I managed to get my hands on some land at long last. It's not very good land, and it's not easy to reach, "but it's mine and I love it."
It's twenty acres in Northern California near a small town called Igo not far from Redding at the north end of the Sacramento Valley. It's got hot dry summers and cold wet winters (with a few bits of snow.) The local ecosystem is what's called chaparral, "a shrubland plant community ... found in areas with steep topography and shallow stony soils".
Have we got stony soils. The whole place is classified as "gravelly loam", it's just rocks upon rocks in a loam matrix up to ten meters (thirty feet) deep. It isn't really soil, it's literally just rocks and rocks and more rocks. I suspect it's the alluvial remains of something like the Great Flood of 1862.
It's not yet widely known or appreciated that the West Coast of North America is regularly subjected to epic floods.
... sediment research ... found that "megastorms" have occurred in the years: 212, 440, 603, 1029, c. 1300, 1418, 1605, 1750, 1810, and, most recently, 1861–1862. ... for a historic recurrence of, on average, every 100–200 years.
~ Great Flood of 1862 :: Wikipedia
It will happen again. The USGS (United States Geological Survey) estimates that the likelihood of a so-called Atmospheric River 1,000 megastorm or "ARkStorm" event is now "once every 25–50 years" due to climate change, and could cause "economic losses of over $1 trillion".
So there's not much point investing in permanent agriculture or buildings here. It's also zoned agricultural, single residence so I could build a house here but I can't build a neighborhood or village here. I might be able to host workers if they're helping with the agriculture, and I think I might be able to operate a campground if we met the legal requirements.