There are moments in life when you realize that if you’re ever going to do the thing you’ve been dreaming about, you’d better quit dreaming and start doing.
For me, building an off-grid homestead at Pappy’s Place was one of those moments.
I arrived on a little piece of heavily wooded ground in the Missouri Ozarks with a plan, a 6-by-9-foot hot tent, a wood stove, and enough determination to figure out everything else as I went. I had never even stood on the property before. This was the first time I would see the place I had decided to call home.
There wasn’t a cabin waiting for me. There wasn’t a well to turn on or a power company to call. Before anything else could be built, I needed the basics: shelter, heat, water, power, and a place to sleep.
So that’s where the story of Pappy’s Place begins.
Arriving at My Off-Grid Homestead for the First Time
I had seen a few photos of the property online from the seller, and my brother had already bought the property next door, so at least I knew I was heading down the right private gravel road.
That didn’t stop the anxiety.
It wasn’t bad anxiety. It was that kind of anticipation that gives you a skipped heartbeat every now and then and puts a little flutter in your eyelids because you know something you’ve been waiting for is just ahead. I had about half a mile of that gravel road to think about what I was about to see.
Then I reached the gate.
I got out of the car to open it and, for some reason, just slowed down. Before I ever stepped through the gate onto my property, I stopped, took a deep breath, and looked all the way around me.
To the west was the holler. I already knew it was there from the photographs and topo maps, but seeing it with my own eyes was completely different. I could see the rocky outcroppings that separated the upper ground from the land down in the holler. I had no idea yet what I would eventually do with that lower part of the property.
But I knew I’d do something with it one day.
Before I had even driven through the gate, I knew I’d made an exciting choice.
It was just before noon in the middle of January, and the temperature was somewhere around 33 degrees. It was frigid, but not that miserable kind of cold—or maybe I was simply too fired up to notice.
I pulled through the gate and headed down the driveway toward a graveled clearing. Everywhere I looked there were trees. Most had probably been bare since November, and without their foliage they looked almost pathetic—tall, skinny skeletons stretching above the property. But I knew what those woods would become when spring finally found its way back around.
I parked the car and spent the next few minutes doing little more than looking around and letting it all soak in.
I was here.
Eventually, reality reminded me that admiring the view wasn’t going to keep me warm that night. I started unloading the car and pulled out my tents. I had brought my larger Teton canvas cabin tent, but I chose the smaller hot tent instead. It would work better with my camp wood stove—and, if I’m being completely truthful, that little wood stove had stayed pretty close to the front of my mind even while my eyes were wandering across the property imagining everything that might someday be here.
There I was. Alone. All by myself on a piece of ground that was now mine, with no real way of knowing exactly how any of this was going to play out.
But before I started turning that piece of ground into Pappy’s Place, I stopped and thanked God for the blessings and the opportunity that had brought me here.
Making Camp Before the Sun Went Down
Once I had taken in the property for a little while, the practical side of the day started pushing its way to the front. January daylight doesn’t hang around forever, and I still had to make some kind of home before dark.
I started unloading the car and sorting through what I had brought with me. I had two tents to choose from. One was my larger Teton canvas cabin tent, which offered more room. The other was a smaller 6-by-9-foot hot tent.
The hot tent won.
Space mattered, but heat mattered more.
I found a spot between two trees about thirty feet apart and started setting up camp. The little tent wasn’t luxurious by any stretch of the imagination, but it gave me shelter from the wind and, more importantly, it was designed to work with my camp wood stove.
That wood stove had been on my mind all afternoon.
Once the tent was standing, I began arranging the few things that would make up my living space: a cot to sleep on, a chair, an ice chest, and the stove that was going to be responsible for keeping the Missouri winter on the other side of the canvas.
There is something strange about setting up a tiny camp on land you now own. Every item you put in place feels temporary, but the ground underneath it feels permanent.
I wasn’t visiting.
I wasn’t camping for the weekend.
This was home now.
Getting the First Fire Going
With the tent up, the next priority was obvious.
Fire.
I installed the little wood stove and made sure everything was positioned as safely and securely as I could manage. I had brought a small battery-powered 10-inch chainsaw with me, and the property had no shortage of fallen limbs and small trees. That meant fuel was all around me if I was willing to put in the work.
The stove could only handle short pieces of firewood, so I cut what I needed down to roughly 10 to 12 inches. Anything much larger than about three inches in diameter got split with a hatchet.
It wasn’t a sophisticated firewood operation. It was simply what I needed to make that first night work.
When the first fire finally caught and the stove began throwing heat into that little tent, something changed.
The property still wasn’t developed. There was no cabin, no running water, no permanent power system, and no real infrastructure of any kind.
But I had shelter.
I had heat.
And for that first evening, that was enough.
The First Evening at Pappy’s Place
By the time the important work was done, the day had started to settle down around me.
The excitement of arriving had slowly turned into something quieter.
I sat there with a Gold Peak sweet tea in my hand and looked around at the place that, only a few hours earlier, had existed mostly in photographs, topo maps, and my imagination.
Now I was sitting on it.
The trees were bare. The temperature was dropping. The little wood stove was burning beside me, and nearly everything I owned for the immediate future was either inside that tent or sitting nearby.
There wasn’t much comfort by normal standards.
But there was peace.
I remember being grateful more than anything else.
I thanked God for getting me there, for the opportunity in front of me, and for the chance to build something that could become more than just a piece of land.
I prayed that Pappy’s Place would become my forever spot.
I didn’t know what the next day would bring. I didn’t know how difficult some of the coming months would be, how many plans would change, how many lessons the property would teach me, or how many times I would have to figure things out as I went.
But that evening, sitting there with a warm stove, a cold drink, and several acres of Missouri woods outside the tent, none of that mattered yet.
I had made it.
Pappy’s Place was real.
What Came Next
That first night was only the beginning.
In the days and months that followed, that little campsite slowly began turning into a working homestead. Water had to be hauled. Power had to be made. Firewood had to be cut. Shelter had to improve. There would eventually be gardens to plant, animals to care for, projects to build, mistakes to make, and more than a few plans that didn’t work quite the way I thought they would.
I’ll share those stories here as Pappy’s Place continues to grow—not because I’ve figured out the perfect way to live off-grid, but because I’m learning what works for me, what doesn’t, and what I’d do differently the next time around.
If you’re thinking about building a more self-reliant life of your own, or you just want to see where this adventure goes, pull up a chair.
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