I’m going to get older and more broken eventually, and don’t have offspring to help out. I don’t have a lot of options financially, but I have enough skills to build stuff. Probably. And grow stuff, mostly in greenhouses; that I can do. I plan, ideally sometime in the next year, to get a large property with a super shit house on it that’ll last a couple years until I can build the earth-bermed home I want. I figure if a person can build a cinderblock basement, they can probably build a full earth-bermed home from the same. Cheap to heat, cheap to cool, kinda cheap to build relatively speaking, just a gob of work.

Don’t worry, I’ll hire an architectural student to make plans as part of an assignment or something, and I’d get it inspected at various points of the build. I’d rather not die to my own hubris.

Once the first place is built, I can build a second house, probably same U-shape pseudo-duplex design -one living room space, a full bath, and two full-size bedrooms on either side of a kitchen/dining room (so 4 bed 2 bath 2 family room, kitchen, dining), but without the full basement level. The main house will need the basement because my partner and I don’t share living space for a variety of reasons, and part of it can also serve as an emergency/winter shelter for the animals.

If I do this, I can offer room and board for the family of whomever I hire. Due to this being my retirement plan, and me being rather poor (I have a small remaining mortgage on a house right now and that’s all I have to my name. No inheritance, no savings. I’ll be selling this place to buy the homestead, and using whatever remains for the building, solar, etc.), I probably won’t be able to pay actual wages anyone would want to work for -basically my entire net worth will be in the land itself, I’ll have to earn by selling some of the surplus food, and the structures on it are going to be built over time as I can source/create materials- but room and board for two adults and their kids, plus 2 acres for whatever personal use, and access to any and all tools for the property, sounds like fair compensation for one full time worker; the other adult can have a job if they like, or child-mind and raise their own animals to sell or whatever, I don’t care. Plus contractual inheritance of control of the trust when my partner and I die if they want it, else it’ll be left to some educational organization. I’d fucking hate for some shitty capitalist to buy it, or my sister inherit it, and ruin all my vision and work, but if I’m even remotely successful, the place will be worth a lot more when I’m done with it.. I’d like whomever helps me to reap the benefits of loyalty.