HOA and Farm

I'm sorry I don't have insight into your question, but I DO have a Hungarian aunt in Colorado by the name of Zita. You don't have a child with the same name as a bird do you? lol...

By the way I think community gardens/farms make a wonderful use of unused common areas....

Hi Janet,
The HOA already owns the property.

Nope!

I do not understand then ... if HOA owns the property whay are you asking about making it part of the HOA?

Yeah, I dont see that happening....

Just keep everything the way it is. The price they are getting at market keeps the expenses in check. Expenses go up, prices go up. Once the produce is free, expenses will go out of control, everyone will want their free stuff, and no one will want to work the farm for free because everyone will hate each other.

Hi Zita:

I cannot potentially help as I still do not fully understand your situation:

Is the property owned by the HOA as “common property”? Or, is this property owned by an HOA homeowner and they allowed the farming of the land?

Without more info, I am kind of leaning towards what Steve posted on this issue.

This could get complicated. You may get into the commercial food handling/agriculural business, which may have restrictions, healith dept. and licensing issues.

Keep it private and provide for your own "family" (HOA members) only.
Since you will want to get rid of your stock, you can give it to your members and they can give it away to others. But be sure no on tries to "sell" the donated goods.

Better yet, donate the leftovers to area food banks.

If your group insists on getting into this, see if a local farmer or produce stand will take you under his liability "wing" and purchase your goods. But you will not sell to the pubic, yourself.

Thanks Susan,
This is something we have not considered before.

Hi Janet,
What you say is true, however the HOA already insures itself from all kinds of activities more dangerous than gardening--for example--there is a full scale workshop with power saws, etc; a sledding hill,....
We always scratch our heads about this...if we were to stop all activities on the property--we still wouldn't be exempt from lawsuits. While it's good to minimize risk--do you do so to the extent that you paralyze the community?

I can't advise you on the legalities, but I can say something about formalizing free-spirited, "organic" enterprises. Every spontaneous community enterprise has its own life force, and its own life span. When you apply a rigid organizational structure to a free-style effort like the one you have, you automatically change its nature, and you may not like what it morphs into.

If you look at the people who are keeping your farm going, I'm betting you can easily identify 2 or 3 natural leaders who inspire all of the rest, and they're doing it on their own. It may very well be that the reason the farm is successful is because of this particular mix of personalities, unfettered spontaneity, and the very lack of rules. If you integrate the farm into your HOA government, you may lose those leaders, and the next thing you know, the farm will become another burden on the association, rather than the whimsically creative enterprise it is today. If it sounds like I'm speaking from experience, I am.

On a practical level, what happens if the HOA takes on the costs of running this farm, and a homeowner doesn't want any vegetables? Every homeowner has to pay for the food, whether they want to eat it or not? What happens if a blight of some kind attacks the produce? What happens if there's a salmonella outbreak? What if there simply isn't enough production to make the farm profitable, or to feed everyone?

My gut feeling? Leave it alone.

Rob

Hi Janet, Steve, and Rob,
First and foremost THANK YOU for your time and personal energy that you have put into your posts. I can't tell you how valuable it is to have some outside input. We are a very close knit community of 75 adults and children--of varying levels of prosperity and we operate on consensus. There is a desire for supporting our neighbors in the realizations of their dreams and expressions--and the community values the move towards more self-sufficiency in food and energy production. So with these two currents of energy operating in the back ground, it is difficult to see clearly what some of the issues are with making the farm an integral part of the HOA.
If you have any other thoughts please share them. As it is, you've given us a lot to chew on.
May you all have beautiful days.

I've had an - how can I best say it? - interesting life. My father retired from the navy when I was 12, and bought a farm in North Carolina. I worked that farm for 4 years, and then left home when I was 16 to work in the Civil Rights movement. I was part of the commune movement in the 60's, and was a community builder in various collectively-owned farms and alternative energy-based, semi-enclosed ECO-systems and lifestyle experiments. Somewhere along the line I ended up doing a stint in the army, where I worked in yet another commune (a halfway house for alcoholics and heroin addicts coming home from Vietnam).

After the army, I joined the "Back to the Land" movement, and bought a big piece of land with some friends in Idaho. When that didn't work out (we had widely differing views on conservation and forestry), I formed another group and we all went to Hawaii to buy land to form another community-based farm. Afterward, I gave up on the whole idea of Utopia, got married, started a business, had a bunch of kids, sold the business and went into the Internet consulting and web development field.

Now it's been 24 years since I moved to this CID, and through all of this, I have learned a few things.

First: Cooperation and from-the-heart consensus is a great mix for starting something like a community or a business; but neither a business nor a collectively-owned community can be sustained that way indefinitely.

Second, a CID, such as what most of us live in, has to be run like a business, and a business has to be run like a business. That means all the laws have to be followed, or it's a lot like playing Russian roulette: it may be exciting, but you wouldn't want to grow old having to regularly spin the cylinder and pull the trigger.

Third, it is extremely difficult to succeed in business. 90% of all small businesses fail in the first year. Of the 10% that make it into the second year, 90% of those fail by the end of the third year. After 5 years, only a fraction of those original dreams are still viable. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is thinking that their hobby would make an excellent business. They tend to let it sort of evolve, because they already know how to do whatever that hobby is. What they don't realize is that their labor of love, which they get so much creative expression and relaxation from, becomes transformed into an obligation and a burden that they can't get away from, even if they could, which of course they can't - not for several years, at any rate - until the baby is walking a bit on its own. And the thing has to be planned down to the last seed and corncob.

My biggest concern in this case is that the HOA would be trying to start a small business, integrated with the social architecture and legal framework of the HOA. Just because there is already a sort of communal/consensus effort going on with the farm, the business aspects of such an enterprise that need to be defined and organized are completely different from the current enterprise. They may look the same, but they will have completely different sets of rules for accounting, accountability, and fiduciary responsibility, and the real danger is that it will fail, and along with it, yet another small business dream, and all at the expense of the homeowners.

Every change in life involves taking calculated risks, but I'm not sure I would take this one. Granted, I'm not there, and I really don't have all the details, but I would proceed very, very cautiously.

Rob