SKIP - a book about connecting industrious people with elderly land owners

Totally serious.  

There are a lot of different ways to look at this, but for software engineers ... what is your end game?  After working for several decades, a few of you might want the same path I took:  a quiet place in the country with a garden and a few critters.  

So I did the engineering thing for decades.  I made this web site.  I bought the land ....     and then I kept meeting elderly land owners looking for somebody to will all their stuff to.   They desperately wanted to find somebody that would keep on homesteading instead of their property getting bulldozed.  

This is our kickstarter video - i think it tells the story really well:



To go to the kickstarter


      CLICK HERE

As a land owner who will be elderly at some point, I want to buy this book when it's available!

Nice idea.. to save the land , make it green and help to people.

This makes me smile very broadly. There is hope for America after all?

this is Stardew Valley IRL version

Great idea! I'm jumping on the Kickstarter now.

Hopefully the book covers how to connect with these folks? My family is interested in homesteading and we're dipping our toes in, but aside from buying/inheriting someone's property a mentorship would be extremely helpful.
We don't mind making mistakes and learning but getting off the ground faster would be excellent. It also gives you a lot more confidence knowing you have someone you can ask any question and they'll probably know what you're going through.


Thanks for putting this all together!

You could release the book on Amazon KDP, which would basically cost you nothing.

Haven't posted here since I've been out of my college courses but I read your email. I'm only 33 so not ready to make a giant move but I grew up on Alot of land and would have rather had my grandparents do something like this instead of it getting ruined by my relatives. Also my dream someday would be to have alot of land with fields and woods. I love this idea and hope that it works. We don't need more developments. The house I'm at now has a decent yard and woods to the back. I have to live an hour from my workplace because this is the closest area I could afford to have a little piece of what I wanted for my kids.

Carol Murphy wrote:This makes me smile very broadly. There is hope for America after all?

I feel like there is a lot of weird gloom and doom around.   I think this project, and some other recent projects are a sort of "cure" for the gloom and doom.  I think we have accomplished some massive positive things!

Peter Azurahc wrote:Great idea! I'm jumping on the Kickstarter now.

Yay!

Rick Silva wrote:You could release the book on Amazon KDP, which would basically cost you nothing.

The thing we set the kickstarter up for is the several rounds of editing, layout and printing.  And if you get 10,000 books printed, it is a lot cheaper than printing them one at a time.  We hope to get books out to thousands.

On a related note, i got the last of my stuff off of amazon a few months ago.   I am encouraging me co-author to put this book up on amazon when all the editing and layout is done.

Is this true or a scam to sell a book? I know this may come off as rude but I'm looking for exactly what you have, and it's been my experience if it sounds too good to be true it usually is.

I think the fact that it is free thoroughly un-scams it.  https://permies.com/wiki/skip-pep-bb

Welcome to the Ranch

I can understand that people are suspicious, but Paul wants funding to get his book printed and training off the ground, and I am sure it isn't a scam.

I read the email, this topic, kickstarter, website, saw the video, but I still don't understand what is the story about

Mike Savvy wrote:I read the email, this topic, kickstarter, website, saw the video, but I still don't understand what is the story about

It is odd.

At this moment, I think the video conveys it best.

A huge list of tasks.  Each task is verifiable.  You do a task and post pictures proving that you did the task.  Then move on to the next task.  When you have completed about 80 tasks (which should take about two to four weeks) you are PEP1 certified.  PEP2 takes about three months.  PEP3 takes about nine months more and PEP4 takes about two years more.  

Each person has a different story.  Some people will pursue PEP1 just to build the skills - just to know this sort of thing.  Personal growth.  Some people have inherited land and they want to do this sort of thing, but don't have any skills.  

Another angle is that a lot of people want to get into homesteading, but it is brutally expensive.   People earning $50,000 per year are looking at properties that cost more than a million dollars.  And homesteading does not mix well with a mortgage.  Some people are forming collectives - to buy a homestead or raw property as a group - and that's a 90% failure rate.  

As a software engineer, I spent years working freaky long hours trying to save up enough to buy land to go into homesteading.  And it turns out there was a massive shortcut all along that I didn't know about.

Thank you for the explanation, I understand the part with certification (but who will proof that and give certificates?).
But I do not understand the purpose and why is that meaningful to say that you have worked as a SE the whole life? I think that point has confused me.
So what are you and other people would like to have? To have a land? For home / garden ?  How is your idea works? Somebody has the garden and everybody can help him with planting trees?
P.S. is that really a problem to buy a land? In many places in europe you can become that nearly for free.

Mike Savvy wrote:Thank you for the explanation, I understand the part with certification (but who will proof that and give certificates?).

It is happening now.  People that are already PEP1 certified can certify others.  People that have completed a certain BB can certify others.  It is all built into the software at this time on permies.com (which is running the same software as coderanch).

But I do not understand the purpose and why is that meaningful to say that you have worked as a SE the whole life? I think that point has confused me.

I created this web site as part of my software engineering journey.  For many years my motivation was to save up enough to be able to buy a homestead.  I did that.  If I had known about the shortcut, I would have taken it.  

So what are you and other people would like to have? To have a land? For home / garden ?  How is your idea works?

I now have land.  Others want land.  I am trying to make people aware of the shortcut.

Somebody has the garden and everybody can help him with planting trees?
P.S. is that really a problem to buy a land? In many places in europe you can become that nearly for free.

I cannot speak to stuff about nearly free land.  I am sharing what I do know.

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