Building the Hogan

Looking for land in the Taos area turned out to be more of a challenge than we’d counted on.  Our plan was to complete the purchase by the end of January, but by the beginning of February and a couple of failed deals later, we were still without land.  We realized that in order to find acreage in our price range we were going to have be pretty far from town.  As I said in the previous post, we were looking for 5 to 10 acres and in the Taos area that will run you from $75,000 to well over $200,000.

We widened our arc.

Over the past few decades the green building movement has taken hold in the Taos area.  The Greater World Community, just west of town, is one of the original Earthship communities in the United States and probably the single largest concentration of Earthships on the planet.  There is land available within the community, but Cecilia and I had already decided that the labor required and/or cost of building an Earthship was outside our time and money budget.  We’ll discuss Earthships in more detail in later posts.

The trip to Greater World proved to be worthwhile, however, when we almost accidentally came across the very land we’d been looking for.  Much to our surprise we were able to find a 20 acre parcel, not too far from town, with panoramic views of the mountains and mesas.  I say “almost” accidentally because having the benefit of hindsight now, we can see that every step of our process had led us to this very spot.  The lot was more than twice the size we’d hoped for and sported many possible home-sites as well as ample room for the garden.

The neighborhood was sparsely populated and solar panels adorned every lawn or roof.  We were off to a good start.  There was an Earthship here and there, but most of the houses were typical of the region - strawbale adobes.  Kindred spirits.

We were so excited about our find that we called our realtor immediately and implored her to convey an offer to the owner.  In Taos, that would be considered “impulsive” or “pushy”, for as we would soon discover, everything in Taos has its rhythm. 

Since we had time to do some research, we found out why there were so many solar panels.  To our delight we discovered the neighborhood in which the property was located is a totally off-grid community.  This meant that our plans for solar and wind power would not only be welcomed, it would be required.  We couldn’t have been happier.  And because the elevation is over 7500 feet, water would have to come from the shared well or water catchment.  This, too, fit in well with our requirements.

A few anxious days later we got the good news.  We had our land.