In Search of Community and Farm

Farm Timeshares
WORKPOINTS for consideration
equity investment partnerships for market garden farming on a family scale.

if a small group, a family where to pool resources and buy something like this:

There's a larger reason than holiday escapes in all this.

Capital markets are confused. Real estate and farming are unstable. This is a good time for small circles, family and friends to pool resources, to invest in a family farm "condo" or "timeshare" with an agricultural objective. The agriculture can be simply to rest the land and turn it towards permaculture and natural forest gardening.

Farms are presently a bargain hunters paradise. I doubt this will last long. If the oil based economies, climate change, population, resource factors are not resolved, currency markets will collapse and the currency of the ruling systems become irrelevant. That is a self evident truth.

Why invest in small scale farming? It's basic Maslow's Hierarchy of needs: food, shelter and energy at community scale.

Examples from our searches of 2009:

- a Victorian Gothic 1870's fantasy mansion on 25 acres, oodles of barns, a large pond, can be found for the same price as an average house in Oakville or Burlington.

- a 100 acre country retreat with a large collection of restorable buildings can be had for the same price as a bungalow on Hamilton Mountain.

- a large Victorian brick home with caretakers 3 BR bungalow, 8 cabins, a community dining hall, shower building, barns, ponds, inground pool all on 100 acres of rolling hills for the same price as a house in Ancaster.

- we found ours, a tiny farm setting in the Niagara fruit belt perfect for family scale...for what we were paying for a downscale converted garage in Waterdown.

our backyard: abandoned orchards, two streams and wild areas full of critturs
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The bottom line requires an empathy for gardening, a rational perspective on food as currency of land and buildings as "real" and perennial family estates.

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The family farm should be a "hedge bet" against the cyclic nature of economies and empires.

If you are however a practical thinker and you can muster the time sharing investment resources from family and friends, look for a place that has substantial salvageable outbuildings, a large, character main house and at least 15 acres perhaps as much as 100 acres with ponds, streams and some bush. You do not want an "agribusiness" profile.

Take someone with construction and farming know how; professional experience may experientially challenged when it comes to farms. Education, Psychology, Systems Programming or Mechanical Engineering is an abstract when faced with assessing soil tilth and the viability of 150 year old hand-adzed trunnel jointed frames with rough sawn timber planking.

Gardening is a science . Much of that science is visceral, genetic and folklore based in earthwalking experience. Don't be intimidated by it..it is part of your soul. It grows on you and within you.

Gardening is a healing art.

We dream the garden and

the garden dreams us.

dormant farm buildings: a motley collection of historical but sad looking relics..

restorable to my eye but slated for destruction.

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Where do you start?

some pointers:
-a financing platform begins with partners.

- bind land and buildings into a financial community.

- rebuild community through a business format

- the cash investment is the act of faith.

- the investors form a board of directors

who build critical path to secure the long term.
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- working residents "lease" working and living spaces

pay rents towards the building investment "trust fund".

and provide the soil knowledge, how to seed, tend, harvest and preserve food.

the planning of building and business projects.

field management skills

labour, fussing and focused trades,

soil management, organic gardening and naturopathic animal husbandry sense.

The farm should have large libraries, study areas, high speed computer links to the outside world to protect it against the pathologies of cultural autism and social introversion. Keep the setting "metaphysically neutral" and simple: one blood, one spirit. Things will hold together and thrive for much longer.

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addenda:
- build startup capital by selling "food credits" in 100.00 to 1,000.00 units redeemable in the season for which they are issued.

- thousand dollar units can be extended over two years.
- each setting will have variations determined by the footprint of existing buildings.
- long term wants simple self sustaining engineering.

- skilled guidance can build passive energy greenhouses, living water systems, composting toilets, off the grid engineering, masonry stoves for heating/baking and a host of other small details easily determined from networking.
- outbuildings can be restored for workshops, craft shops, food preparation and packing, dormitories, and guest houses for working visitors, camp outs and holidaying family folks using their credits towards recreational facilities and "bed and breakfast".
- have a "club house" offices, community library and community kitchen. A separate seniors residence with facilities for one or two seniors should also be considered.

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- insist on a 100% equity financing objective. Farming can’t think clearly with the proverbial "Sword of Damocles" of a mortgage hanging over the family farm...particularly when all currency is under such severe stress. A simple manoeuvre during a currency collapse and you're working for a bank again.
- suggest a minimum startup with a half dozen $10,000.00 investors, i.e. no more seeding investors than bedrooms. $60,000.00 is sufficient for the average down payment and closing fees. Attracting sufficient capital to convert the asset to 100% equity should be everyone’s modest and realizable first year objective.

- investors buy bedrooms and use of the main house, or use investment credits to book space for visitors.

-a family owned private bed and breakfast arrangement.

- a hedge bet, a reserve base of operations for an extended family.

A family farm, whether it be friends, co-workers or family is a wiser investment than gold. At minimum you can grow your own food and sleep in a passive solar greenhouse under the moon.

Flamborough greenhouse, from our "homeless period" ..

with backup wood stove, a cot for those long winter frost watch nights.

Sometimes the full moon floating overhead.

(edit Mar 2010 of original April 3-2009: rdb)