Build Diary

Started with a question: what would it take for twelve families to own land together without anyone losing their autonomy? Spent weeks researching community land trusts, cohousing models, and why intentional communities fail. Read everything from the Fellowship for Intentional Community archives to CLT legal structures used in Burlington, VT and Irvine, CA.

Key decision: the 501(c)(2) CLT model gives us the legal framework we need — the trust holds the land, households hold 99-year ground leases, and nobody can speculate their way into control.

Drafted the governance model. Studied what went wrong at Twin Oaks, the Farm, and a dozen communities that dissolved over money or power. Built in the structural safeguards: term limits, financial transparency, external ombudsperson, four-step conflict resolution, annual cult check against the ICSA checklist.

Wrote the Hard Truths section. If we can't be honest about the trade-offs — tight money, cameras in shared spaces, firearm policy — we'll attract the wrong people and lose the right ones.

Built the website and all the tools: land calculator, interactive community map, Land Scout (pre-filtered search across six verified listing sites), Catalyst Model playbook, and household application with matching algorithm. Everything is open-source — if someone wants to fork the model and build their own community, that's the whole point.

Published the Starter Guide and Catalyst Playbook as downloadable documents. Made the financial models transparent so anyone can run the numbers themselves.

Started actively scouting land using our own Land Scout tool. Focusing on western North Carolina — Watauga, Ashe, and Avery counties in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Found promising parcels near Blowing Rock with infrastructure already in place (underground power, fiber optic, completed roads). Running each prospect through the land calculator to check viability for 12 households.

Learning: "recreational property" listings often have the acreage and privacy we need, but mountain terrain means careful evaluation of build sites, septic capacity, and winter road access. Every parcel gets checked against USDA Web Soil Survey and county zoning records.

Shared the model publicly and got serious structural feedback. Made significant changes: replaced "matriarchal governance" framing with "vulnerability-first governance" (same principles, wider appeal), added a defined 6-month trial residency so people don't have to bet their savings on a feeling, spelled out the exit equity mechanism in detail, added a four-step conflict resolution path, and reframed the income model to explicitly support hybrid earning (not everyone needs to be a farmer).

The feedback process validated something important: the model is stronger when it's specific. Vague promises about "equity" and "conflict resolution" erode trust. Concrete mechanisms build it.