Bear Creek Community Land Trust in NE Missouri

Hello fellow permie community folk! After years of meetings, upheaval, research, babies, comings and goings, legal stuff, potlucks, and a few more meetings, we are happy to announce that we've created Bear Creek Community Land Trust in NE Missouri! What began as a loose network of satellite homesteads around the Possibility Alliance has evolved into a cohesive community.

More info HERE

I don't want to just rewrite a bunch of things already mentioned on our website, but I'll try to give some basics...
We relied heavily on previous work done by Red Earth Farms, see here, as well as their neighbors, Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. These communities are about a 45 minute drive from ours. We are made up of individual leaseholds where members have autonomy within our bylaws, as well as substantial chunks of common land that can be used for cooperative agricultural pursuits or shared communal infrastructure. The land has a good amount of mixed hardwood deciduous forests, prairies/pastures, many ponds, and a few seasonal creeks.
Some of our founding members include the White Rose Catholic Worker Farm as well as Giving Tree Homestead (yes, that's me!)

Here's a reasonable map that is not definitive, but close enough..


Our very first visitor thingy is rapidly approaching, but we will have other opportunities to visit throughout the rest of the season.

Please please let me know if anyone has any feedback or questions regarding our exciting new adventure!

Sounds interesting! I see you have links to the other communities but not one to your own website -- could you put one up so we can go look at your new place? How many acres do you have (it looks huge!) Also, are you accepting new members? I constantly talk to people who are interested in belonging to a coop or community similar to Dancing Rabbit, but I haven't seen many others with that style framework to point them to. Yours sounds like it has some real potential.

Oh ... GOOD LUCK, as well!

Deb Stephens wrote:Sounds interesting! I see you have links to the other communities but not one to your own website -- could you put one up so we can go look at your new place? How many acres do you have (it looks huge!) Also, are you accepting new members?

Hey, thanks Deb! The link to our website is the one near the top that says "More info HERE", but here it is again Bear Creek Community Land Trust

And yes, we're accepting new members! That's 98% of why I'm making this thread.. we have leaseholds available! Some have well established infrastructure and some are raw land. Pretty soon the website will have all the listings clearly laid out for what's available. They range in size from 10 acres to 1.5-3 acres.

We've been living here for about 7 years now, and it's been at least 3-4 years of working out all these details. Considering all the communities that have failed over the years there is plenty to think about while establishing something new. We've been wanting new members for a while, but wanted to make sure we had all the details worked out before we really put it out there.

Thanks for your questions! Let me know if anything else isn't clear.

-WY

Looks awesome, Mike!

Timothy Markus wrote:Looks awesome, Mike!

Thanks, Timothy! Feel free to visit anytime!

Hi Mike! My husband and I are super interested in visiting soon. Could you tell me approximately how much are the leaseholds that are available for rent/sale? We're curious if they are within the range of possibility for us or not. But we want to visit regardless!
Thanks!

Rebecca Amstutz wrote:Hi Mike! My husband and I are super interested in visiting soon. Could you tell me approximately how much are the leaseholds that are available for rent/sale? We're curious if they are within the range of possibility for us or not. But we want to visit regardless!
Thanks!

Hi Rebecca, thanks for the question. At the moment there are larger leaseholds (~10 acres) with buildings and gardens etc that would be more expensive due to the valuing of the improvements, but there are also some raw land leaseholds that would just be priced by the acre with a potential contribution to commons. I don't actually know the exact pricing for the available leaseholds, but if you do come for a visit I'd be happy to break down all the options. Were you wanting to start from scratch or did you need some infrastructure in place?