- The hens and I just made it
through the craziest rainstorm of 2023.
It's only two weeks into the year
and on my weather station we have 4.8 inches of rain.
So the hens have been actually inside
for a little bit, but man, it's been crazy here
at the homestead and it's actually a little bit
over two years since I first purchased this property.
So what I wanted to do in today's video
is walk around the property and share some thoughts
and some things I would consider
if I was in my shoes again two years ago
as far as what to consider when you're trying to buy
a suburban or an urban homestead property.
Look at them.
They've just been eating, eating, eating.
Every morning, they run out here to grab their grubs.
They know I'm here.
There's Butter.
Butter's absolutely the greediest of the hens right now.
But let's start out here in the backyard.
The first thing I would consider is basically
your tolerance level for rural to urban life.
For me, I didn't grow up in a rural area at all
and I knew I wanted more space for my homestead
but I didn't really want to make the jump
out to a more rural area.
And so I'm still in San Diego
where I've grown up my whole life.
I went to college for a little bit, traveled a little bit
but I'm still back here in San Diego, but I'm just a little
outside the city center, maybe 20 or so minutes
from classic downtown where the lot size expands.
The noise and issues start to decrease,
like crime, for example.
And the prices tend to drop a little bit.
So it's that sweet spot that's not really
in a bad area so to speak, meaning the prices
would be really low but it's certainly
not in primetime real estate,
number one, because I couldn't afford it two years ago
when I bought the house.
But number two, because you simply can't get the space.
The more desirable the area, the less likely
you're gonna be able to find space like this.
This is just the backyard here
and my whole lot is 13,000 square feet.
So you need to figure out location-wise
how much space and money do you have
in your budget and then you search from there.
The second consideration is zoning
and any of the sort of legal requirements.
Now the first thing I'll say is
if you're looking for a suburban urban homestead property,
I highly recommend not living in a place that has an HOA
because then you're subject to what are called CC&Rs.
They are, the basically the rules
of the HOA that are enforced.
Now sometimes you get a pretty good HOA
and you don't really run into issues like that,
and then of course, sometimes you have
these nightmare scenarios that we all hear
about where some president of the HOA takes a dislike
to you and just makes your life a living hell.
So for me here in my area, I'm not subject to any HOA rules.
And then I get into the regulations
of the actual county and municipality.
For example, can you have chickens?
Can you have a shed?
If you have a shed or chickens, do you have to permit it?
So for example, for me, my shed,
if it's less than 8 by 10,
I do not need any permit whatsoever,
so long as it doesn't block a certain height
and it's so far off of a fence.
So I complied with those regulations
and I didn't have to talk to anyone to put in the Epic shed
which was a very big relief.
Same with the hens.
How many can you have and how far away
from the property line does that coop have to be?
Are there any noise regulations?
Can you have a rooster?
These are some things you should really look up.
So if you figure out what area of the world
or the country you want your homestead to be in,
you start looking at the countywide regulations,
dig in, and just Google, let's say
it's San Bernardino or something,
San Bernardino chicken keeping rules,
San Bernardino, you know, unpermitted structure rules,
that kind of thing will let you know how much red tape
you're gonna have to get into to build some
of these essential homestead structures.
We're out here in the front of the garden now
and you get into the third major consideration
which is the assessment of the lot itself.
How big is the house on the lot?
How big is the lot itself
and what's the relationship between those two?
So I'm actually standing in the spot
that I kind of first saw when I initially looked
at this property when I found it
I think on Zillow back in the day.
So I'm standing where the old citrus tree was,
kind of looking backwards at this house here.
And I'll tell you this, when I pulled up, I immediately knew
that the ratio of lot size to house size was right for me.
Now I'm going pretty extreme here at Epic gardening,
so this might not be right for you
but I'm dealing with basically a 13,000 square foot lot
with only about a thousand square foot home.
And so I knew that if I wanted to expand
from a raised bed garden to an orchard,
to chickens, to in-ground beds,
to sort of a winding permaculture food forest,
well I certainly have the space 'cause there's thousands
of unused square feet still on my property.
And so you want to think about that.
Is the house enough for you?
Is the lot size enough for you
for all the things you could conceivably want to do?
And you also want to think
about how long you plan to be on the property.
For me, I certainly plan to be here.
I don't think I'll ever sell the property to be honest
with you, but I certainly plan to be here
for quite some time developing the property.
But there is a time when maybe I actually
want even more space, five acres, 10 acres,
maybe a little bit more rural outside of city life
where I have enough space to expand
and experiment here and learn a lot.
And then there may be a time where I move on.
And so you wanna think about your longer term projects
and even plans for your own life.
The next important thing I wanna show you guys
is existing structures, trees, and advantages.
So in this front yard,
this orchard did not exist when I got here.
The loquat tree did and absolutely none of this existed.
It was just a completely barren, grassy, chippy area.
And so we've put in all this paver stuff
and that was actually quite expensive.
So if you have a property that has that, all the better.
But this is really nice.
I will be honest, when I saw this huge loquat tree
here on the property, almost in my soul,
I knew that I had to buy this place
because the loquat tree was the only tree
on the last Epic garden that I was renting
at the time in an urban lot in San Diego.
So this tree here, to get get this tree at this size,
good luck, I mean it's gonna take you five to seven years.
So if you can buy a property that has
some existing production on it,
whether it be a couple random fruit trees
or whether it be some kind of irrigation system
that's already built in or an existing maybe disheveled area
of a garden, you wanna look at the land
and see like what kind of assets are actually here.
Now in my case, I had an old shed in the back,
nothing in the back, nothing in the front,
and a couple trees lining around the property.
So the only two fruit trees that existed here
were this loquat.
There was an apricot on the back and there still is.
And then unfortunately, now the citrus
which is right there, is no longer there.
It's been replaced by a different citrus
that I much preferred.
But if you get a property that has this stuff,
you're literally saving years and years
and years of production in your life.
So it's a huge benefit if you can do that.
And then you gotta think about what's on the ground.
So as a budding homesteader,
one of the things you're gonna want to care
about is the quality of the soil itself.
So if I dig back all these wood chips,
you can see I've got a pretty decent style of clay here.
And what I can do is test the soil and see
if it's suitable for all the stuff that I want to grow.
In my case, during the bidding process,
I bought this place in May of 2020.
It got a little hectic.
There were six offers.
I was trying to fight them all off.
I didn't do a very thorough soil test.
I kind of wish I did, but fortunately I didn't run
into any major problems.
But what you're gonna wanna look out for
is any sort of heavy metals.
You're gonna wanna look out for the quality of the soil,
see just how hard it would be especially
if you're gonna grow on ground to get it
to a level where it's starting to produce.
For me, it took about a season, a little bit longer,
before I started to get a reliable quality
in that soil where I knew how it would produce,
I knew how it would grow,
and I could feel really comfortable.
But I could imagine a scenario where you buy a property
and you didn't test the soil.
Maybe there's lead in the soil, some sort of heavy metal,
some kind of problem that really prevents you
from growing the way that you initially
bought the property to grow in.
And that could be very discouraging.
So $35, under $100 certainly of soil testing
will give you a lot of information that will
either qualify or disqualify a property.
Back here in the backyard to talk about something
that really could have ruined my experience here
at the homestead if I didn't get really lucky.
And the problem resolved itself.
So this is a section about noise and neighbors.
Now there's a couple different things I think you
should look into.
In our particular case, when you're in an urban
or suburban environment, it's gonna be a lot noisier
on average than maybe a more rural area.
And so something I didn't even think to check
before I moved into this place and purchased it
put a big down payment down on it is the flight path.
I actually am not over a commercial airline flight path
but I am over a helicopter flight path for the Navy.
And so every single day, a couple times a day,
and on Thursdays it's even crazier,
you get helicopters coming through.
And why is that a problem?
Because first of all they're loud, but second of all,
there's a huge, huge facade wall right
there that just reverberates it right back into here.
And especially for someone like myself who I make a lot
of videos for you guys, but even just your own enjoyment
of the space, it'd be quite challenging to deal
with that on an ongoing basis.
My life would definitely be better
if there weren't helicopters flying over 10 times a day,
just something I have to deal with.
The other thing that really could have been tough
is right behind the chicken coop.
If you guys remember, if you're a long time follower
here on Epic Homesteading,
you remember this was dotted with trees,
with a really kind of shaky and crappy old chain link fence
and a neighbor with five chihuahuas.
And the chihuahuas, anytime they even caught
a tiny glimpse of me, they just would run to that fence
and start yapping and going absolutely crazy.
And there was no way that they were ever going
to adapt and adjust to the point
where I actually had to ask my neighbors,
I would say, "Would you guys mind going
in on a fence with me?
Because it's simply so loud
and so intrusive to the experience
of living here that I need your guys' help.
I think it'd be respectful, at least if you guys helped
and like kind of chipped in on that fence."
They were willing to, but it turns out they ended up moving
and it was really beneficial
because not only did my new neighbor, awesome guy,
we split the tree removal there,
we actually split the fence and it's a great relationship.
But you really want to check your neighbors and noise,
make sure that they're gonna be okay
with you doing something a little more unconventional.
Even though I think what we're all doing here
with home steading is actually quite conventional
and should be the norm.
But to a lot of people that's just not.
And so you wanna make sure
that you're not a nuisance to your neighbors
and your neighbors aren't a nuisance to you.
Many more antics to come this year.
Stay tuned, good luck in the garden.
Keep on growing.
(soft groovy music)