My advice, from someone recently coming from the world of perpetual homesteading?

Follow your heart - And I know what you mean when you mentioned that "downward spiral" - a state of mind really, but the one thing we really can't do without (aside from food).

I dunno about living in a shed though, I've done tent, but it doesn't come to mind as being the same thing, regardless of the additional protection afforded by your 10'x12' shed.

At one time I had a 40 acre ranch in the high desert overlooking Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms - but as rural as it was, and isolated, it was still no different than city life, just a bit more rural. Perhaps someday I can steer you toward a really odd place back in BLM land where, on a single pile rising from a wash on one side where the trail meanders through, the caves with in one area, pictograms, and within 30 feet, petroglyphs, both left by indigenous from two distinct eras past.

When you climb up and into those dens, the thing that first struck me as most odd were the eons of separtion between the peoples who left those communications on the walls, yet the latter for some reason respecting the messages from their ancestors for which they probably had no, or perhaps little knowledge of except in the fables of vocal histories.

I used to visit and just chill there two or three times a month, as it was up above some canyons in a large plane-scape plateau lying within a large valley amongst the outcroppings.

Anyway, That life held little difference between standard residential living in the suburbs, the most obvious of which was the separation of former homesteaded land by vast swaths of distance (not so much anymore, but it's nice overlooking settlements from atop the hills at the end of a half-mile long driveway winding it's way up to your home alongside the cliffs.

Were it not for being evactuated on 20909 during the August Complex, narrowly escaping incineration, I might still be spending all but the deepest parts of the winters up there in the remote mountain wilderness of Humboldt.

I have to ask though, when I lived in the desert for several years raising and homeschooling my daughter, I was completely unsuccessful at growing tomatoes to fruition of ripeness - Those wild and zaney lizards seem to bring their juveniles to feast on the succulence of that fruit, just prior to the time where you can begin to harvest them, with no amount of netting or caging being successful. Some neighbors a few miles away in Johnson Valley had The Jennifer and myself over for a few afternoon barbeques, and shared their solution with me.

Although their innovation was a visionary improvisation that repurposed the old analog Satellite dishes that dotted the landscape, unused and attesting to an earlier era of satellite television that now only had commercials for Dish and DirecTV, I couldn't bring myself to disassemble my backup TV system for the sake of vain nostalgia - it still spun about and locked on the the aging satellites themselves still in operation at the time.

Basically, they built tubular stands with a large diameter ring at the top where they would set the upturned dishes in place, fill with substrate, and.... Glorious, delicious desert sun nourished tomatoes.

Later, during my sojourn high in the mountains of Humboldt, I had other thieves to concern myself with. My confidence was shaken during my first spring there. Everything had thawed, the rains largely subsided, and I was irrigating a small collective orchard scattered around the hills and valleys, the favorite of which were my plum trees.

Like the lizards before them, I woke up one day knowing it was time to hike up a hill to where my plum trees were and begin harvesting plums in earnest, to which I could gorge upon, only to discover that when I arrived the deer had decided it was the perfect time too and had decimated all but the highest fruit in those ten foot trees. I did manage to overcome their ability to rape my garden though, but it took a magininal line of discarded debris resembling the beaches of Normandy of twisted steel and wire fencing that if they did continue to jump over my ten foot fence, would certainly impale them or break their bones. I lost about 15% or arable square footage, but hey! It was 160 acres of nothing but me and foxes and skunks', racoons, big cats, and bears (Oh, and one feral cat, Jonesie, that had adopted me), so I just substantially increased the perimeter. problem solved!

I'm assuming your largest problems on that front are from birds, especially road runners, and coyotes? Well, lizards too, which is why I want to see how you handle that without losing all of your tomato plants lolz.

But I digress. Going back to those earlier desert years...

Then I returned to the beaches of Los Angeles where I enrolled my daughter as a sophomore into my old high school. A good decision I think, as there's a point where children need some exposure to socialization with others in society other than the company their parent keeps.

I recently returned to civilization, the world of air-conditioned high rises and concrete bunkers that I had known for most of my adult life as a systems administrator and network engineer, but I completely relate to your aversion to being like - the Man in a Box (Sorry I couldn't resist the temptation of the STP reference, lolz). I find that I too, am no longer interested in that freakin' hamster wheel, and with what little actual work I secure nowadays it's still on par with what I used to draw down, albeit, with about 1/4th the weekly investment of my time.

Okay, it was nice reading your article, and it looks like you've got a few more that I'm going to circle back around with. Yet it is an odd coincidence that just earlier today I was bashing YouTube vloggers and streamers claiming to be homesteaders, who amazingly have enough wherewithal to purchase and have state of the art off-grid systems delivered, assembled and installed/constructed by them, from the PoV of the camera crews following them around - POSEURS!!!

Obviously, you are NOT among those poseurs, and I applaud your spirit and determination.

The only advice I can offer you however, is when you start getting down, just remember, all of the sustaining features you have incorporated are making your existence attainable, so perhaps turning around the perspective of, "Am I getting from my homestead what I need?", to that of, "Am I giving to my homestead what it needs to sustain me?"

I know that often helped me a lot during those extended weeks where I didn't see any humans.

Well, considering you're in the desert, perhaps you might consider investing in planting cottonwoods - they are hardy trees and grow quickly. If you're 40 now then by the time you're 60 you'll have a lush canopy affording you with much comfort, and as you well (no pun intended) know, there's plenty of water in the desert to attend to the voracious appetite this species has for water - you just have to catch and contain it. The rest should be easy for you, since based on your website, you're already well versed in harnessing solar power for irrigation systems.

I'm extremely impressed with what I've seen of your garden so far too! Interesting in following that progress.

Wishing you all the very best, in health and happiness, for you and yours,

Kindest regards,

#tallship

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