The Campfire Trail: November 23 - DIY Homestead

November 23, 2022

Day 418 of the Adventure

A rainy day at the treehouses

Before Reading: I am sharing some of our income sources as ideas to consider. If you find any value, or if you think you would like to receive other instructional videos on creating income stream ideas with your property (or future property) please consider Subscribing to our YouTube channel using any of the video links on this page. Thanks

In the middle of all the cabin work, we still occasionally want to touch on things that may have direct benefit to readers in similar circumstances. Specifically, those in the homestead, off-grid or recreational property kind of life. In this case, it's the subject of creative sources of income. Obviously, not all lifestyles demand the same level of income support. Ours is not very "Income Dependent" but that has not always been the case. Our very first experience with buying a cabin property type of land, ultimately required an income source, even though we had not figured that out until we were actually committed to it. The "Cabin" part of the dream was overwhelming as a lifestyle choice. Unfortunately, we had not really built a business plan prior to acquiring the land. In our case, it was probably better for our future that we didn't. How could that even be true? Simple. Had we tried to develop a plan that made sense, we may very well never had taken that first step.

A few treehouse cabins in the background

I'm not the kind of person who would advocate starting something significant without a good plan, but it was something that we did, breaking my own rule of planning. The reason it worked was that our first bunch of cabins did not cost that terrible much, even though they did require a lot of repairs. The risk was smaller but there was still no real plan in the beginning. In a nutshell. as we completed the renovations on each cabin, we started renting them out as nightly guest rentals. It did not take long to realize the gold mine in nightly rentals. Our four initial little cabins became five, then thirteen, then twenty, then even more. Ultimately it turned into multiple properties including camping, RV sites, cabins and even treehouses. Yes, you may think of this picture as a big complex business operation. The truth is, it started with one single cabin. It could have started with a single campsite. As we began to plan out our "Camp Run-Amuck" life, an initial plan of a half dozen primitive, off-grid campsites was front and center of the idea. From our experience, we know that campsites produce the best income with the least amount of expense and effort. The only real question is how much privacy are we willing to give up. In our case, the easy answer is to only make sites available for specific dates, sacrificing some privacy but preserving it for the most part.

For the truly ambitious, here's a few links to some of our treehouse cabins. Obviously, a huge amount of expense goes into this kind of project. Still our "Run-Amuck" plan is scaled to something literally anyone could do. It's all about the DREAM!

Carry On

Adventure Quote: “Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone.” ― Shannon L. Alder