The Great Off Grid Ozark Adventure: part 1

Note: This content was written out long before it was published here on the blog. So although this post is being published in early 2025, it was written several months ago.

Ever since we moved onto our ½ acre lot in rural Southern Utah, we have been getting more and more into homesteading. We have certain goals that are difficult to achieve here in our climate, but we have been working on them. We have also been very interested in some different natural building techniques. Most of which are highly regulated, and therefore expensive, in Utah.

I was outside working last year when Mary came out and showed me a blog post she stumbled upon. It was written by an herbalist who had 30 acres in the Missouri Ozarks. The description and photos were amazing! The price point was even more amazing! In the past, when I had suggested the thought of moving to a new place or larger property, Mary didn’t want to do it. But she surprised both of us when she decided right then and there to call on this property! That is very unlike her! It had been on the market for several months and we were very surprised that it hadn’t sold yet. For the first time ever, we considered moving to another state.

It was a big deal, and I didn’t expect the thought to stick. But it did. We couldn’t stop thinking and dreaming about it. It had a year round spring, 6 acre established garden, lots of herbs growing, and an off grid solar set up in place. The kicker was that the home was made for a single woman living alone. It was way too small for our family so we would still need to build a home. No matter how much we thought it was a crazy idea, we couldn’t let it go. Finally, I started looking at plane tickets and I found a really good deal so we booked and decided to go visit the state for vacation that year. To be honest, our budget has always been rather small and traveling was not something we did much of. After all the booking was done, I went to schedule a time to see the property but it was under contract by then. I tried to convince the real estate agent to let us see it anyway because why wouldn’t they want back-up buyers? But no luck, it was a solid no. By then it was too late to get a refund on the plane tickets so we just decided to go and look at some other places and check out the area.

We did feel discouraged and wondering if we ought to just abandon the whole idea. Personally, I was in a strange place internally where I had done the emotional work of letting go of the place I was living in. It was difficult. I grew up in the area, and have lived in the area all my life. My family is here and I am comfortable here. But something deep inside was calling for a new adventure. I had finally accepted it and then it seemed as if the property we were so excited about was just pulled out from under us. Then one morning just as I was waking up I heard a voice. It said two things. The first was, “Stand still and behold the wondrous works of God!” This phrase is in the Old Testament when Job is lamenting his situation and his younger but wiser friend starts to speak to him. The second phrase, was just a simple, “keep preparing”. What?! What did that mean? I could only assume that it was meant to tell me to keep preparing for what I had been, and that was a move to a new state.

Although we weren’t able to actually visit the first property that drew us into this journey, we found ourselves nearby so we drove past it and looked at it from the road. This is a straw bale cabin that had been built on the property.

We took our trip and it was exciting, and exhausting. We visited the Gateway arch, Mississippi River, looked at several properties, and experienced the nightmare of seed ticks for the first time. We didn’t love any of the properties we saw on that trip. There were some good options, but they were not right. However, the very last stop before our flight home was a property that was out of our budget, but we went to look at anyway. What we found was that the family living there was incredibly inspiring. We hit it off pretty quickly and they opened up to us. They were a very large family. The husband was from the US and the wife from Germany and they raised their kids mostly in South America. They lived a very simple life and used/needed very little money. They traded for things, worked odd jobs, sold milk, etc., and had developed a nice little homestead. We honestly spent most of our time there just visiting with them. They sent us with homemade bread and butter and some homemade pastries for our travels home. They were able to do so much with the resources they had right on, or near their own land. They were moving because their adult kids decided to go back to South America and they all wanted to be together. I could write a lot about our experience there, but we walked away changed. What one family could accomplish together on some land was amazing!

The last homestead we visited had an orphaned fawn they had adopted. It was pretty magical for our kids to play with a deer!

While the trip was difficult, we had some great memories and we all loved it. We found that we felt especially drawn to a certain area of the state. So, we returned home feeling open minded to whatever would come next.

To be continued…