Subdiving the Homestead, Devising Covenanta

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I tried to make this post last night but the board was down or not responding. Here goes again.

I have land which is paid for which I put into the Forestry Stewardship Program. My land is mostly wild, with deer and turkey and I am planting and making cover for quail and songbirds. I want to establish a homestead, not to raise ALL my food and supply all my needs, but certainly to have chickens and noisy roosters and guineas and perhaps a few pigs and of course German Shepherds and other animals which would be prohibited in a regular subdivision. I want to build in a way that respects the land, using Michael Reynolds Earthship concepts but modified so that my building inspector will allow them and I can afford to build. This sounds like concrete block to me, but might be cordwood or straw bale, etc.

Now, in order to get the money to build, I have to cut off some of my land and sell it. The last thing I want to do is sell to a person with a conventional mind who will drag a trailer onto my former land or a modular home and start playing rap or other obnoxious music very loudly and then complain about my chickens.

I have looked at the subdivision covenants in the deed books and searched on the internet and have yet to find any covenants and/or restrictions which would run with the land to insure that future buyers of my land were in harmony with my own intentions and the intentions of many people on this board.

If anyone has designed or knows of subdivision covenants specifically to allow homesteading and disallow ordinary subdivision restrictions, I would appreciate it if they could give me some advice.

And yes, I know I have to go to a lawyer. What I want to do is save myself big bucks and make sure I get what I want by already having covenants as a model that say clearly what I want and do not want (such as no spreading of raw sewage on the land, no raising fighting chickens or pit bulls, no no trailers, but yes alternative housing, yes chickens and ostrich and emus and etc)

-- Elizabeth Petofi (tengri@cstone.net), May 10, 2000

Answers

Elizabeth, have you looked at what orginizations such as Nature Conservency, Ducks Unlimited, and Pheasants Forever put in their land agreements? There might be some good ideas in those. Otherwise, just a clearly thought out list, even if you don't have it in "proper" legal terms, would go a long way to help you when you do go to a lawyer. Gerbil

-- Gerbil (ima_gerbil@hotmail.com), May 10, 2000.

Thanks, Gerbil. First I have to say I made some big typos. That is supposed to be subdividing and covenants. My error.

Second, the closest place I can come to what I have in mind is the eco-village concept. There is a good new site going up called

www.thequarries.com

They will publish their covenants but I don't think they have worked them out yet. They have a tumbling square you click on the sides of and it's a real challenge to hit the side you want! But the more research I do, the more interesting it becomes to me because there are ecologists and forestry people and agricultural and sustainability, Sierra Club on the one hand and the people like Michael and Joshus Rey nolds on the other but -- and I would never have guessed it -- despite all the subscribers to the homesteaders magazines which would indicate a big interest in homesteading to me -- I can't find any model covenants which cover what I am talking about. Probably if I could think up a different question, it would really reveal the divisiveness rather than the harmony amongst homesteader types -- sort of like what has surfaced between Joel Rosen and myself.

Nolo Press -- my favorite source for usable legal information -- probably has model covenants and I could probably get their software as a layperson --

Anyway, the charitable organizations have a special gizmo or pitch and are not what I am looking for, though they are certainly much closer to what I want than regular covenants. Thanks, Gerbil.

-- Elizabeth Petofi (tengri@cstone.net), May 10, 2000.


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