The Great Off Grid Ozark Adventure: part 2

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. If you’re just finding this post, I recommend starting with part one here to get more background.

After returning home from our trip to Missouri, Mary and I continued to look at land online. It’s difficult to shop for land online when you can’t be there in person to really get a feel for what it is like. This was a time of alternating between, wondering what in the world we were thinking, to being excited. We made a list of what were the top priorities for having property. We have found that privacy is a big deal for us. We want trees, but we also wanted some cleared land. If you’ve never been in the area, the forest is huge and overwhelming! We also wanted water of some sort… We probably looked at hundreds if not thousands of properties online.

Finally, there was one that caught our attention more than others. It was very interesting. It had a home on it and it belonged to an Amish family. We knew we wouldn’t want to live in that home forever, or even remodel it. But we thought that having a structure in place while we build would be very valuable. Eventually, we decided it was worth another trip out there. Financially speaking, this time it didn’t make sense to take the whole family. Mary and I took the youngest who could fly free at the time, and Mary’s mom stayed with our other kids while we went out there again to look at this property. It was our main target but we, of course, had some other things to look at. We had nicknamed it the “Amish Paradise”. This trip was about 8 months after our first trip. We arrived by airplane late at night and the flights were much delayed because of storms and wind. We got our rental car and drove across the state during a pretty big storm. It was slow going and I wasn’t used to the curvy roads, especially during a large rainstorm. We finally made it to the 5th wheel AirBnB at a little after 3:00am.

We got up at about 7 to travel to the property we had come to look at. Unfortunately, it was a big disappointment. The pictures online had been taken quite a bit before, and the land looked very different. Much of it had been stripped of everything. Unfortunately, just driving up to the property we noticed right away that there would be problems. They tore out all the trees and let their animals eat every bit of vegetation on the steep slope above the road so erosion was quickly becoming a problem. There was trash all around, the home was not in good shape, and was not actually built well in the first place. Part of the home was just open. It had once been covered in plastic (yes, exterior walls covered with painters plastic) which was torn and blowing in the wind. You could see dirt and sunlight through the floor boards. It smelled terrible, nothing had been taken care of, and it just felt depressing. There were some good things, and we felt that the land needed someone to take care of it, but it just didn’t feel right and we didn’t feel up to the job.

We went and looked at a commercial property nearby because we thought we might move our business out there. It wasn’t right either, but as we chatted with the Realtor, he asked about our situation and asked if he could check into some other land sites for us. He texted that night and it turns out that another Amish place had come onto the market that day. It was right close by the one we had looked at. It didn’t look all that great, but we decided that we’d check it out anyway. As the first place looked nicer in the pictures, this place was the opposite. It was a really nice piece of land! It didn’t have water, which was a downside for us, but it was a very peaceful area tucked away in a little valley. It had really good crop soil which is rare in that area. The home wasn’t much to look at on the outside and, of course, being Amish it didn’t have running water or electricity, but it was well built and could shelter us while we built a home. The only downside is that the home was already on the best location! It had a good balance of things and the previous owners had left behind some guinea hens and chickens so ticks wouldn’t be as much of a problem. There was a large barn in place as well. We fell in love and it felt right. We went home, but by the time we got home and got finances in order, we found out that it was no longer on the market. It turns out that someone had it under contract when we were there, but they had a technical hiccup and it went back on the market for just a few days, then they got their glitch figured out and closed on it. We didn’t even have a chance.

Mary and I both reacted differently to this experience. I doubled down and wanted to be ready to buy the next time an opportunity came. I started looking at land right away. Mary, needed a break. She backed away from the whole thing for a while. Again, we began to question our sanity. Was I just hallucinating when I heard a voice telling me to keep preparing? Maybe… We felt doubt and disappointment. So, we worked on getting funding in order so we were ready to make an offer when the right opportunity showed up.

To be continued…