Intro
***Please note: This idea for what you might call a "homesteading cooperative" is squarely in "vision" territory currently. I'm not making active plans to organize this project at this point in time, but I'm always interested in talking to like-minded people. One reason is simply the pleasure and learning experience of talking to folks with a similar interest; and the second is networking for the future, for the time when I do start actively pursuing this dream.***
About the term "homesteading cooperative": I spontaneously thought up this term one day in early January '09, and after a Google search realized that I'm certainly not the first to come up with the term! I think it's an appropriate name for the concept I've described on this website, if I'm going to give it a label. "Small farming cooperative" might also work. The basic idea is a few people get together to buy land with the intention of jointly starting one or more agricultural enterprises - and the benefits include the ability to share equipment, skill sets and knowledge; saving money; working cooperatively to accomplish more than one person or family could alone; becoming individually self-sufficient; having other folks you know you can rely on; and many more reasons, certainly. I anticipate being close enough to a small or medium town to sell goods to, and be involved with, the local community. I value privacy and freedom, which I believe are the necessary precursors to cultivating a sense of community naturally with neighbors and fellow homesteaders.
Vision
Hi, I'm Sarah. I have a dream of being an organic farmer. I'm currently taking classes that will allow me to pursue a degree in the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley. After graduating, I intend to go to Santa Rosa JC for their certificate program in sustainable agriculture. After that, I plan on getting an agriculture-related job, becoming more experienced and saving up some money (all this will probably take 3.5 years). And then I want to buy some land with a few other people.
Buying land with a group of people - say, 4-6 individuals or families - allows us to combine our purchasing power, which is particularly important if we want nice land in Central California. The people in the group would ostensibly have a similar goal - a desire to homestead, run a farm business (some or all of the group - more on that below), live a more self-sufficient and self-reliant lifestyle, and have neighbors that we know and trust.
I believe the land we look for should have a few key traits:
- Acreage: 100 or more acres would be great, but we'll see what our needs and resources are and what the market is like in a few years.
- Mixed land - Pasture/grassland, trees, plantable acreage, building sites
- Topographically varied - Rolling and hilly are fine, even desirable, but it should be at least half flat.
- A spring, a well, a creek or pond would be pluses
- Plenty of rainfall
- With or without house(s) and other structures already built; is zoned or could become zoned to allow for building detached houses
- Is zoned or could become zoned to allow for both agricultural and residential uses
- Location - Within 3 hours of San Francisco. Rural, 1/2 hour or less from a town with schools, commercial, medical, etc.
More about location: Land is expensive in California. Given our criteria, it would be impossible to find affordable land (more about this in a sec) in the really "hot" places like Sonoma county, Napa county or Santa Cruz county. However, I've seen wonderful properties for sale on Realtor.com in, for instance, Willits (Mendocino county), Placerville (El Dorado county) and Livermore (Alameda county) that are half the price of comparable properties in the aforementioned counties. But they're still close to a market for the farm's goods (CSA, farmer's markets, restaurants, etc.) as well as excellent schools, hospitals and so forth. I have ties to the San Francisco Bay Area and would love to live on a rural farm that's still (relatively) close by!
More about cost: The number of people we have in our group, the amount we can each contribute, the amount we can get loans for, and the land factors we decide are most important will determine the price range of land we can look at. (Naturally, the amount each person contributed would affect % of ownership.) Plus, we have to consider additional costs for starting a legal entity, hiring a lawyer/appraiser/consultants/other folks as needed, starting the farm business, permits, development, building our individual houses, and so forth. It's impossible to say what the cost of joining this project will end up being. Not everybody may be able to contribute the same amount, and work exchange might be an option. Logistically I don't know how the finances will work yet, but right now I'm hanging on to the "big picture."
I also don't know for sure how ownership would work. But I see at least five different options:
- 1. We could split the property into "x" number of parcels of different shapes and sizes, and each person would have an individually titled house and parcel. Zoning law would have to allow sub-dividing.
- 2. We could have individually titled houses and parcels, as well as common areas that are owned by a special type of homeowner's association which we create and own. (In other words, the HOA owns the common areas and we own the HOA entity.)
- 3. We could form a housing cooperative. For us, this would mean we own a legal entity that owns the land, and we have individual titles to detached houses. Not to be confused with the shared single-building ilk of the same name - see this Wikipedia article for more information. It states, "A housing cooperative is a legal entity - usually a corporation - that owns real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings. Each shareholder in the legal entity is granted the right to occupy one housing unit, sometimes subject to an occupancy agreement, which is similar to a lease." In other words, we would form a housing cooperative corporation that would buy and own the land, and each of us, as shareholders, would own a share of the corporation. The agreement of the co-op is that each of us builds a detached house on the land, which we have individual title to, and occupy it. According to the Wikipedia article, this is a common form of ownership of apartments in New York City.
- 4. We could form a condominium association. Typically, people only own the "air space" in their condos. (The aforementioned article states that "Co-operative ownership is quite distinct from condominiums where people "own" individual units and have little say in who moves into the other units."
- 5. Land trust
There may be another form of ownership that's right for us. There's also the issue of how the land devoted to the farm fits into the picture.
About farming: I know that I want to start a farming enterprise with a few partners, so some or all of the folks in our group could be co-owners of a farm that we operate on the land. Farm products to sell could include veggies, fruit, grains, meat, dairy, herbs, specialty products (i.e. shiitakes), and possibly value-added products. (It's also possible that a few folks could run the farm and another resident would have a cheese business, buying milk from the farm to make cheese and other dairy value-added products. Or someone could have a fiber business and spin roving from the farm's sheep, etc., etc. Lots of possibilities.) I know that the farm would incorporate both crops and livestock (on pasture) and that it would be organically and ecologically managed, but I don't have a detailed model or business plan in mind. I have some ideas, and I'm sure a few years of education and working on farms will help bring clarity. The partners should have a comprehensive conceptual model and business plan before we even consider buying land.
I would like to pursue self-sufficiency by having sources of alternate energy (solar, perhaps wind), a gravity-fed spring or a well, a septic system (and backup composting toilets), a graywater recycling system, landfill diversion, permaculture, and so forth. I would like to build my house with lasting, environmentally-friendly materials using energy-saving design. I feel these methods and techniques of inhabiting the landscape and sustaining life are part of the solution to our environmental problems, and I want to do my part in moving towards sustainability. It's cheaper and more satisfying than relying on conventional utilities, products and services, too.
I look forward to cultivating traditional homestead skills and working cooperatively with the group members as we live our homestead life.
The Intentional Communities website is a good resource for information about starting up projects of this nature, and I maintain a listing in their directory.
I'm always interested in talking to like-minded people. If this project strikes your interest, please feel free to e-mail me and introduce yourself.