Beginning at the 2018 Annual Meeting the members agreed that it would be helpful to have a set of regularly scheduled “check-in” meetings so that issues/concerns/questions don’t have to wait until the next annual meeting to be addressed. No minutes or formal agenda is created for the check-in meetings. That said, given that there is are enough shares represented at a check-in meeting, business can be transacted outside of the Annual Meeting if necessary (which would then need to be documented and referred to in the minutes of the following Annual Meeting, naturally). The members decided that quarterly would be a good spacing for these meetings, and that the dates could be flexible if other business interfered. In general, we set dates for the three extra meetings (the Annual Meeting being a DELUXE check-in meeting) at each annual meeting, and then a few weeks ahead of that set date we’ll all communicate to confirm the date and set a time, or request a date change, and propose a new date/time within a week or two of the set date. This process has worked really well for us so far, and has accomplished the goal of better communication within the cooperative. I would highly recommend adoption something along these lines in a similar farmstead cooperative structure.
LLC
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The Agreement
SEE IT HERE: Farmstead Cooperative LLC Agreement Template version 1.0 Build 150407
Linked above is a rendered version of the LLC Agreement that we will be using (minus our specific names, etc.) to organize our effort to create a Farmstead Cooperative. It is marked up with footnotes that I’ve added to help clarify some of the legalese, but also to emphasis some of the important concepts. Once downloaded you can “turn off” or remove these notes by manipulating the style sheet in the header. You can also work with the document in a word processor like Microsoft Word (see instructions below).
Yes it is LONG, and probably boring on a narrative level, but the idea behind it is that the language is based on legal precedent in an effort to create a structure that will perform exactly as we want it to perform in every possible challenging circumstance, especially if challenged in a court of Maine law.
In many ways, I’ve learned, that documents like this function within the legal system just like software functions when it is compiled and run by a digital processor. Software code is not easy for the lay reader to understand, but it is meant to perform a specific set of tasks for the user through the refractory of the digital processor. In that same way legal language is software programmed for the court system to perform a specific set of tasks. In that spirit, please enjoy.
[To simply save the document to your computer for off-line review click the link above and then use your browser’s “Save As” menu item to save the document as an .html file. Then you can open the off-line copy in a browser, or in a word processor (like Microsoft Word) — just make sure you set your word processor to open documents with a .html extension, usually called “Web Pages” naturally.]
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One Way To Do It
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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Growing a Farmstead Cooperative 