I am thinking about saving up to buy land.  I mean, once the EF is saved up for. So in the future.  It's kind of a dream.  Not necessarily land to live on.  But maybe some land in the county with one cleared acre, where we can put in a cistern and a greenhouse with guttering that harvests water through a series of filters and into the cistern.  Then we can grow a big garden and always have the water to water it without tapping into city water.  Getting a permit for a well is very hard right now, and expensive, but there are no permits needed for a cistern or gathing rain water. I'd also like to build a roof over it, with guttering to collect more water and make one end an RV shed.  If the cistern is out of sight, it is out of mind for any drone flyovers, just in case there are any bad actors out there.

I'd like one of those giant greenhouses that look like hoop houses, maybe even two.  We could grow so much more food there. and it would be protected from the elements and extend the growing season.  We could put up shade cloth easily when it got too hot and run fans and in the fall we could keep it warmer by battening down all the windows and moving to just planting down the center.  There are also even propane heaters if we wanted to try to grow into the cold part of the winter, but I doubt we would do that, since the roads are pretty impassable in the area I'm thinking for at least one month of the year.  But growing 9 to 10 months of the year would be great.  And we could put gutters on that for rain water catchement as well.

And I'd like to have a big pond and looping creek waterfall, with both a pump built and a solar fountain.  The pond we could stock with trout and have an automatic feeder.  And it would have the natural bog section for filtering out all the fish poop, that you don't go into, and we'd add water flowers as well as flowers and plants along the banks and rocks.  Not quite a tropical paradise since we arent in the tropics, but there are some amazing grasses and other style plants that grow here that look very tropical and they even overwinter.  And then there are some tubers like caladium and elephant ear hostas that you have to dig up and overwinter inside, but they are so worth the effort.  Lilies you can leave right in the ground and there are some that look very exotic.

Eventually we'd put in a septic tank when we could afford to so we could have a hookup for a small shed with a toilet and sink in it, maybe even a shower if we went swimming in the pond.  We would use solar to heat the water.  Meanwhile, we'd build an outhouse in the woods and keep a bucket of lime and some hay or straw to throw down the hole for proper composting.  And it is not hard to set up a solar shower/washing station to wash your hands with.

And the very first thing we would do when we got that land, before we did anything else would be to plant fruit trees, fruit bushes, and their pollinators.  Fruit trees take the longest to produce food.  5 to 6 years to produce fruit, so you have to get them in the ground the minute you move somewhere.  And I'll want a couple of Willow trees if there is a body of water to sustain them and I will want flowering pink cherry trees and flowering dogwoods planted along the driveway into the property so that when they are big enough they will form an arch over the driveway.

And maybe one day build a fully accessible house to my exact specifications, big enough to fit a wheelchair.

Will this ever happen, I don't know.  Land is getting more and more expensive, which is why I'd like to buy some here sooner, rather than later.  Otherwise, I'd have to move away from the coast to get a really good deal and I love living here even if the politics are not something I agree with.  I can't move to a place that there is not proper access to a high level medical facility or a really good ER in a regular hospital.  If I don't have both of those I risk my daughter's life and probably mine, too.  The cheapest places to live don't tend to have Viginia Mason, Swedish, John Hopkins, and the like.

So maybe this will always just remain a pipe dream.  Like so many of my dreams that came screeching to a halt the day my daughter slipped on those rocks and fractured her skull and changed her and our lives forever.  But maybe we will find the right place already built.  Because fixing up this place once we fully own it outright is not something I really want to do.  I really just want to start over with a house that isn't over a century old with a basement that doesn't flood in bad rainstorms, because I can't climb down the stairs to turn on the pump anymore.  And I'd like a house with modern wiring that is up to code.  I just want that option.