How to share extra land with other homesteaders?

[texasrancher]

Hello,
I am a new member.
Someone will probably ask, "Stranger, why did you come to our forum?"
I would say, a friend told me that HT was the place to go for friendly helpful advice.
So I galloped in this morning.

My problem is too much pasture land in Central Texas for one man. I plan to run only chickens and gardening from here on.

So I want to make some of this land available to another homesteader, but I don't want to sell the land. The land that is available would handle 12 to 15 cows, and 100 goats.. I don't run these animals myself anymore so there would be no competition.

Providing I could even find a family or someone who is even interested, these are the questions I have been thinking about.

#1. How can I structure this so it would be fair to me and them? Would it be better to set it up as a lease agreement or a cooperative agreement? Or ?
#2. How could I screen them to make sure they would be good neighbors since we would be essentially on the same property. I have heard horror stories from other people.
#3. Is this even a good idea? Has anyone else done this? What did you learn from it?

[Shadow]

We have tried this several ways, rent to own, profit sharing, leasing, owner financing, We have a house on the far corner of our place, older but well maintained 8 rooms larger and newer than our house but we did not want to have the hassel of renters after we retired. This house is 3/4 of a mile away from our house on another county road, we seldom see it as it is just not on the way to town for us or anywhere else.
Owner financed twice, one couple just had too many kids and could not pay the payment they left oweing $1600
second was stealing from the truck lines he worked for (riding lawnmowers) and lost his lisecnce when caught drunk driving a semi.
and on and on last one destroyed the house thinking he was remodeling it to what his idiot wife wanted. We never recived half of what we were supposed to in owning this house for 15 years.
We had several other rental properties that were just houses to rent no land and no problems. This one we always refer to as the rental house from h--l.
I have removed the windows, what electical I could salvage , dug up some flowers, this spring I will remove some siding and then burn the rest a little at a time as I have time get the septic tank removed and filled it will be gone, gone at last thank God gone at last.
DON'T DO IT.

[wilderness1989]

Been there done that......my recommendation is DO NOT DO IT. It's more heart ache than it's worth.

[rambler]

Originally Posted by texasrancher

My problem is too much pasture land in Central Texas for one man.

Yea, it's tough stuff to digest. I'd suggest getting cattle or other livestock.



Just teasing.

Threads like this come up from time to time, & they tend to develop into quite a loud & busy thread with 2 _very_ distinct camps voicing their opinions.

I'm in the "don't try it" camp.

Either keep the land for yourself, & sell off the growth, or rent it out for cash, or just keep the weeds down & be happy with it.

Or, sell it off & be done with it.

Trying to have it both ways - you still control it, but someone else should be living on it & care for it & use it - just has way, way too many pitfalls.

Any good, stable person/family with the gumption to make that land work will see no future at all in you land because it is yours. They will be looking for their own dream.

The people that will knock down your doors to get ahold of your land will be like described in the other message - people with no good outcome on life, nothing of their own, & not too much care about your property, other then trying to live off of you for a while.

I'm sure there are 10-15 people in the whole USA who would actually make this work out to your & their satisfaction.

The difficulty would be living long enough, & having anything left of your property, to weed out all the riff-raff you will come across first.......

Look at it from the other side of the fence. If you wanted to start out, what would you be looking for? Would you want to put your time, sweat, & efforts into some land that you know you ain't never going to own? Is that deal you would ever look for?

Even if you find good folk, how long will they be there? Long enough to get their own stake, & then gone - so you have to look all over again for folks.

If you had something big enough or business enough to make a living on, then it would be different. You could structure it to help out the beginning family, and be able to offer them a future of a growing farm/ranch/business.

But, hey, here's a little chunk of land I can't do much with, wanna work on it for a while? I want to keep total control of the property......

I'm not sure that will draw the kind of neighbor/partner/renter you will be happy with.

I don't see anything in it for them. Unless they have nothing at all to start with....

I can be wrong, of course. Or there might be more to this that what I see. Just my opinion, or seed for thought.

--->Paul

[LagoVistaFarm]

There is a fair amount of information here:

http://www.californiafarmlink.org/

It's not Texas but these people are ahead of the curve. They basically feel that it has to work for both parties or forget it.

[frazzlehead]

Do you have any neighbours who could use a bit of extra pasture?

Around here it is fairly common for folks to lease pasture from someone - but they generally like to have it nearby so they can easily check on the critters.

Maybe ask around with those who live near you...?