Land in MD

[jjacks47]

Hi skoolie fam! My partner and I are looking for somewhere to park and live in our Skoolie with our three dogs. It is a short, 22 foot bus. We just received bad news that we can not stay where we currently are, if you know someone or yourself in the Maryland area with somewhere safe to park and live please let me know! The sooner the better!

[o1marc]

This is a common issue many overlook when thinking of the journey. These things always take twice as long as expected and you should budget double what you thought, plus a couple thousand dollars.
Good luck on your search.

[jjacks47]

*can’t

Thanks!

[WIbluebird]

East coast is one of the hardest places to live in a bus I would imagine.

I just don't think full time stationary living is practical in most of the country unless you're in areas like the Appalachians or out west. Zoning and urban regulations make it hard to be able to pursue this lifestyle anywhere near areas with jobs.

I just can't figure out why people buy these buses without a definite place to park or store them. Verbal agreements with friends/family rarely work out in my experience. If you don't own the land then literally anything can and does happen

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by WIbluebird

East coast is one of the hardest places to live in a bus I would imagine.

Yeah, it seems basically impossible around here, other than RV parks/campgrounds if you can convince to accept a skoolie. I've called all the ones within an hour of Philly and they all have the younger-than-10-years rule (although one place said maybe they would consider a newly-converted skoolie if it looked nice, but they're only open six months a year).

Originally Posted by WIbluebird

I just can't figure out why people buy these buses without a definite place to park or store them.

I think the overwhelming majority of people buy school buses without really considering the implications, even if they have a parking spot.

[DeMac]

Weird, to me. Who would buy a horse without owning a pasture?

Agricultural lands are a great place to start. Offer to work instead of money.
------------------------

long version
We live outside of any cites, just county & state authority, A-1 zoned (Agro). Most of our neighbors have 10 acres or more. Approximately 20% of them have at least one shipping container or semi trailer for storage. There are seven school buses (visable by driving by) within a mile of our home. Mostly used for hauling watermelons & pumpkins. My immediate neighbor has four semi trailers and a long term (5+ years) RV dweller. Others have bucket trucks, crane vehicles, well digging trucks, airstrip w/ plane, etc. Workin' folks. Also, lots of active RVs.

We have two shipping containers, near the bus, and have had multuple county building inspections for a new well, electrical service, and concrete forms (by me, owner/builder). A county code enforcement officer visited us so he could take pictures and verify our status as an active farm, for property tax purposes. Just the bus, containers, livestock, electrical pole and water well (no structure), which were all added by us, in order to convert the property taxes from "Vacant Land" to "Agricultural". Our home (we converted a barn) is on one of four contiguous plots, but nearly a 1/4 mile away. We won't be living in the bus or containers.

It has taken a great deal of physical labor to achieve what we have here. We don't pay for help, though I do barter. Some (not you, reader) want to buy a bus to live in, yet are not willing to do the work required to build a safe, secure, reliable (income producing) home.

Owning our own dirt means we make our own rules (while following the county & state laws). Transient housing, automatic weapon fire and naked tractor work are ok. (not engaged in any 'acts'). Personally, I feel most free here.

[jjacks47]

When we first began this journey, we had a place to park and store it. Where we had it parked to work on it, said we could stay when it was finished but she was under the impression that this was our second home and not our full time home. Don’t really need too much discouragement at the moment, as you can imagine, it is stressful to deal with at the last minute. Thank you for the suggestion in regards to the agricultural land.

[DeMac]

Short version is for you. Ag lands are a good place to start, we all need help. Us, included. We've had other skoolies stay and help. Gone to other skoolies and helped. I thank G for my neighbors. You are not alone.

Is Delaware an option?

[ttee]

Throw up a listing on craigslist roommate wanted section. You might find someone willing to rent their yard/shop to you

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by DeMac

Weird, to me. Who would buy a horse without owning a pasture?

Agricultural lands are a great place to start. Offer to work instead of money.
------------------------

long version
We live outside of any cites, just county & state authority, A-1 zoned (Agro). Most of our neighbors have 10 acres or more. Approximately 20% of them have at least one shipping container or semi trailer for storage. There are seven school buses (visable by driving by) within a mile of our home. Mostly used for hauling watermelons & pumpkins. My immediate neighbor has four semi trailers and a long term (5+ years) RV dweller. Others have bucket trucks, crane vehicles, well digging trucks, airstrip w/ plane, etc. Workin' folks. Also, lots of active RVs.

We have two shipping containers, near the bus, and have had multuple county building inspections for a new well, electrical service, and concrete forms (by me, owner/builder). A county code enforcement officer visited us so he could take pictures and verify our status as an active farm, for property tax purposes. Just the bus, containers, livestock, electrical pole and water well (no structure), which were all added by us, in order to convert the property taxes from "Vacant Land" to "Agricultural". Our home (we converted a barn) is on one of four contiguous plots, but nearly a 1/4 mile away. We won't be living in the bus or containers.

It has taken a great deal of physical labor to achieve what we have here. We don't pay for help, though I do barter. Some (not you, reader) want to buy a bus to live in, yet are not willing to do the work required to build a safe, secure, reliable (income producing) home.

Owning our own dirt means we make our own rules (while following the county & state laws). Transient housing, automatic weapon fire and naked tractor work are ok. (not engaged in any 'acts'). Personally, I feel most free here.

....and even then you can still wind up with neighbors that complain a lot and cause problems....just because they don't want more neighbors??

[DeMac]

Kidharris,
We share our hands and animals with our neighbors and they help us. (Each of whom, are working their own A-1 zoned land)

Complain to who? About what? The hard work, long hours,
low yield or you mean the heavy machinery, containers, livestock,
mass quantities of mature & the crops we grow with it?

Have ya seen where your food comes from? Truly, alot of manure & rusting steel.

But complaining, ha, ha. Lots of complaints in agro, any suggestions? Crop workers use buses for travel, work, & housing. Owners transport crops, animals & feed. I bet the first skoolie, was a shepherds wagon.

Our agricultural community is a society of likeminded individuals with a common goal. We are each self-sufficient but hold each other upright, as well.

(Look out my back door and complain.)

[LargeMargeInBaja]

Along with a couple-three dozen folks in various versions of RecreationVehicles and home-made ExpeditionVehicles, we workkamp a small organic teaching farm near the outskirts of Eugene, Oregon.
.
After refining our latest RequirementsStatement, we quickly realized the right people to network.
Lo! and behold!, at the first farmers market we visited, they needed us and we needed them.
.
But you have to enjoy potlatches a couple times a day with imaginative innovative semi-pro chefs.
You have to enjoy the company of like-minds.
And, in our situation, you have to enjoy the company of goats and swine and mules.
.
Oddly, each of these points were (was?) in our RequirementsStatement...

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by DeMac

Kidharris,
We share our hands and animals with our neighbors and they help us. (Each of whom, are working their own A-1 zoned land)

Complain to who? About what? The hard work, long hours,
low yield or you mean the heavy machinery, containers, livestock,
mass quantities of mature & the crops we grow with it?

Have ya seen where your food comes from? Truly, alot of manure & rusting steel.

But complaining, ha, ha. Lots of complaints in agro, any suggestions? Crop workers use buses for travel, work, & housing. Owners transport crops, animals & feed. I bet the first skoolie, was a shepherds wagon.

Our agricultural community is a society of likeminded individuals with a common goal. We are each self-sufficient but hold each other upright, as well.

(Look out my back door and complain.)

Where I live, Mohave county, in NE AZ, the building and zoning is a "complaint driven" system. They don't run around looking for violations on their own, but if they get a complaint, they can cause a lot of problems. The old timers have all realized that they can cause you serious problems by complaining. It is not uncommon here for a new comers first meeting with some of these jerks is for them to threaten to complain on you, trying to get you to move along. They don't want new neighbors. Many of the ranchers own very little land, it is all leased. The majority of the land is governmant owned. The majority of the private land is absentee owned.

Squatters and meth labs take advantage of the absentee owners and just park their rvs. It got so bad that the county passed a law saying - no septic tank, no rv parking. Since septic tanks have to have permits on file they can kick out the squaters with out having a complaint by the absentee owners.

What do they complaign about? Dogs, livestock, roosters, trash, not having a permit to build, fence lines, illegal wells and septic systems, abandoned or non op vehicles, theft, drugs, shooting guns in their direction or any other lie or excuse that they can think of. Some of the folks are just hermits, paranoid, or worried that you are going to find the gold mine that should be theirs. You try sharing their animals and you are likely to wind up being fertilizer.

Agro out here mostly consists of a few ranchers getting cheap desert grazing from the BLM and state leasing organizations and taking advantage of adverse grazing when ever possible. Adverse grazing is where they graze your land for free unless you pay to fence them out. If the cattle tear up your fence, knock down your porch posts or put dents in your car scratching their selves, good luck getting the rancher to pay for damages. Yo hurt their animal and its going to cost you. Az is an open range state. The ranchers sell a lot of their cattle to the tourists and locals when they run into the cattle on the road. THe rancher doesn't pay you for the damage to your car, you pay him for his expensive "prize" cow that you killed. Bulls cost extra.

Most of the places you see dotting the desert are abandoned, folks either died, got run off by the "neighbors", or just couldn't take the desert life. A few of them get killed. Not everyone is a jerk, some are just cautious, but really nice.

Things may change though. The people leaving California have money to burn and have been buying up the desert land around me and driving up the prices. The pandemic has accelerated that trend and some of them are actually moving in. Doesn't mean that they will stay though.

I can see a few buses around, but only 1 that someone lives in and I think that he has lived there for a long time, but now he is having a "complaint" problem from a new neighbor.

"Have ya seen where your food comes from? Truly, alot of manure & rusting steel."


You make farming sound easy.


I am 70 years old now. When I was young in both Arkansas and the plains of NE Colorado, we lived on real farms (multi feed crops for the animals - alfalfa, corn, sorghum, beets, peas. Dairy cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys, rabbits For food and money. Guineas for coyote alarms, 2 collies for coyote dispatch, attack goose, and a big garden and a plow horse (mostly for decoration and us kids to ride - hard to fall off of) Pemaculture before it became permaculture. Any waste/extra crops went into the silage pit or got sold/traded. My hard headed grand paw in Arkansas preferred mules, both for loading timber and planting, no tractors for him. Learned how to drive when I was 10 driving a little Ford tractor in Colorado. The only implements that they trusted me with was the manure spreader or the hay rake. I've seen more manure and rusty steel than I care for. They also let me drive the old Chevy pickup sometimes to go get the cows for milking (twice a day, before and after school). I had a hard time reaching the pedals, but there wasn't much to run into. Mostly I just had to open and close the gates, the cows knew when it was milking/feed time.

This was back when branding, de-horning, and castrating was all done by hand and was about the only thing that neighbors helped out with except maybe harvesting which they usually traded or charged for. Occasionally they would share the expense of hiring a professional coyote hunter with a pack of greyhounds to thin out the coyotes. Irrigation water still came in ditches, no pumps or sprinkler systems. Air conditioning was unheard of. We did have a telephone "party" line shared with our neighbors. Everybody knew everbody elses business. Going to town once a month, sometimes twice, was a real treat. Got 1 black and white tv channel...most of the time.

[Bus'n it]

Cool story KidHarris! I am in East Mesa on County Island. For the most part all you said above applies here. Someone has to complain about something to get the county involved. When they get involved it does get ugly. I grew up in NYC but as a young person then, I wanted to be out of the city and into the farms. The closest I got to that was when I was 23 when I got my CDL (Still have it) and drove all over the place. It is through trucking that I decided later in life that the "West" was for me. Got married and we both left NY 20 years ago and never looked back. We have one more move left in us which will lead us somewhere with open land. (If that really exists anymore!)

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by Bus'n it

Cool story KidHarris! I am in East Mesa on County Island. For the most part all you said above applies here. Someone has to complain about something to get the county involved. When they get involved it does get ugly. I grew up in NYC but as a young person then, I wanted to be out of the city and into the farms. The closest I got to that was when I was 23 when I got my CDL (Still have it) and drove all over the place. It is through trucking that I decided later in life that the "West" was for me. Got married and we both left NY 20 years ago and never looked back. We have one more move left in us which will lead us somewhere with open land. (If that really exists anymore!)

Here I was thinking maybe I was in the wrong county. I spent a summer in the Tempe-Mesa area about 50 years ago. I enjoyed it, thought it might be better than here.


I was thinking that there is a bit more farming in southern AZ than here

[Bus'n it]

Originally Posted by kidharris

I was thinking that there is a bit more farming in southern AZ than here

Give it 10 more years and there will not be any farming land left! Almost all the citrus orchards are gone in Mesa. Now what is left is more of a tourist attraction. Sad.

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by Bus'n it

Give it 10 more years and there will not be any farming land left! Almost all the citrus orchards are gone in Mesa. Now what is left is more of a tourist attraction. Sad.

Most of the tractor sales dealers in AZ are still in south AZ.

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by Bus'n it

We have one more move left in us which will lead us somewhere with open land. (If that really exists anymore!)

Sounds like your headed somewhere really cold in the winter.

[Bus'n it]

Shhh, don't tell my wife that ;)