Our new homestead site along Clear Creek in the Appalachian foothills

I’ve been greatly anticipating writing this post for a long long time. Today, I can proudly report that we are officially landowners! We’ve finally found and purchased a piece a property outside of Berea, Kentucky, where we’ll begin the exciting and challenging work of building a permaculture homestead community and natural building school. Getting to this point has been a long time in the making.

The land we’ll be happily and doggedly stewarding is a lovely piece of south-facing hillside ten miles outside of downtown Berea, Kentucky and along Clear Creek, the area we’ve grown to deeply love over the past two years since first visiting. The location of the land is spectacular — it’s right in the heart of the Clear Creek community. We’re close to many friends and neighbors along the creek, folks who share similar paths and visions to our own.

The land itself has many of the desired features we established for ourselves when we first began searching. It’s 28 acres on a hillside, with about 20 of those in gently sloping pasture. The other eight acres, split between the west boundary and the north boundary are wooded. There’s excellent solar access, despite the land being surrounded by the beautiful foothills in the beginning ridges of the Appalachian mountains.

It’s hard to photograph, but much of the property is a gentle south slope

One of the best features, other than the orientation of the land is the abundant water — there is at least one spring at the top of the property, and likely two other ephemeral springs as well, perfectly positioned for gravity feed to whatever infrastructure and food production we’ll eventually develop. The one spring had been developed years ago and served as the sole water source for the original farmhouse, so it’s historically reliable. This spring is part of the same network of springs that many friends along the same ridge use on their own properties. The water quality and quantity is incredible.

There’s a natural spring tucked in these woods

Another big plus is that we share a northern property boundary with Berea College, which is great because that means the spring is more or less protected from development. (Berea College owns a lot of undeveloped forest around the county.) They’re a desirable neighbor, to say the least.

A view of the north side of the current house on the property (thankfully it’s oriented to the south!)

The property does include a house, a very conventional home built within the past 15 years. A house was never on our original property checklist, but I have to admit the existence of the home does pose some great benefits to us. We can relocate to the property almost immediately, without having to camp or commute there for potentially years before we build anything of our own. Of course, the materials and design of the house are not something we would choose for ourselves, but we do plan on giving it some TLC and design makeovers of our own. Wood floors, bringing in more light, and a big ol’ wood cook stove are some of the ideas in the works. It will be a fine transitional space for the time being, and it’ll enable us to take our time in observing the land and make the best possible choices about where to eventually build our own homes, workshop, etc.

Some nice trees in the setting sun along the fence line

Life is looking pretty good right now. It’s been fun to track our own progress from building and living in a cob house in Missouri, to deciding we want more land and to create our own homestead, to moving to another landscape, and finally today achieving that first step of officially acquiring property.

We are truly bubbling with excitement at the thought of all the work to come. The land is far from “perfect” (whatever that may mean) — it will need quite a bit in the way of rehabilitation and stewardship to get it on the up and up. There’s more run down infrastructure that needs to be removed than I care to think about, and the soil will need lots of amending, but that’s all part of the work of taking care of a piece of land and restoring it to something beautiful. And for that I am definitely ready. Here we go.

An old pig shed awaiting a new life