Prepper Group Purchased Farm

Since this is a new Forum to me I will provide some background information on my prepper group. Our group is a large extended and beyond family Right now we are at 53 people ages from 73-4 months.

We started by hunting as a family getting back together each year on a farm for deer season and Canadian geese. We did this for 12 years and looked into buying the farm 250 acres with options for more back in 2002. We did it as a LLC so each family had just so many shares init. It cost more then it was worth at first. No one wanted to live there just take vacations so we rented out the fields to the neighbor farms. That was until 1014 when we decided to start making major changes. Included the following:

Increase acres from 250 to 625.

Replace farm house with log cabin lodge.

Build 5 smaller log cabins

Started truck garden in 2015 now over 5 acres.

Built in a hill side 5 9x9x40 foot containers. Just made a long flat area and just set them up next to each other. We use them for storage since we do not have a barn (Burned down in 88).


Every summer we spend a lot of time up there performing major projects, learning new skill sets. weapons training, gardening , and livestock maintenance. We now have 2 families living there and I will join them within 3 years. It took all our extra income, experience, and risk taking to get this far. We are now as ready as can be.

 

That sounds really good, great resources, and well done to you guys with getting the legal issues sorted out via LLC. This can often be a sticking point with these sorts of arrangements.

 

RICH-FL, interesting set up! How many of the 53 actively participate on a regular basis with on site activities? How are priorities of site development negotiated with such a set up? With just my wife and me, setting priorities is a bit of a negotiation with her always winning...

 

Lucky you, wish I was related to you all.

 

welcome to our group, where in the world are you? don't give away too much as i can see you value your privacy , just rough location.

 

I live on the edge of south central and the interior area of Alaska. That’s about a 50,000 square mile ballpark of my location!

 

That's impressive! We started expanding our BOL/vacation property in 2000 by purchasing adjacent and nearby properties but nothing close to the acreage of yours. The properties are just in mine and the Mrs name, no LLC. There's actually more available now I wouldn't mind buying, but maintenance of the existing ones is already costly and time consuming - the Mrs isn't happy about adding more cottages/garages and yards to maintain and I don't disagree with her on that. I've often thought about alternative ways to help family/friends (that are less affluent generally) obtain these properties, whether via a LLC, or perhaps buying the properties ourselves and re-selling them to family/friends as a land contract with long term/low (or no) interest loans. The problems I see with any plan I've considered is:

1) How divorce/death could be handled. Suppose I and my cousin John (and his wife Jane) have some form of joint ownership of property and they get divorced and need to sell their interest in the property to split the money as part of the divorce settlement. Or if John dies and Jane wants to sell her (and John's) share. In either case, I might have to choose between buying them out to get sole ownership (and maybe at a higher price than I paid due to property appreciation), or just selling the property on the open market. There's obviously lots of different problems that could come up that would be hard to plan for in advance, like if John died, Jane marries a new guy Jack, then Jane dies - now Jack (who I can't stand BTW) and I are now joint owners of the property.

2) Just in general, the old adage of "business and family do not mix well". People (and their interests/priorities/hobbies/finances) can change over time, I'd hate to lose a friend or have a close family member mad at us because they weren't holding up their end of the LLC / land contract terms and we had to take them to court (or similar).

I can't imagine all the permutations of possible problems like this with your group of 53 people, but interested in how your LLC is written/managed to handle things like this. If you have a template of the agreement you used, or could post yours with all the personal info edited out, I'd really like to see how you did it as a possible solution for us.

 

To answer some questions:

We vote every two years on the two leaders who make most decisions and priorities.

We have major division of labor divided into Leadership/planning, medical, water/waste treatment, farming, blacksmithing, and security.
A lot of work overlaps each other, but since we are mostly extended family, and very close friends it all works out.

 

Sorry I"ve been up at the farm for 15 days. We needed to do some repairs do to the high snow fall we had this year. It's going to be a wet and wild spring. Cold does not get it low of 26 below zero without wind chill and I'm from Florida where its 82 degrees above. That is a very hard hit on the body!!!

So I will start my many lesson plans over the next week or so. Then by mid April I have to change over to my new and improved computer, so I will be down for a day or two.