Creative Pennies

Seattle is a hip city and the culture is definitely kick’en it on the funky tip. You know you have found that new wave progressive vibe when you go to a Hemp Rally downtown and a former Seattle Police Chief gets up to talk about his organization of law enforcement officers who think the current drug war is dangerously misguided. After a short visit with Valisa’s brother Hig and his wife Erin, we headed out on a Ferry towards the Olympic mountain range.
Westwind Farm at the Salt Creek community is just outside of Port Angeles, WA on the Olympic penninsula. Beautiful farmland with a creek full of tiny salmon sets in front of stands of trees which roll up to the tall Olympic mountains. Plus side: Lots of infrastructure, already a working farm, Orchards, Row Crops, main farmer has set aside land to build more houses on. Neg. Side: 100-200 inches of rain a year…can a Colorado desert kid survive that??? Also, the farmer, Peter, did not clearly spell out how we could assume partnership/ownership of the land with him since we want to “own” land not just work on someone else’s farm. We are going to write Peter for some more information and questions to feel out whether or not this farm/community could be a good fit for us.
Overall the Olympic peninsula looks beautiful for farming and has protected watersheds above many of the pieces we looked at. Plus there are Lots of trees so if the rain gets to be too much we could grab our animals and build an arc. Although we can’t forget, as Bryan said the other day, “Rain is a natural resource“…a scarce one in many places we have visited.
Land is expensive everywhere…especially so when you start looking in beautiful places, close to hip towns and cities, or near colleges. It takes bling to make bling-bling or so the saying goes. And that is why we have been looking for more than just a cheap piece of land in a very rural area. The more I look and see “perfect” pieces at double what we want to pay the more I realize that really good land is valuable to many people. The question is…do we walk away from the land we want because of the price tag or do we pull a few tricks out of the magic hat and try to get the land we want.
The intentional communities how-to book, Creating a Life Together, is both frightening and inspiring at the same time. It is scary how complicated all the land buying paper work, taxes, real estate transactions, loans, by-laws, and such can be, especially to those of us who have never done it before. But it is also inspiring to read about all the people who have found a myriad of creative ways to bring people together to pool resources so that beautiful land can be liberated by those of us with fewer zeros in our bank accounts.
The other day my artist friend Shannon Bowley called. She did volunteer recruitment with Emergency Communities and had just got some extra flow from some commissioned art pieces she is working on. She promised us 5,000 dollars as a loan in case we find the perfect thing and need a little help. Everybody sing, I get by with a little help….
On a larger scale, Earthhaven community in North Carolina created a program called EarthShares in the first year of their community. They owed just under half a million dollars on the property they bought and needed a way to keep the bank/owner financers from trying to snatch the land back should they fall on a hard month or two. So they wrote up some brochures about their venture in sustainable development and structured a way for people to invest money in their project with a timeline for pay back with interest just under what the bank would have charged. Something like a green or socially conscious stock option. In four years they have paid back all of the money to the bank and now continue payments to their investors. Still in debt in a way, but they are growing and successful so both borrower and lender are proud of what they have accomplished together. All I am saying is….let us not run from the fear of the unknown but let us all reach out to our networks and support systems to find a way to materialize our dreams. The worst that we could do is fail…but at least we tried. As Shakespeare said, “Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we might win by failing to attempt.”
Stay tuned for further information about the Tuff Roots Stock Option.