Quail Haven, an ERE Mountain Enclave

[AxelHeyst]

Quail Haven is where I live. It's 70acres/28hectares of drylands tucked just inside a mountain pass in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California.

I have a long term vision for QH as it relates to ERE, postconsumer praxis, the flotilla, etc. The purpose of this thread is to
a) document the process and
b) be the place for news about what's going on here for people who might want to participate. An ERE journal for QH.

As of right now the deal is that any EREr is welcome to come visit just about anytime, for days to weeks at a time. At least a half-dozen forumites have already done so over the past few years, not including EREfest related activity. You should contact me ahead of time because we need to coordinate shelter and expectations. I don't have a *lot* of infrastructure yet, and particularly if it's winter or summer you need to know what the deal is ahead of time. (If you're an experienced western vanlifer or dirtbag with your own kit you'll be fine.)

My near future goal (1-2 years) is to build sufficient infrastructure so that just about anyone can pop in any time of year and there'll be shelter and infrastructure to accommodate them. You should check in ahead of time just to make sure there's a spare bunk and to make sure I've got the gate open.

My longer term goal (3-8 years) is to make QH a postconsumer permaculture makerbase based on do-ocratic governance, a practical real-world mojave solarpunk experiment in alternative living. fremenERE. etc. We'll work that out when we get there.

ETA: Per Jacob's (alone-together, broad-deep) 2x2, I see QH as currently broad-together but aiming at facilitating deep-together. (Except when no one else is here and I'm in hermit mode, then 'QH' is in alone-(??) mode depending on what I'm currently focused on.

I consider QH to be something of a sister project of ERE City.

I should clarify that I'm not planning on excluding people who don't pass an ERE WL6+ purity test. I will be intentionally engaging with EREadjacent subcultures and personalities - permies, hipnecks, hackers, ecoanarchists, all the collars, etc. Might as well mention, since stereotypes of rural areas exist, that QH is LGBTQ+ friendly.

Here's a link to a static page on my website. I'll keep the current status and vision updated there, so you don't have to wade through this thread to find the latest.

[ffj]

Bravo! The extent of my California travels has never exceeded the confines of LAX and it is nice to know I have a place to pitch a tent if I visit. I wish you luck in your goals.

[C40]

I sent you a PM. I'd be interested to come by the next time I'm back in the US. There's a good chance I'll travel by motorcycle again. I'm looking at your projects on your website and Youtube and seeing that we'd probably have a lot to talk about. And perhaps I'd enjoy lending a hand if you have some project going when I stop by

[AxelHeyst]

@ffj and @c40 it'd be an honor to have you guys over anytime.

--
The 2024 QH EREsidency Season
The ideal season for visiting QH this year is going to be between mid June and the end of October. (I'm going to be gone in April and November starts to get cold and dark). There are no strings attached to visiting - come on by just to huff the fresh mountain air and talk about how trivial it is to find boxes if you like - but the rest of this post is specifically about people interested in visiting with goals beyond just dropping by.

The gist is: come stay here at QH, help with projects, learn skills, teach skills, experience off-grid desert mountain livin', go on adventures. The specifics of the arrangement are flexible - there's no one way it has to go. We'll hash it out between us ahead of time.

Quadalupe prototyped it last year. He arrived the end of August and left the end of September. He helped build the salvaged solar shade structure, was my #2 up to and during EREfest, and then we went on a 7 or 10 day climbing and hiking dirtbag trip up the Sierras, including a climb up the ultra-classic Cathedral Peak in Yosemite.

We can work on projects a lot or a little, structured or ad hoc, it depends on your stoke. There's no chance of getting bored. Here's the projects at the top of my list for this year:

• Sleeping pods/microshelters. Learn basic stick-frame construction, building science, and low-voltage offgrid solar wiring. If you're interested in building your own tiny house or van conversion, this is an excellent fast learner project. eta: want to build your own here and take it with you or retain ownership rights to it to grab it later? Let's talk.
• Finishing the shade structure. I'm planning on three walls of cement-stabilized rammed earth to windshield the shade pit as well as block the evening sun. We'll also patch the holes between the panels for complete shade and to enable rainwater collection.
• The Burrow. This is going to be an earthsheltered greenhouse and bathhouse. This is the biggest project of the year: terraced walls, a hexagonal roof, concrete formwork, more low-voltage PV stuff, ventilation, solar shower, greywater irrigation system design and install, etc.
• There are also always tons of smaller projects we can work on, and random stuff that will break that we can work on. Interior trim in the studio. Tidying my winter emergency electrical system bodges. Articulated external window shade/shields for the studio. Putting a window in Serenity, finally. Greywater gardens. Food forest earthworks. Dry-stack stonework. Rainwater harvesting systems.
• Special projects: if you know or are confident you can learn how to fix a motorcycle, we should chat.
• Your own projects. Treat QH like a makerbase.
• An 'ere2' group collaboration project.

Normal everyday #offgridlife chores that somebody's got to do:

• Carrying water.
• Monitoring the electrical system and conforming electrical consumption to day and weather cycles (in summer this mostly means no high powered gaming in excess of 2hrs post-sunset... so unlikely to be an issue).
• Dumping greywater (ideally we'll have greywater gardens going by the time you get here. If not, we'll build them together.)
• Managing the compost toilet and pile.
• Being sun and heat smart, particularly if you're here in July and August. Highs will be 105F, but dry and often with a breeze, and nightly lows are rarely hotter than 60's F.

Fun/Stoke:

• Climbing
• Hiking and trailrunning
• Bikepacking
• Reading in the hammock in the shade on a hot day with a nice breeze
• Nighttime yoga with coyote serenade.
• Stargazing.
• Lounging by the creek if it's still running.
• Peak-bagging
• Dirtbagging up the Eastern Sierras (climbing, hiking, scrambling, hot springs, whatever your level of technical interest, we got it.)

Further Notes:

• Culture. I get along with red, blue, and purple people. We're in the reddest county in California but I've never seen stars and bars within 50 miles of here. We're a LGBTQ+ friendly household. Everyone has guns, but it's no big deal. The neighbors are mostly retired engineers. Crime is super low. A couple years ago some people stole gas cans out of our well shed - that's the worst it's ever been up here.
• The Main House is my parent's castle. They're very kind and generous people and are used to my friends coming and going. They're also fastidiously clean and tidy. You'll need to respect that or stay out of the main house. They won't get mad at you, but I will. Leave a dirty dish in my parent's house, or a mess on a countertop, and I'll see red. That's about the only way you can piss me off.
• I'm an introvert (so are my parents). I love being social and I don't need all of our conversations to be deep and intellectual, but if you *need* more than 90min a day of chatting, QH might not be a good fit. If it's just going to be the four of us. If there is a critical mass of people here, though, it'd probably work out.
• I enjoy teaching skills and am patient. I enjoy being thorough with instruction and figuring out the best way to help people learn - I see it more as facilitating skill acquisition rather than teaching. I like to get to know someone in order to figure out their learning style and then do my best to help them learn based on their strengths. You don't need to be highly skilled at anything to come here.
• I also enjoy learning. I don't have an ego about what I don't know, and am open to learning new things as well as what I've been doing wrong (e.g. if you're a skilled builder or electrician or whatever, *I'd* be learning from *you* when it comes to the projects around here, and happy about it.).
• I've learned a lot about this kind of easygoing offgrid work relationship from 7+ months of workawaying around the world. I think I at least don't suck at it, and one of my ambitions is to get actually quite good at it.
• You don't need to be FI. We've got strong internet, you can remote sidehustle or even WFH from here. I will be.

This isn't exclusive to forumites. I'm looking at you, lurkers.

What you do here doesn't need to be limited to my imagination. Let's blow the Overton window up on this. People who aren't planning on ever coming here, feel free to throw ideas into this thread.

• A DIY silent retreat. Find a rock to sit on (or under -- I can recommend a cave or two) for a week out in the desert and I'll ruck kitchari and water out to you once a day.
• Base camp here for your climbing season.
• ...

[mooretrees]

Well we’re coming! End of March and maybe we can do some nature journaling and tinkering with motorcycles while we’re there? Plus cook sourdough flatbread, hike and long talks! Can’t wait.

[Quadalupe]

I really want to encourage people to take AxelHeyst up on this amazing offer! He was gracious enough to host me September 2023 (which I chronicled in part here). It was a terrific experience!

We had a lot of fun. While at Quail Haven, a typical day would look like this:

• Wake up, watch the sunrise
• Work together on a project, have a great brunch/lunch
• Have a conversation about deep ERE/philosophical topics or shoot the shit for a while
• Some quiet time, time to read, think etc
• Go on an adventure! Climbing, walking, running, shooting, anything goes!
• Joint dinner
• More reading/quiet time, interspersed with good conversation and stargazing (the view is AMAZING in the desert!)

AxelHeyst is a very chill dude! I helped build the shade structure and he was very patient in explaining this to me. When I made mistakes, he explained me what I did wrong and how to fix it. He didn't lose his temper once! I also felt that he took my suggestions for anything into consideration, even though I was sometimes speaking from a place of ignorance. So don't feel like you need to be a total pro to be able to help out. If you are willing to try and receptive to feedback, you'll get along great!

The area is also really dope. I hail from a very densely populated country with not much nature to speak of, and no desert at all. The variety of plants, rocks and animals was very cool to discover. And as mentioned before: stargazing is amazing. I've never seen so many falling stars in my life

For you lurkers out there, it's also good to realize that hanging out IRL is different than communicating on a forum. Sometimes, posts on a forum are more formal and maybe a little bit intimidating. When you are meeting in meatspace, you are not engaged in a permanent battle of wits, so don't think that you are not ERE/smart/capable/well spoken enough! I think we had some great thought provoking conversations. We also did a *lot* of shit talking, joking around, silly banter.

So to summarize: if you are remotely interested in this, don't be afraid to reach out to AxelHeyst! I had an amazing time, a trip of a lifetime. I can totally vouch for him and Quail Haven. Just don't play Catan with him and his family, you'll get trashed

[7Wannabe5]

I'm an introvert (so are my parents). I love being social and I don't need all of our conversations to be deep and intellectual, but if you *need* more than 90min a day of chatting, QH might not be a good fit. If it's just going to be the four of us. If there is a critical mass of people here, though, it'd probably work out.

I think this is one of those realms in which "self-aware is halfway there" definitely applies. More mature extroverts will have learned how the introverts in their lives cherish the "gift of silence." One thing I've noticed about some male extroverts is that they exhibit their extroversion by socially roaming rather than talking very much. Like they need to perform a cycle of visiting every human in their social circle on a regular basis, but they don't need/want to talk to them. Maybe just give them back a wrench they borrowed last week and trade a couple mild insults. Maybe it's actually a form of territorial marking rather than extroversion? It definitely seems to be compulsive.

[AxelHeyst]

I should clarify that I love extroverts and cherish their company just as much as introverts. I greatly appreciate extroverted energy and vibe in my life (most of my irl friends are extroverts). My OP comment should be read as a heads up to consider your own needs and how to conscientiously meet them in a rural situation.

[RoamingFrancis]

I consider myself a child of the land.

[AxelHeyst]

Okay, I've got a piratecaptainERE scheme. I'm interested in critical feedback and riffing.

The basic idea: A group of us draws up articles to come together at QH and spend a ~3mo season building micro-shelters/camping pods/etc for sale on the open market. Like this, or this, or this. Design tbd, but season 1 would aim for "simple and hard to screw up." Risk and profits are distributed per the articles.

Why: I can think of the following motivations to get in on this:

• Learn remunerable skills (framing, insulation, moisture barrier/control, finish carpentry, low voltage wiring, PV systems, building science, drafting, ...)
• Spend a few months at an extremely low COL, potentially $0 depending on the articles.
• Spend a few months in a beautiful natural rural location.
• Spend time actually doing stuff alongside other EREfolk.
• Probably earn some income from sale of the micro-shelters

Structure Options
Equal stake. Everyone buys in equally on materials and operational expenses, including food. Everyone has an equal share of profit.
Mixed stake. I, or a backer, fronts the capx and opx. Backers have 2+ shares to everyone else's 1 share.
What *isn't* an option, to my mind, is just paying wages. Everyone involved has to have an ownership stake and share of risk.

Roles (at least a couple people would play multiple roles)

• Accountant.
• Sales and marketing.
• Designer.
• Chief ('foreman', but I couldn't find a gender neutral word that isn't awkward. "The person who already knows which end of a hammer to hold and makes sure people put the thing together right.")
• Cook
• Crew (swing hammers, pick up supplies, finish work, electrician, etc. Lots of subroles here.)
• ...?

When
Fall 2024 would be the absolute earliest, but I've already got a different Plan A. So more likely Spring 2025. I'd probably not schedule a build season for summer as most people don't like working outside in 100F. Spring and fall are lovely here.

By this time I'll already have built at least one very similar microstructure and worked out some of the kinks.

If this works out we could do one or two build seasons a year, improve the designs and execution, and get more and more people skilled up and paid to do it while forming bonds with other EREfolk.

[theanimal]

I like it.

Some questions for further thought. Assuming the intended market is not local, who is it going to be marketed to? How will you get the finished product there? Will initial capx involve buying a truck and trailer?

[AxelHeyst]

About 25 million people live within a 4hr drive of QH, so presumably we'd target those people. Another 10 million live a six hour drive away in case no one in SoCal wants some awesome glamping pods / backyard WFH studios. An idea would be to find people operating glamping campgrounds and the like, and contract to deliver a number of pods direct to them, which would be convenient. That might not come together until Season 2, when we'd already have a portfolio of finished work.

I already have access to a truck and trailer, and if that fell through borrowing or renting a truck would probably make more sense because delivery season would be concentrated, not distributed, per year.

[AxelHeyst]

An alternative to selling to campsites and WFH'ers would be to make microshelters for tiny house villages for the unhoused, taking into account common sense. I dont' know enough about how those projects work to know if it's a realistic option but it's something I'd look into. Probably not for season 1 though.

[mathiverse]

Pretty cool idea!

Two things you probably already thought of, but I'll throw up.

You may have to handle filtering to make sure you have a good mix of skilled and unskilled labor. If a skilled person will need/want helpers, they also may have to be willing to teach others in order to bring them up to speed.

Things to handle in the articles:
* Amicable separation/process for buying out shares in the event something comes up (family emergency, flakiness, jerks, etc)

[AxelHeyst]

Good points.

Skills: as long as crew size is <=6 or so, I think it's enough for just one person to know specifically what they're doing for this kind of project. As a major purpose of the project is to develop skills, and overhead will be roughly $10/day per person, we won't need to be rushing in order to not lose our shirts. I can teach the skills necessary as we go, and supervise well enough to ensure quality is high enough. The required attributes for crew would be general competence, good attitudes, and teachable mindsets.

I base this answer on my experience with Quadalupe last year. He warned me he didn't have a lot of DIY experience, and so I figured our productivity would be something like 1.25x - possibly even less than 1, because I'd be going slower having to explain things. He wasn't wrong: I remember teaching him proper use of a cordless drill, and delivering a mini-lecture on how screws actually hold things together. But *I* was wrong about our productivity: I'd say we ranged between 1.8x and 2.25x what I'd be able to do by myself. And after a few days and we got into the swing of things I thought we stayed above 2x.

So, if anyone likes the sound of this but is thinking "Ah, sounds fun but I'm not skilled enough" -- wrong! This isn't a money-making scheme, it's a function-stacked skill-development and community-bond-cultivation scheme, designed such that no one *loses* any money and will be likely to come out ahead. (And by skills, I mean more than just which end of a hammer to hold on to...)

Regarding articles for separation - yes, definitely. I image the process would be
1. Establish the group of interested parties
2. Draft articles between us that we're all good with.

As opposed to me coming up with articles and then asking who's in. The articles would be customized for the group.

--

Another model is that instead of building these to sell, the group is composed of people who want them for their own use. Sort of like a barn-raising... except we'd be raising multiple 'barns' as a group.

[ffj]

Have you considered just making a couple of these yourself and seeing what kind of market you have? Also, how do you plan on hauling these? As well as loading and unloading them?

Love your idea of bringing people together and developing skills.

[7Wannabe5]

But *I* was wrong about our productivity: I'd say we ranged between 1.8x and 2.25x what I'd be able to do by myself. And after a few days and we got into the swing of things I thought we stayed above 2x.

Yes. This. Why I wrote elsewhere about how incredibly handy even the average human 6 year old can be in the right (intelligently designed) situation.

[AxelHeyst]

Have you considered just making a couple of these yourself and seeing what kind of market you have?

I am planning on building at least one this summer and potentially another in the fall, but for use at QH/site B, not sale. You make me think, though, that I could put some adverts out and say "I'm taking orders for summer 2025" and see if I get any bites. We could potentially roll into build season with a full list of customers with deposits already down.

Also, how do you plan on hauling these? As well as loading and unloading them?

The smallest design I have in mind is a 4'x10' sleeping pod, which would fit on the QH flatbed trailer, and be light enough that a few people could heft it or the tractor could put it on.

For larger/heavier designs they might have to be built modular, packed flat, and assembled on site.

An alternative is to build them on actual trailers. I like that idea less as it increases the cost and only adds utility for a smaller subset of customers.

Also: I'm not necessarily married to the idea of building microshelters/WFH studios. It just occurred to me as something I already know how to do, could teach just about anybody, other people would be interested in learning, and I have the sense (to be validated) that a market exists for them. If someone comes up with another project idea that people are in to I'm all ears.