it
if you need to put in some culverts under the ditch to make sure that that runs properly
that's going to be involved in cost now in places such as aberdeen i was talking
asian up there they have a lot of rural water up there so you can tap into that but that's going
to cost a certain amount of money and how far it takes to get the line up to your property you're
going to have to potentially dig a well that could be anywhere between 10 grand to 50 grand
and then of course the septic is its own own beast that you have to have that could be anywhere
between eight to ten thousand dollars depending on the type of system uh the type of rocket you
might have underneath those kind of things usually electricity is to your lot you just gotta bring it
up to your property however i have experience one time where they said the electricity was to the
lot and it wasn't and they had to spend thousands of dollars getting it to where it needed to be so
we want to make sure that we double check on those utility pieces here's a good time in this utility
section to kind of sneak in here a little bit about wind and solar now that's another thing you
want to check within the covenants some areas will not allow you to have your wind turbine even your
personal wind turbine for your property they may not allow you to have solar panels on your roof
because it detracts from the looking look of the neighborhood so all these things we kind of have
to make sure we take a look at the other thing you got to consider is internet rural south dakota is
not winning the race when it comes to high speeds take a look at this video that i did right here
on the internet in south dakota to give you a good idea what you can expect in that realm
if you want to grow stuff you probably want to have good soil right now i am not a green thumb
whatsoever we had a garden for a while we tried it again when we got to our other place it just
we just didn't we we gave up we decided this just wasn't for us but obviously the better the
soil quality the better you'll be able to grow whatever plants and crops you want to grow for
yourself that being said as you might have already surmised if you go to the east side of the state
you might find that the ground there is more suitable for more crops because it is more
human and you're getting close to the land of 10 000 lakes in minnesota you'll have a lot more
water ponds and lakes over there so you might be able to do more growing on the east side of the
state as you go to the west side of the state we get a lot more rocky it gets more desert-like and
it uh some areas are really kind of a clay type soil as well so obviously that soil might not
be the best for growing things however over here on the west side of the state i have seen
people with pretty big gardens so i know what's possible now if you really want to nerd out about
this i found a couple websites that will really help you all right this is the south coast street
university website that i've got up here first talking about the different soil tables within
the state i pulled the paintings accounting here just to kind of pull up a county and as you scroll
in here you can see all these little dots and you can hover over one you can kind of see
you can see what type of ground is there what percentage slope you have here and then of course
i'll talk about layout soil rating you can go over here to this methods and it talks about what all
the definitions of all these things are but you can go through here and just kind of check out all
these little data points this one here what does this one say here this one here is this says say
uh look at that the most probably used for this is non-cropland it says so check out this website
kind of give a feel for the different soil tables within the state of south dakota and the next one
actually is usda web soil surveys and these go into considerably more data it's basically the
same information but a little bit more depth i selected an area over by brooking south dakota
which is over by minnesota and you can see here because all this information you can just kind
of geek out on if you need to know exactly what's in this the soil you've got all that information
right here so you can get a real good feel of what the soil makeup is for you and your projects
up next south dakota weather whether you're planning on growing crops or grazing animals
you've got to keep in mind the weather of south dakota the winters can be harsh here they can be
cold we have snow and blowing snow and blizzards and all those kind of things you want to make sure
you have protection for your animals and we've got a really short growing season so you want to
make sure you know how to grow what plants when a couple more websites for you take a look at this
one that has the different zones of south dakota and the different plants that you can plant within
those zones to be the hardiest all right so here's the planting zone map so i put in watertown south
dakota which is way over here in the northeast side and that turns out to be planet zone 4b
so if we scroll on down here planting zone four right here it talks about the different
types of vegetables you can grow when you grow them fruits verbs flowers to grow all that kind
of stuff right there the next one here is the 10 best vegetables grow in south dakota this
one talks also about the hardiness and the zone as well but it goes more detail about the different
10 best types to grow in south dakota third one is a really cool pdf that i found for you guys
south dakota student riders with this extension talks about the different vegetable varieties in
south dakota not only does it talk about all the great ripe vegetables but also the right varieties
to grow the best in south dakota and even talks about planting during the right times of course
i'll put all these links in the description below go ahead and check them out and geek out if you
need to so in our garden experiences we have found that not planting until like the memorial day
is usually the best bet because sometime along the way we have a may snowstorm or something
else happens it's not quite warm enough and may ends up being almost too cold to
grow plants now the really serious gardeners that i know they're the ones that will start the plants
inside and then replant them when it comes time or they'll have their own greenhouse and they can do
whatever they want temperatures vary across the state of south dakota the closer you get to the
black hills we have this little banana belt effect where especially the towns around the
outside of the black hills can experience milder winters sometimes we have 40 degree 50 degree
temperatures in january when everything east is still in 20s and 10s so typically we are warmer in
the black hills area than the rest of the state we typically have a little less snowfall except for
like you know lean dead they get 195 inches a year and it tends to melt faster in the black hills
area than it does in the rest of the state but regardless we still have those have strong winds
they get kind of cold in the middle of the winter so you want to make sure you have the shelters
that you need for the animals and make sure that you're stocked up to prepare for those winter
months and finally let's talk about the severe weather events now i did do a video about severe
weather events in south dakota so you can go into more detail of that right up here in this video
but in a nutshell you'll see some pretty strong thunderstorms coming through the area through
the summertime we'll have a nice warm day and then the evenings will bring in those thunderstorms now
over here in the black hills area we experience a lot of hail with those thunderstorms on the
east side of the state they don't have as much hail but those winds can be torrential
and just beating them with the rain in the wind we don't see too many tornadoes in the black hills
area but as soon as you get about half an hour hour east of rapid city you can kind of get into
more tornadoes that are in the planes between wall and sioux falls i've always kind of mentioned the
humidity but we'll have a lot less humidity over here on the west side of the state than they will
over on the east side of the state so not only will they have 100 degree temperatures
you also have the humidity and dew point that goes along with that general rain in south dakota it
just kind of depends upon the year it started out earlier this year to seem like we're in a bit of
a drought but then may brought in a lot of rain showers and it seemed we kind of got out of that
droughtness but in 2019 there was so much water running around that they actually closed a portion
of the interstate and had to route us around it just because there was a pool of water sitting
on the interstate so keeping this in mind having some preparedness for water is very important
have some irrigation plans for your crops have some water plants for your animals make sure
of course you have enough water you don't have to stick around very long to let the weather change
in the state of south dakota now of course i've covered some of just the basics of homesteading in
south dakota but you might be wondering well how else am i supposed to get started i need fences
i need this i need that welcome to south dakota where the midwest hospitality will be there to
help you to get started to know where to go by your feet to know where you go by this over here
not only to help you get started but also to be there to take care of your animals when you're
away or do those other things that neighbors do when they live just down the road the mentality of
south dakota ranchers and farmers is leaving each other alone letting them do whatever they want
but also helping out where they're needed the other thing that you appreciate in
the state of south dakota is all the farmers markets if you live not far from rapid city
you could bring your goods and to sell at the farmers market i think they do it every weekend
in the summer you can arrange to get beef or pork from a ranch or down the street
fresh pit corn on the cob is amazing and those eggs straight from the chicken
nothing better than that yes it is possible to homestead here in the state of south dakota
you just got to make sure you do your homework look at all the rules and regulations make sure
you're not buying something that you can't do what you want to do it's probably going to be
a little more expensive than you might imagine so make sure you have those funds in place and then
be prepared for anything south dakota might throw at you there we go lots of information pounded at
you i hope i gave you a lot of resources a lot of things to think about if you enjoyed this video
make sure you get more information about the two videos i mentioned earlier and check out
this video if you're thinking about buying land in the black hills of south dakota it covers
a lot of what we talked about in more detail specifically in the black hills and around the
black hills of south dakota thanks for watching have an amazing day to remember love where you
live oh beautifully done i can't tell you how grateful i am to y'all now for one last favor
if the three ladies with callers would kindly walk out of the ring i'd be very much obliged