We just bought a piece of land in good area. There is nothing on it but trees, vegetation, and some nice rolling hills. We don’t know what we should do first. We took your advice and wrote down its “mission” before we bought it. It is our vacation place for now and when the SHTF it is our bugout place. So what’s next? Oh, we paid cash for it from our IRA and we do have some money to get some items done. It may or may not be a retirement place for us.
First off…congratulations!!! Congrats on buying a place and double congrats that you didn’t borrow money to acquire it.
Normally I would simply refer you to the 7 Common Risks/Threats pages and advise you to follow that: 1) Violence 2) Injury or Sickness 3) Communications (lack of or poor) 4) Organization (lack of or poor) 5) Dehydration 6) Exposure 7) Starvation. However, in your case…building up a quasi-homestead / Bugout location…it’s a bit different in some aspects. Mostly due to timing.
Since there is no infrastructure, that is your fist goal, due to time-frames. But, that doesn’t mean you sit back while waiting on that to happen. Many tasks can be done in parallel…meaning concurrently. But lets get back to infrastructure.
Water –
You need at least two sources of water. Both need to be reliable, the primary source needs to be extremely reliable. If you have running water, river or stream, that is one source; rainwater can be another source. If your river/stream is 100% reliable then you are good to go, just develop a way to harvest it, move it, store it, and purify it. For rainwater you will need a capture system (harvesting) which is normally a building’s roof. Since you have no building roof yet, that will have to wait.
Around here a well is a necessity, period. If you need a well you need to get on it quickly. Ask your neighbors and church members who they used and trust. Then contact at least 2, if not 3, drillers and ask them to give you a price on a successful drilled well. You can ask them for a separate price on a pump set-up. While the trustworthy ones will balk at the ‘successful’ well idea, they should be able to estimate the well depth and odds of hitting water. The different estimates should be similar in depth and odds since that information is readily available through state records.
I don’t suggest you drill your own well…for a variety of reasons. You need a professional job done that is safe and will last way past your lifetime. We decided on a DC pump with solar panels because our well, that was already drilled, is 750’ from our house. An independent power system for the well was required, not optional. We put the pump in ourselves using MDPE pipe. We went with the pipe, 210’ of it, so we could maintain the well ourselves. We also did all the plumbing and wiring ourselves.
There is plenty of good information online showing how to do it. Here is an overview of our system:
Around here folks can wait as long as a year to get a well in. So make this a very high priority to get underway quickly. Also, be careful how much deposit you put down…there are stories of companies running off with deposits. That is why you choose a trusted company that folks you trust recommend to you.
Violence –
Back to the 7 Common…put a small cache together of weapons. The minimum should be a pistol, tactical shotgun, couple hundred rounds for each, and a good knife. Hide it really well, but make it fairly accessible.
Why the cache? You may not be able to get guns to your property if you had to bugout…they may have been stolen or confiscated. And if you have multiple folks, including kids, that can properly handle guns…then a cache for each if you can swing it. Hide each cache in a different place on the property…not anywhere near the property line.
Weapon Articles:
Medical –
Then do the same thing for emergency medical kits that you did with the weapons. The minimum I would do is a BOK & IFAK. I would prefer to see you add in a TBAK and STAK as well. An option would be Home/Family First Aid Kit.
Related first Aid articles:
Misc –
Just as a thought…what if you can’t get there with any of your preps at all? You might want to consider a ‘starting over’ cache. Survival Cache to Stay Alive & Start Over – Part #1
OK, that is enough for now. I will post more fairly soon. But this will get you started.
Articles in this Series –
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