The single biggest reason I chose to buy the property that is NewHome in South East Missouri is the sheer number of creeks, rivers, lakes and the St. Francois Mountains. I am nestled in a valley in the center of one of the bigger foot hills of the St. Francois Mtn Range in the Ozarks. I am kind of picky on a couple of MUST have things when I choose a property to call home. #1. The Property MUST be at the end of a dead end road. #2. the Property MUST have a good well with great Water in it. #3. It MUST be within 10 miles of a small town with basic services like grocery and Gas. #4. It MUST be within a 1 hour drive to a bigger town with Box Stores etc. I want to be on the edge of very remote but have modern things and stores within a hour drive. In the case of NewHome I wanted a property close to HWY 34 to use as my gateway to the Castor, St. Francis, Black and Current Rivers and within a hour of Lakes Wappapello and Clearwater. Also not only at the end of a dead end road but surrounded on at least 3 sides by hills with elevations of 600 to 800 feet. I did NOT want a right on one of the rivers property and have to deal with the spring flooding mess. I also wanted mostly heavily wooded with 3-5 acres of open land on a valley floor between the surrounding big hills. It took nearly a year of searching before I narrowed the hundreds of properties I looked at down to a property in West TN. and this Property that is now NewHome. I had a strict $250,000 budget for purchasing the new property. When I drove over and looked at this property I fell in love with it instantly, inspected the cabin carefully and noted all of the issues that would need repaired or replaced most notably the really bad DIY electrical Job in the Cabin and a couple of logs that were rotting and would need to be replaced and made a $230,000 offer and 10 minutes later the offer was accepted and NewHome was under contract and paid for and closed on 2 weeks later. I DO NOT impulse buy land or real estate This property was exactly what I was searching for and the asking price was right at the money I had set aside and budgeted for........ And Hey I saved $20,000 when my offer was surprisingly accepted instantly without a counter or negotiation. I prefer square properties but that was something I could compromise on. And I do have 4 acres of open land on the valley floor between the Creek that is my North Property line and the slope at the base of the big hill. The big hill that is my back yard peaks at 700 feet elevation and in the SE Corner it levels off to nearly flat and may or may not be a future bigger log cabin building site. Zoomed a little farther out. And zoomed even a little farther out And zoomed way out 15 minutes way to the West on goat trail dirt and gravel roads is the Castor River. The next River that runs into Lake Wappapello is the St Francis River, Next out is the Black River that runs out of Clearwater Lake, and the Next River out on Hwy 34 is the Current River over at Van Buren. On the West Side of the Castor River it is very rugged terrain and into the St Francois Mtn Range. Farmington, Cape, Sikeston and Poplar Bluff are all a hour to 1hr 15 minutes away and all are Box Store Towns. Marble Hill is a small town with A few restaurants, a good size grocery store and a couple of gas stations at 6 miles away. Glenallen is 3 miles away but is a Ghost Town and FEMA Buyout town after a Tornado Wiped half the town out one year and the dam on a lake broke the following year wiping out the other half of the town. Only a handful of folks did not take the FEMA Buyout. The pins on this map are all of the Castor River Access points that I have physically visited and have found so far. I have only lightly explored the St Francis river and have not gotten around to pinning the public access points yet. But it is Kayak and Canoe worthy and flows into lake Wappapello. I have explored Clearwater lake and the Black River flowing out of it a lot more than the St Francis. And the Town of Piedmont is my primary stop and take a leak town when traveling back and forth farther west and over to SWMO and Springfield MO. (200 Miles from Home to Springfield) The Farthest West at a 90ish minute drive that I will go is the Current River. The Current is a old friend that I am very familiar with. In 1985 I Canoed down its entire Length From Baptist Camp to where it runs together with the Black River in Arkansas. I was 17 years old soon to be 18 and head off to basic training. I made that trip last 37 days camping and fishing my way down the entire current river and shipped out to basic training 2 weeks later. I always made it a point to spend a week of my leave for the next 10 years on the Current River. After that from 1996 through 2006 I always spent every chance I got traveling over and doing Baptist Camp down to Van Buren sometimes only 1-2 times per year other times a dozen or more. I have not been able to get back on the Current River since 2007 The Farm and businesses took of and I became totally chained to that life until I closed it all down and retired on December 31st 2023 at age 55. LOL 2024 and 2025 were kind of crazy for me and I did a lot of errrr ummm exploring other things. Like coming up with a plan of what to do next, where I wanted to buy NewHome, meeting and dating way too many women but hey I multi tasked and combined the Dating with looking at properties. Then Finally the finding New Home....... The endless round trips of moving the old farm to NewHome, selling the old farm, going to North Carolina and spending 3 weeks there, meeting Lorrie and moving her to SEMO when I returned home, all of the building and upgrading at NewHome that lasted right up to Thanksgiving and driving around checking things out and planning the 2026 adventures since then with a couple more trips to NC mixed in to visit Lorrie's family and bring another truck and trailer load of her stuff back to MO. The great thing about Lorrie is she has almost identical interest with me and is about as river, lake, camping, and kayak and canoe crazy as I am LOL if I even hint at going and exploring someplace new she is in the truck and ready to go before I finish the sentence LOL. She also came with a pair of really nice Kayaks Most of our river and camping time will be on the Current River in 2026 doing Monday through Friday Morning trips camping on the river as we go. The great thing about us both being retired fairly young is we can do week days and avoid all of the Weekend Tourist Folks that clog the current up. We are both really itching for nicer and warmer weather to get out there on the current river. We have not explored much to the North of us beyond the Castor River start at the Shut In. There is Big Creek, the Merimac and more to the North. There is not much to the East other than the Mississippi River and some smaller creeks and rivers that dump in to it..... And the MS River really just does not interest either of us much at all. To the South is pretty much the Castor River that loops around the South side of us. We want to get into the St Francois Mtn Range and explore and camp them..... We do enjoy hiking as well as the Canoe and Kayaks More related to my previous post but I chose to call SEMO Home over SWMO because of the far greater number of lakes, rivers and creeks. The Huge amount of Mark Twain Natl Forest a short drive away, the St Francois Mountain Range, and well all that rugged terrain is is much more beautiful than SWMO IMO. And again just my experience and opinion the Prepper and Homesteader Community here is a fraction of what it is in SWMO but the folks here are much more serious about it and actually doing it and living it rather than talking about it and doing it as a supplemental thing. Not to say there are not plenty of real and serious homesteaders and preppers in SWMO there are just a lot more NY and CA transplant not so serious and far more Liberal types over there. The biggest number of out of State folks here are like myself Retired State of IL Employees from Souther and Central IL. Collecting the IL Pensions and benefits that wanted out of the TAX and Cost of Living Hell known as IL. LOL a pretty good IL Expat community here. I mean in my case $14,800 property taxes on the last 40 Acres with a portable building converted to a cabin and 2 barns..... To 67acres, a nice log cabin and 2 barns and 2 other outbuildings for $459 per year in property taxes in SEMO. IL is not losing large amounts of population every year because it is a nice and friendly place to live The good news is the majority of the people that leave IL. for here are Right of Center to Very Right Politically and are people with financial resources that were large $$$ Tax payers in IL. Bad for IL. because as we leave by the tens of thousands that leaves the non tax paying welfare liberals becoming the dominate species in IL. Causing the State to raise the taxes more to compensate for what those of us that left took with us. IL is a prime example of what Liberalism and communism with a State Government that is Hostile towards the Citizens of the State can accomplish. LOL We figure that doing everything and exploring everything that we want to do in SEMO will take us at least 20 years At the same time we have a very nice homesteady place that is very much like the old farm just scaled back to a fraction of the old farm and designed to support 2-4 people not a business feeding 250 regular customers and 2000 weekly hit and miss customers. Rabbits Replaced Hogs, Hair Sheep and a couple of milk goats replaced the Cattle, 100 Chickens replaced the 20,000 per year chickens, and Ducks and Muscovy were added. The Garden shrank from 20 acres down to 1/2 acre and the Orchard shrank from 300 trees to a Dozen. 3-4 Days and nights Exploring, floating and Camping and 3-4 days and nights per week at NewHome and we are still very much self sufficient, well prepared for less than favorable situations and can smile and have fun at the same time. Nothing more of a buzz kill than the Survivalist type Prepper that walks around with a constant scowl with what seems two Cobs crammed in the bunghole proclaiming every conspiracy theory and end of the world situation they can imagine. Geesh how can those folks maintain that serious and miserable way of living and thinking! Been proclaiming that BS since 1970s and very few of the theories panned out. LOL thank God they changed their brand to Preppers after the Oklahoma City Bombing and attention was focused on the Militias and Survivalist types. I hate being called a prepper.... I just can't live that unhappy, paranoid and miserable waiting for the end of the world or for society to collapse A Farmsteader or Homesteader that is prepared for real things that really can happen and are likely to happen and enjoying life and the world around me is much more pleasant and fun........ And having the skill and hardware as well as the resources if needed is a much more happy and pleasant lifestyle. Get yourself a nice little cabin and some land in the middle of nowhere everywhere. Enjoy life and don't worry yourself to death about a bunch of shit you have no control over and can't change anyway. This Iran stuff for example... agree or disagree there is not a single damned thing you or us can do about it. We just have to deal with all of the unintended consequences that will fall out from it, like fuel prices will go up, inflation is going to speed up again, the Domestic and Global Economy is going to be kicked in the balls... how hard remains to be seen. And yeah there is the possibility of Iran's Allies Russia and China getting involved and setting off world war 3......... Me I am going to keep on planning the 2026 adventures and if nukes fly and burn me to cinders so be it....... Nothing I can do to stop the Lunatics we call world leaders from doing their senseless crazy shit that they so love to do.
Thank you for the latest update and comments. I too am a relaxed prepper. I am to old and to decrepit to fight the good fight. Am enjoying using my prepps now, and enjoying my home and firewood. The prepps come in very handy, as I doubt that I will be alive to use them in 5 years, Cooking for myself and eating alone, I have found a dozen different ways to eat chilli with out beans, Add beans, over rice, add black beans over rice, with shells, and so on. Quick, easy, and use storage foods.
I am more and more turning into the 'relaxed prepper' myself as your words are completely true, "there is not a single damned thing you or us can do about it." This goes for all the looney tune Democrats also. Maybe if they get the SAVE Act pass we can finally get rid of some of them since they will find it harder to steal elections. I do understand Trump's reasoning on Iran and agree with his logic, if he can pull this off it will truly be a world changing event. Maybe that is worth the risk. We'll see. Personally, I don't give a damn about Iran, but I do see how they are the cause of the majority of the problems, the fear, and all the blood and treasure we spend over there. Change them and you change region completely. Again, we'll see.
