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The Co-sufficient Cabin Cluster Model
Lots of people are coming to us and saying that they are yearning to leave their city lives and find a way to live a low impact lifestyle working towards becoming self suficient smallholders. Now, we all know that land prices, the planning system and lack of farming know-how makes this a very challenging endeavour. That is why we (and by all means many other contributors) have come up with the idea of introducing a spring board for new entrant farmers where you don't have to gamble, mortgage, and sign your life away before you have gained enough experience to take the next step.
The idea is simply to have clusters of small temporary affordable mobile cabins renting together on council land suitable for agriculture on the outskirts of towns and cities. The cabins will be held as part of a shared equity co-housing scheme whereby the occupants, the aspiring landworkers, could rent to buy or even “sweat to own” their cabin. The residents would also be members of a farming co-operative that would have a leasehold agreement with the ALT to manage the land and infrastructure according to our purpose and principles.
During a 'Back to the land' workshop last summer it became clear that there might be a need for this kind of stepping stone located closer to a more urban environment thereby making use of existing connections, transport systems, inclusive planning laws and access to a larger customer base.
How could we make it work?
Through a community share offer the ALT would raise money to acquire land and build the infrastructure and cabins. We envision a part of this infrastructure being renewable energy installations that would provide a guaranteed income for the farm.
In this way we would create a degree of flexibility for aspiring land workers to learn on the job and earn equity to invest in their future.
We hope that this cabin cluster model could make the difference for people between feeling trapped and unable to change the way they live, to being able to make the move to a more sustainable, regenerative livelihood. Get in touch if you have any ideas or are interested helping take this forward.
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