History

background information

Homestead Story

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seedlingOur tenants’s story has attracted the attention of a local reporter, and the first in (what is hoped to be) a series of reports (including a video) on their progress of building their farm can now be found at the Bangor Daily News web site. It came out in the weekend paper today.

The reporter, Gabor Degre, is a photographer for the paper as well as a reporter and is focused on using video to tell the story. He had been intrigued by the growth of small farms started by young people in this area of Maine, and he found out about our tenants just as he was looking for someone to profile that might help describe this latest “back to the land” movement. As part of his reporting, Gabor has visited the farm multiple times and interview us as well.

The First Annual Meeting

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Our first annual meeting of the Windswept Farmstead Cooperative, LLC took place in front of a roaring masonry heater in the Farmhouse on a blustery March evening ahead of sharing a dinner. Following are the items discussed and/or decided upon for the upcoming year. Attending were the current tenants and current members.

We reviewed several areas that were in need of repair, as well as improvements that the tenants would like to make (and pay for as allowed for in our LLC Agreement) and sought the Consent of Members for them. The tenants are planning a big event in the fall of 2015 and there was some discussion about the timeline and use of sub-assets for that event.

In addition there were some areas where the tenants wanted instruction, and we all discussed the best way for them to learn about these areas, either from one of the LLC members, or from a recommended outside source.

One Way To Do It

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I can describe the specifics about how we went about forming our Farmstead Cooperative and then separately worked out a method that would allow some folks to become members of that FC. Our “one way” is probably unique to our collective situation (and therefore one of many ways to do it). The specifics described here are likely unique to our group. Another group may decide to organize in a different manner, as they should, according to their own collective requirements and goals.
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Featured

The Manifesto

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Manifesto DeliveryTransferring access to farm land (partially or completely) using a Farmstead Cooperative is not easy. In fact when compared to a cash sale, mortgage sale, or lease agreement it’s probably the most difficult method for a seller to use. Significantly, while it allows for shared access to land, it also demands shared responsibility for that land as long as one remains an equity member of any fraction.

The Farmstead Cooperative idea became the only way I could achieve our goals of keeping our farm agriculturally viable into the future, and offering a new farmer fair equity when they worked to maintain and improve the land. As we began the formal process of creating an “entity” under which we could organize the idea of a working Farmstead Cooperative, I sent a letter to the lawyer that we had chosen to work with on the transfer paperwork. He immediately dubbed it “The Manifesto.”

The letter reworked the outline we had sent to a lawyer friend who helped us find a Maine lawyer who specialized in land use issues. I used the letter to organize and clarify the ideas I had been thinking about around this effort, and to help me communicate to the lawyer what we wanted to create.

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Our Story

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My wife and I moved to mid-coast Maine from Boston in 1990. We both had grown up in the suburbs, and we both had lived an urban life after college. We enjoyed the Big City, but we wondered what was out there beyond the last street light. Mostly I wondered — having worked in many food services positions (cook, waiter, bakery manager) through high school, college, and post-college — where did the ingredients prepared and consumed come from before they were hauled through the service entrance in boxes, big bags, and tubs? I thought, “surely we could spend a year investigating that mystery and then return to Boston with wisdom and experience well beyond our peers?”
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