Several opportunities in Eastern Arizona

I have so much to share, where do I begin?

It is very interesting to note that my homesteading journey began right here in these forums.  I was a nurse, living in Missouri.  I began communicating with a couple who owned property in Arizona, and they were selling their five acres.  It was exactly what we wanted so we could start trying this "living off the land" thing.  We purchased that land in 2020. We purchased a 35' fifth wheel, and we set off on our adventures.  We considered joining an established community, but because of what was happening in the world in early 2020, not too many folk were open to the idea of coming together, right when the world was constantly encouraged to stay away from one another.  

We quickly realized that our "practice" five acres was not enough, and soon we purchased 40 acres in beautiful Show Low, Arizona. It was amazing.  We continued to learn about solar, septic, water, growing, and animal husbandry.  We were on our way!  More opportunities presented themselves, and soon we purchased an established business on another 20 acres, not too far from our 40 acres.  Even MORE opportunities recently came to light and we have purchased another 11 acres in New Mexico, just a few miles over the Arizona border.  

So here we are, with all these projects and so much to learn and so much knowledge to share.   We have been hosts for WWOOFers, and Harvest Hosts.  We love to share the joy that our animals bring us, with others.  But, we need help.  There is always something to do.  We raise sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, livestock guardian dogs, and cats.  We run a busy business that always needs extra sets of hands.  We are able to offer housing and community in exchange.  A supply of eggs and meat is almost always guaranteed.  We need help with our growing efforts.  We simply do not have time.  We need help running errands, as our business requires us to be present on the property almost all hours of the day.  

There is no way for me describe what we need, other than people just like us, but people that also like their own space and own projects.  

I hope that this is at least the beginning of a discussion and it has so many twists and turns and so many directions it can go!  Reach out to me and we can discuss!

I can't find where to edit my previous post, so I'll just keep adding to it, as I think of things.

I thought I would add a little bit more about who we are, as a couple, what we have done in our lives, and what we hope to accomplish.

I am Marlena.  Tim and I have been together for eight years. I am the mother of five children, although Tim and I do not have children together.  He also has two adult children.  

I spent most of my 20's and 30's busy raising children and immersed in pregnancy/childbirth/lactation/education/childrearing.  I taught "Lamaze" for twelve years and was a doula, attending many births in the hospital and out of hospital.  I have also been a surrogate mother three times.  I love birth and being present for others.  I have had three of my own unassisted home births, one midwife attended birth, one birth center birth, and two hospital births.  Anyway, I think you get the idea, I am fascinated with birth!  I became familiar with The Farm in Tennessee, the stereotypical hippie commune started by Ina May and Stephen Gaskin.  I always dreamed of living in such a community.

Fast forward thirty years...and here I am.  I call myself a midwife to my animals.  Although I eventually did become an RN, I did not pursue becoming a nurse-midwife.  I was a clinical instructor for student nurses in their labor and delivery rotation, and that was enough to fill my need to be involved with birth.  Two years ago, I left my nursing career and pursued full-time homesteading.  As I described above, we raise animals for food and have been pretty much self taught.  There are many homesteaders that live in our area, and I believe we are an amazing group of people who figure stuff out together and make do with what we have.  

Currently I work full time at our business on our property.  Tim works at home and helps tend to our animals.  We remember the days when we were free and would travel the country together.  We miss those days a lot.  We can rarely be away from our homestead, and when we are it is very stressful for us - we have returned home after a few days away and came back to dead, sick, missing animals and all kinds of broken equipment that require expensive repairs.  We believe that finding other like minded individuals that can help out and benefit from living this same lifestyle might be a good way to help mitigate these issues.  

So what do we need help with?  Well, everything really.  I'm hoping that there are a few people out there that can bring their own unique strengths and can add to this wonderful thing we have going on here.  That's enough for now, gotta get going!

Hello! I might be interested in this opportunity if you are open to a mom with an 8 year old. Would love to discuss. Hope to hear from you!  Thanks, Sarah

This seems to be a rambling journal of things we do, and things that we have done.  It is my hope that by sharing some of these details, it will give others an idea of what we are looking for.  

I am currently sitting here, after waking up at 3:45am.  This is pretty typical for us.  Living off grid, we tend to go to bed when the sun goes down, and wake up early, finding that we have the most energy in the early morning before things get going!  Tim is working his regular Monday-Friday job. He works according to east coast time, so he is usually done by 1:00 in the afternoon and able to help around the homestead after that time.  I have YouTube running in the background, listening to a virtual tour of some intentional communities.  Is that what we strive to be?  I think so.  Tim is not nearly as keen on the idea as I am. He prefers his privacy and prefers to be alone.  I crave community and friendships.

We have shared our land with others.  One of my adult sons lived with us for a while, I've had friends on our land, we've had visitors from Harvest Hosts, and we have had long term renters.  I have learned from each of these situations.  Honestly, besides the renters, the experiences have been less than ideal.  First of all, living with family, especially adult children, is a challenge.  There is the parent/child relationship that can create its own drama.  I was totally taken advantage of by a "friend" that we were helping who lived in our RV rent free and proceeded to trash it, leaving it dirty and needing extensive repairs.  That destroyed a 10 year friendship, which is unfortunate.  It makes me wonder why I would consider allowing a complete stranger to live in a community with us.  Well, because I do have hope that there are others out there who crave community living.

Between 2012-2014 I immersed myself in farm life, learning as much as I could about animals.  I volunteered on farms where I worked with goats, sheep, cows, llamas, alpacas, pigs, tortoises, chickens, doves, and turkeys.  I learned how to make goat cheese!  I bottle fed baby goats! When I WWOOF'd, I gave my all. I worked for 4-6 hours per day, on my hands and knees picking weeds on a dahlia farm.  I also worked as a ranch hand, working my butt off mucking horse stalls.  The work was therapy for me, as I usually cried the whole time.  I had just gone through a very difficult situation, started a new chapter in my life, living in my van, and basically had no idea what I was doing.  I was working with dressage horses - with no interest in horses at all - but I looked at those huge creatures, and cried harder as they watched me cleaning up their poop.  It was hilarious and sad at the same time.  But it was just what I needed.  I became an intern on a four acre community supported agriculture (CSA) farm.  That was where I had the most fun.  I lived on the property where I looked after 400 chickens, and that's where I was introduced to livestock guardian dogs!  Oh my goodness, that's where my true love of Anatolian Shepherd Dogs started! I learned about crop rotation, how to drive a tractor, and how communication is important.  I planted strawberries with a non-english speaking helper, and after three hours, the farmer informed me that I did everything wrong which meant I had to spend another five hours removing the strawberry starts and replanting them correctly.  Apparently, the helper kept trying to show me I was planting them incorrectly, but I misunderstood.  I thought she was encouraging me and telling me what a good job I was doing!  That was a huge learning experience!

Then I went to nursing school! That was an adventure! It was awful, truthfully.  I had so many set backs, but got up, I brushed myself off, and tried again.  I graduated nursing school in December 2016, and felt pretty darn good about where my life was going after that.  And then....2020 happened...

more tomorrow...

I realized that I have been sharing a lot about me.  What about the other person, my life partner, my soulmate, that is involved in this adventure?  His name is Tim, and he prefers to be much more private.  I can tell you that he is an amazing human.  He is smart and funny, and can get just about anything to work.  He grew up as a city boy, so the idea of moving off grid and starting our homesteading life was a huge step for him at the age of 55.  We watched SO many YouTube videos together.  He focused on learning about building - structures, walipinis, greenhouses, earth bag homes, etc. while I focused my research on animals and animal care.

Tim and I met in the summer of 2015, part of an online community involved with Burning Man.  We met in person in September 2015 and we haven't stopped loving our life together since then.  We have lived together in California, Nevada, Missouri, and now Arizona while we expand into New Mexico.  Tim's hobbies are airplanes, flying planes, watching videos about airplanes and dreaming about airplanes.  He is a pilot and a certified flight instructor as hobbies, not as his profession.  We own an airplane and can share so many stories of our adventures prior to settling down on our homestead.  He works online doing computer stuff that is beyond my scope of understanding. Tim has discovered his love of sheep and our Anatolians which are the livestock guardians for our animals.  Our predator load includes coyote, bear, skunk, porcupine, bobcat, hawks, owls stray dogs and two legged creatures.  Our dogs do an amazing job making sure none of our livestock are harmed by predators.  Tim LOVES cats, so if you are a cat lover, you will be a true friend.  We have a wild story about his best kitty friend, Haggis. Tim takes his health very seriously, and finds that fasting keeps him feeling good and healthy!  On the other hand, I love to cook and love to eat even more!

Tim takes care of maintenance on the homestead.  We have our own well and he makes sure our water supply is always available and clean.  We have two separate solar powered systems set up, one for our residence and one for the business.  If you want to learn about solar, Tim is your guy!  He can talk bout batteries, charge controllers, panels, inverters, and backup generators all day long.  Tim has learned by trial and error how to build fences, and we have learned what a "goat proof" fence is.  If you have never heard this term, you are in for a treat!  Together we have learned how to tend to our animals and experienced our first season of lambing this year.  We had 26 lambs born this year and it was a bonding experience, for sure.  We helped sick mothers, held dying babies and nursed sheep back to health together.  We learned how to load livestock into a trailer together! There are so many fun things to share with others!

About our property:
We are at 6800' at the highest point on our property.  Elevation can be difficult.  We are considered high desert here, and we think it's beautiful.  Maybe I'll write more about our property later...

Thank you for the day to day plus the life history, as this allows a more complete picture of you and your partner.

How about the Land?  
any images of the surrounding landscape?
what are the 2 or 3 closest towns?
climate zone?  

Is your business raising and selling livestock and guardian dogs?
Do you raise any of the feed? is it feasible in your area to attempt to raise feed?

Would you expect people/person that joins you to hold a job outside the homestead/your business?  OR is there enough profit to be made just not enough hands on deck to move things along?

bee well

Em said, "So here we are, with all these projects and so much to learn and so much knowledge to share.   We have been hosts for WWOOFers, and Harvest Hosts.

Em said, "There is no way for me describe what we need, other than people just like us, but people that also like their own space and own projects.  

Maybe I missed this somewhere in your posts if so I am sorry.

What do you offer?

Do you offer a place to stay or Full RV hookups? Or is this off-grid?

Meals?

How many hours are required?

Or land shares?

I am happily living in the boondocks so I am not a candidate just someone who has done volunteer work in the past.

Hello!  We are a couple in our late twenties early thirties planning on purchasing land in the near future to do what you are doing. I am very interested in permaculture and we both want to grow food and medicine, Live off grid and care for live stock. We would like to find land somewhere between showlow and Oracle Arizona and learn more about how to setup solar and live off grid. We are purchasing a camper so we can live in the camper while we build on our property.

We are still looking for the right piece of land, and we have a lot to learn about homesteading and permaculture growing. As well as solar and the works.  

Maybe if this is an ideal situation for you and us, we can come by and help you on your land while we learn and look for our own property.

My name is Robbie and my partners name is Alondra. Let me know if you would like to get in contact or share more info. We are driving down to Tucson from Michigan later this week. We will be in Tucson staying with my grandma while we look for a class C camper.

Also, if you have any suggestions for finding a camper, I’m on all ears 😂.  

Let me know if you are interested in learning more about us. I’ll check on here or you can email me at
robaloie@gmail.com

-Robbie

Robbie, I did email you almost immediately after you posted.  Maybe the email was lost in all the fluff?

I am  interested in homesteading if the offer is still available. Do you provide housing and meals in exchange for work? Contact me if you still need help.
marcosdiazsb@gmail.com
Marcos

I'm interested in talking with you about helping out while learning, as it seems y'all have extensive knowledge in various areas that interest me. I'm 45 yr old male, in good shape, with no unhealthy habits or pets and a reliable vehicle. Am curious and interested in some details, so please contact at 9seven0-5three1-45eight7

Hi Em! Would love to connect. Doing this alone is sooo challenging; am 100% disabled vet (a bit crazy, lol), single, 60+, no experience at all, never even wanted to own land. However, gained stewardship over 120 developed (roads, 6 septics, 5 electric poles, huge RV barn, couple of garages and mobile homes) acres 2 years ago in Chambers, Arizona. Doing my best to bring my vision to fruition. A regenerative eco-village, intentional community whose focus is helping travelers.

LunaGaia Nomadic Village, after the cleaning and preparing stage, is now in the building/planting stage and several people have shown interest in being permanent occupants. We have chicken coop with 6 hens, (lost 2 roosters and a hen), barn cats, a couple of raised beds last year, a new greenhouse. Half of the "natural Juniper" fence is in place to prepare for the larger food forest. Like you, so many projects and not much help or money.

I have yet to host Wwoofers, or workampers, but am listed with TheDyrt. Email lunagaiavillage@gmail.com. Less than a two hour drive for me so.. if you have a good time that I can come visit...

Thanks Janet Douglas aka Moonshot

Interested. Can you email me please? I am in Arizona right now. I have a work from home job and would love to connect! meganmariecoleii@icloud.com

 It may as well be time for an update!  

This is what our life is like - running a homestead and an off-site business one hour away isn't easy. My husband typically stays home to tend to our animals while I work at our business anywhere from 30-80 hours per week.  There are times that I need to have him go to the business with me which is possible, but even easier when there is someone at the homestead to make sure animals get fed.

Thankfully, we just had a couple that WWOOF'd with us for three weeks which renewed my hope that these arrangements can work out.  Self-starters that collected their own eggs, milked their own sheep milk, and learned to butcher their own animals while having all their housing, food and utility needs met.  We do not financially benefit from any of those efforts as we don't sell our products, unless we have way too much!  All we asked for was them to feed and water our animals (approximately 1 hour, possibly 1.5 hours if you really stretched it, of work) each day.  All eggs went to them.  All milk was theirs. They butchered their own animals for their own consumption, so it's not like I was benefitting from any of it before any of you say or think otherwise.  She would put in online orders for the grocery store, which I paid for and picked up.  It was helpful to have two young people just be present and take care of the bare minimum, which is all I have wanted.  We were waiting for our ewes to start lambing, which they did, two days after our WWOOF'ers left!
----
Another update: As of June 3, 2025, we had 18 babies born this year.  We are growing out five rams to butcher.  We will have a new lamb crop next winter. One girl that is off-schedule may lamb in a few months.  

Take care y'all.  

I'd love to come out and see what you've built. I've been trying to do something similar on 140 acres in eastern NM. And the individuals who usually reply or show up are quite interesting to say the least and to keep it nice.
But I'd like to see your place and know how it's all going for you.

Ty Jackson wrote:I'd love to come out and see what you've built. I've been trying to do something similar on 140 acres in eastern NM. And the individuals who usually reply or show up are quite interesting to say the least and to keep it nice.
But I'd like to see your place and know how it's all going for you.

I'm sending you a message.  

Hi Em. i am local, about 45 minutes from Show Low. Looking to join a self-reliant community and am interested in learning more about what you have going. Are you still looking for other like minded people to team up with?

Thanks,
franc

Ive been looking for a community like this to help out in and learn from! Id love to hear more about it

Hi, Em,

I've recently sold my homestead in VA and loaded everything into a box truck and drove 2,500 miles to Reno, NV, checking out communities in TN, KY, and Ozarks of AR, OK, and MO, but all too humid and too many chiggers.  One in UT would have been ideal, but way too expensive to join.  Currently staying with an old friend in Reno while I look for something out here.  Everything in the Reno area has skyrocketed during the 9 years I've been back east.  Having sticker shock on the price of even remote land with no water or other infrastructure at all.

Just got on Permies to see if I could find others in the area who are currently homesteading or want to, but not many in NV.  I'd like to join up with a few others either on someone's existing property or working together to buy and build.  I have my PDC and want to grow anything that will grow in the dry high desert.  Couldn't take the humidity in VA, coastal TX, FL or other places I've lived.  Love the dry SW best.  If I don't find anything affordable in Washoe County, NV, I'm open to heading for AZ or NM in search of community.

If you would be interested in talking with me, please call or text me at 276-832-2563 or email me at mail@corylayne.com

Thanks,
Cory "Cimarron" Layne

franc none wrote:Hi Em. i am local, about 45 minutes from Show Low. Looking to join a self-reliant community and am interested in learning more about what you have going. Are you still looking for other like minded people to team up with?

Thanks,
franc

Where are you at? We're about 5 minutes outside of Snowflake on Concho Hwy. This place seems to be poppin with homesteaders. I see at least one person hauling water every time I leave our property.

Where are you at? We're about 5 minutes outside of Snowflake on Concho Hwy. This place seems to be poppin with homesteaders. I see at least one person hauling water every time I leave our property.

I'm actually very close! We are homesteading 7 miles east and a bit north of Concho Hwy. Only been out here about 4 years and still working on getting things established.

Are you still looking for help from like-minded people?

Andrea Cronrod wrote:Are you still looking for help from like-minded people?

No, I'm sorry.  I've spent four years looking for like minded people just to be let down over and over again, except for a two good experiences with some great people.  We have now changed our plans.  We have two properties up for sale if anyone is interested in some great off-grid homesteads!