Looking for homestead partners

I am a Florida native, and except for a short period as a child and again while I was in school I have lived here my whole life.

However, I want to leave Florida’s heat and humidity for health reasons, and I am looking at a piece of property in Georgia outside of Augusta. I want to set up an organic CSA farm that can also serve as an environmental research and education center to promote ecologically sustainable food, energy and building technologies. I have a bachelor’s degree in biology (with 40 credit hours in history) from Emory University. I have been around gardening my entire life, and I have almost 30 years experience with my own garden. I have the know-how to set up a vegetable farm and I have enough cash to buy the property and set up the initial infrastructure. But I don’t have good health. I was diagnosed in 2008 with congestive heart failure caused by a leaky aortic valve. I also have high blood pressure as well as arthritis that, with my family history, will likely cripple me within the next 10 years. So I am physically not up to setting up a farm. I am not married and I have no children and my only family is my mother who is disabled with lupus. So I don’t have anyone who can help run a farm.

So I am looking for people who would be interested in joining me. I cannot offer a salary of any kind until the farm is up and running to produce income. I would consider taking a partner or two if I could find people whom I would be compatible with- maybe set up a corporation that would own the land and farm with me and the partners owning the corporation. I would also consider leasing some of the land to people that want to farm it. I would also consider setting up an eco-village if compatible people can be found.

The property I am looking at has 48 acres and 2 mobile homes from 30 years or so ago so they may not be useable. I doubt that I could offer housing until a house is built (using rammed earth, strawbale, earthbag or compressed earth block).

If anyone is interested I can be reached at flaja@att.net.

Welcome to the forum. Sounds like you're planning quite an endeavor. I hope you can find some people that are compatible. We're in Georgia, but around the Macon area where we have a small homestead. We raise goats, chickens, my vegetable garden, a small herb garden and various fruit trees and bushes.

Sonshine wrote:Welcome to the forum. Sounds like you're planning quite an endeavor. I hope you can find some people that are compatible. We're in Georgia, but around the Macon area where we have a small homestead. We raise goats, chickens, my vegetable garden, a small herb garden and various fruit trees and bushes.

I'd appreciate it if you could give me a list of the fruits and berries that can be grown in Georgia. My experience in Florida is that the books will tell you one thing- but people with actual experience will tell you the truth.

Not sure what all grows here. We have a couple of apple trees, peach trees and fig trees, as well as some pecan trees. We also have a dwarf banana tree. So far no fruit from the banana tree, but it seems to be growing. For berries we have blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries. We also have a couple of grape vines and one muscadine and one scuvadine vine. If you want to grow citrus though, you may have to go with the patio trees. That's what we've done.