bela samreny

Hello,

My husband and I are looking to move to around Tampa (Tampa, North of Tampa, St Pete, Plant City). Hopefully within 45 min driving distance from USF. My husband works as an adjunct at USF and I own a small backyard nursery business that I'd like to keep going. I am wondering if anyone knows of a place where someone either has a small house/ carriage house to rent on some land that would be willing to let me use some of it for my nursery, or someone who just has some land that I can use and we can rent close to it?

We are both in our mid 30ths, and are respectful tenants. My nursery set up is just a low tunnel greenhouse for my seeds, and and the most, up to 8 pallets for my starter plants that I mostly sell online right now. If you have a farm operation on the land, I am also willing to help out with labor

Please feel free to send me a direct message and ask me any questions you have. We are currently based in Bradenton, but are trying to shorten the commute time for my husband to work.

thanks,
Bela

Hi Bethany. the link you posted doesn't work. do you have a better link?

Hello! I've been a long time reader on this forum and now I'm reaching out to see if anyone here has a situation that would be compatible with myself and my husband.

We are in our mid 30's, and currently live in Florida. My husband was offered a remote teaching job at UCSD, but it requires that we be residing in or planing to move to the state of California in order to accept it. Because it's remote, it would give us virtually free range as to where in California we can live, so long as it's within a reasonable distance of San Diego to commute maybe once a year for an orientation or something like that.

We've been working towards the dream of buying a small plot of land and homestead for a while, working and saving up, but we don't see us being able to afford something or think it's a smart time to buy, right now, especially in CA. If my husband takes the job, and we move back to California, we would love to be able to rent a guest house or something like that on someone's farm or homestead, so that I can help on the farm or exchange work for rent/part of rent. We would also be interested in a land share rent situation - we are flexible. We would prefer to stay in a house, but would consider purchasing a tiny house/yurt if it was the right situation. A major requirement is for there to be stable fast internet, as my husband's job depends on it.

I have been studying and working with permaculture for the last 10 years. I got my PDC about 10 years ago and then spent some time wwoofing on other people's farms, some were permaculture and some were not. I also interned with someone in Chicago who really introduced to a lot of soil science concepts and worked on her composting collective for some time. I've experimented with a lot of forms of composting on my own since then. I currently work part time a small local nursery here, and have also started my own backyard nursery where I sell tropical food forest plants locally and on etsy. In the last 2 yrs of living here in Florida, I've turned my parents' backyard from complete sand and weeds to a food forest (although not a mature one yet) by dumping tons of mulch and working with succession planting, chop and drop, and korean natural farming concepts. I've worked with chickens using deep litter method, but I would love to work somewhere where I learn more about working with animals as soil builders through grazing. I'm a hard worker and my husband and I would be respectful tenants / land sharers.

I'd be interested in a probationary period at first to see if it's a right fit. My husband would not be involved in the farming work, but he would be happy to live there and be apart of whatever he's invited to be apart of.

please message me on here or email me at floortocanopy@gmail.com if you think this would be a right fit for you

Hi Tim,

Thanks for opening up this topic and I'm curious to learn more. My husband and I are older millenials that are currently in a transitionary stage. We just moved back to FL from CA, to live with family, once the pandemic hit, but we're looking to relocate eventually, and be apart of some sort of cooperative land-owning situation. I've worked on other people's farms and gardened, whenever I've had access to space. I currently am working on establishing a food forest on my parents' property, with perennials, annuals, and outdoor mushroom cultivation, so I can bring farming as well as many food-preservation techniques with me. We've never lived in the St. Louis area, but I used to live in Chicago and worked on a farm in Detroit, so I have some experience with working in the colder climate. Do you have an idea of what kind of legal structure to use for land ownership? This is something I've been reading about but don't have any first-hand experience with.

Just to give a better idea of where I'm coming from: for me, a cooperative land-owning model would one of the only ways we can see ourselves being able to afford having access to land to farm, without being burdened by debt, and we're interested in being apart of a community that can pull resources together, as needed (ie. marketing for farming sales, tool sharing, bulk seed buying, skill sharing, labor sharing). I would like to eventually just farm as my job but I have a background in web design and development, and my husband is looking to teach (he just graduated from an fine art masters program and is looking to teach art or writing at a college or high school). I'm vegan but I would also consider eating animal products periodically in a self-sufficient context, and my husband is a meat eater. Although I would consider myself to be spiritual, neither of us are religious or interested in a community built around any sort of dogma, although we are tolerant of others who are religious, as long as there is a sense of mutual respect, and we're not the subjects of proselytizing. I do align myself with the principles of permaculture, and have tried to apply them to my day to day habits and living situations as much as possible, since I first became introduced to it.

Anyway, if others are interested, I am interested in being apart of the conversation to see what others' needs and priorities are as well.

I think access to land is a huge part of the barrier to entry for millenials. It's unfortunate, but our generation is already dealing with so many economic burdens like stagnant wages mixed with an ever-increasing cost of living, and educational debt burden, and on top of that, the way that the cost of land has been driven up speculators since 2008 has made it even worst. With that being said, ownlng land and building a future of self-reliance and local food-security is still a dream of mine. Has anyone here looked into the process of forming a collective land trust with others who are interested in farming/homesteading? It seems like one of the more realistic ways of gaining access to land and startup capital by pooling resources. There's an organization called Agrarian Trust that provides assistance with technical and legal assistance with creating a land trust. I'm not fully sure how it works, but maybe others here have a better understanding of this as an option?