WWAT: seeking creative/practical land advice

[sean nitchmann]

hello group...
i write today neither to solicit working
opportunities nor to offer them, but just for a bit of
educated/experienced advice from people who have dealt with land
acquisition, stewardship, and forming communities...and possibly to
connect with people interested in becoming involved.




my landmates and i are at a crucial juncture in our attempts to
live the life we dream: we have mortgaged a small subdivided piece of
land that wooed us with it's beauty and potential, but was priced more
like a suburban plot than as workable land. there's almost
nothing else suburban about the place: it's gorgeous, sits across the
street from a 300+ acre nature preserve, enjoys great, supportive,
like-minded neighbors, and the land serves well our current vision of
it as an incubator and testing grounds/launching pad for experiments
aimed at living in greater harmony. we are well underway with many such
projects, and have invested a lot of ourselves (but not yet much
capital) in this land--we all love it very much--however, we all know
that our ultimate dreams include more. 




we have not found our dream land yet, and we are not convinced that
we can find our absolute ideal, but we worry about paying for this current place knowing that
we could easily find something nearby that would be better
suited to our ambitions. we would like to obtain more land--land that
we can afford to pay off with minimal debt, and on which we can grow food, build with natural materials, and secure space for community and connection--but we would also like to
see the sustainable efforts on our current land be continued and built
upon. we don't want to see this land go back into the hands of people
who see it merely as a set of resources. ideally we would also like to
be able to continue in some kind of relationship with it, but it is
seeming less and less likely that we will be willing or able to afford
to pay for it. with this understanding, two front-runner options have
taken shape: either 


1) finding conscious buyers, or 

2) establishing an "entity"
(land-trust, etc) that would permanently hold our current (and future?)
land for harmonious/sustainable experiments and revelry. 

in
truth we don't believe that land can be owned, but we find ourselves
in the unfortunate predicament of being engulfed by a culture where it
can't not be. with every day of indecision that passes, we end up
paying more interest to the bank, so we are interested in acting soon. 

we
are: an organic farmer with dreams of blacksmithery, a honeybee
researcher and native plants landscaper, a bike mechanic
philosopher, a well-connected local foods advocate and
community organizer, and a graphic designing cheapskate/diy-er. whereas
our talents, passions, and proclivities complement each other very
well, we're feeling a little overwhelmed by these decisions and we'd love input
from others who may have had to come up with creative solutions to land
attainment, maintenance, and legal structures in the past. any advice would be more than
welcome. also, if you are interested in joining us, either as a
conscious buyer, as someone who could use (what could become) a
relatively cheap place for sustainability experimenting, practicing, and training, someone who feels they'd be a good fit with us in purchasing
new land, or in any other way that you can envision, please don't
hesitate to get in touch.


thanks for reading, and we eagerly await anything that you want to share with us.
smiles.
sean 		 	   		  
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