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RTTL: Ozarks Chapter

Group Land Buy projects in Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas

Northwest Arkansas

This group land buy currently has 8 remaining shares available for $6540 each plus closing costs. Each share grants ownership in the LLC and usage of a 3 acre parcel. Contact libertyhome@protonmail.com for details. Shares only available to Return To The Land regional association members; we will give you information to apply. We are already here developing the land; come on down and join us!

Categories
Group Land Buys

Group Land Buy Process

How does this all work?

Here we will explain the basic legal structure and processes behind a new group land buy. This means we gather a group of like-minded folk and buy a property together.


For information on purchasing a share in an existing liberty homesteads property, please check out our future blog post called “buying a share of land.

First things first: Register a business entity (SAS)

Before even buying the property, we (including you) form an SAS entity (simplified share society) and register it with the superintendent of companies in Ecuador. This is a type of limited liability corporation that costs only a few hundred dollars to set up, and can be done remotely with your electronic signature.

The owners/shareholders of the SAS are the buyers of that specific property. There is one SAS for each Liberty Homestead property. Aside from being a registered business, the primary purpose of each SAS is simply to hold the property in the name of the owners.

Why not just put a bunch of names on a land title? The legacy property registry system is too clunky for our needs. It was never designed for 10+ co-owners and small shares being constantly bought and sold. The closing process is long and expensive and requires a power of attorney document to go through a maize of notarization/authentication/translation processes.

The SAS GROUP LAND ownership structure provides the same degree of legal security as the legacy property registrY system, even as far as inheritance law.

As you can see in the above diagram, you own a share in the SAS (Simplified Share Society), and the SAS owns the land. The only shareholders in the SAS are the landowners themselves.


What legal documents do I receive?

  • Notarized land title that shows the property was purchased by your SAS
  • Property registry certificate from the local property registrar that shows the property is currently owned by your SAS
  • Share transfer certificate issued by the Superintendent of Companies that shows the correct percentage share of the SAS is owned by you

All listed documents will be provided in digital form (PDF) and are verifiable remotely by any Ecuadorian lawyer. Should you require originals, we can send notarized original copies at a small additional cost.


How do I sell my share?

  • We list your share for sale on the Liberty Homesteads website. You may also advertise it privately any way you like.
  • When there is an interested buyer, we have both of you sign a promise of sale contract
  • You use your electronic signature (registered with the Ecuadorian government) to sign the share transfer document, which is submitted to the Superintendent of Companies where the share transfer is registered

What about my homestead?

The Community Contract (between all co-owners of each property) will show the GPS coordinates of your homestead and a map. It will also have basic rules for peaceful relations between neighbors, and management of the community areas, roads, and various shared utilities such as the water system. It will detail any existing easements. Think of it like an HOA agreement. It will also establish voting processes for the budget to maintain the common elements.

Read an example of this document here. One contract will be specially tailored to each co-owned property, and will be updated each time a new owner buys in.

One thing we don’t want to have at Liberty Homesteads, is an annoying over-bearing HOA. So, the contract is designed to give lot owners as much freedom as possible, while still giving your neighbors leeway to complain if you start blasting loud music right next to them at night or adopt 20 dogs that run around like crazy and attack people.

Categories
Permaculture

Farm Animals for Southeast Ecuador

If you’re reading our website, you’re probably interested in doing permaculture in southeast Ecuador, or at least in a tropical climate. Domesticated animals serve many important purposes in the homestead, so we will lay out which choices we’d recommend for your future homestead. In a future blog post we’ll do the same thing for fruits and vegetables, so you’ll know what you can and can’t grow in this climate.

General Principles

The tropics are wet. Our area does not get monsoon rain for 2 months straight like some parts of southeast Asia, but the rainy season does earn its name here. On top of that, the region is hilly. You have to think of soil fertility and erosion of topsoil.

Yes to the following:
  • Small ruminant animals
  • Birds that don’t scratch
  • Anything that doesn’t dig or screw up your soil
Ease up on:
  • LARGE ruminant animals
  • Birds that scratch
  • Pigs and other animals that dig extensively

What did I not say?

Just in case you misread the last section, let me be clear that I did NOT say you shouldn’t have cows, turkeys, etc. What I am saying is that you should base your domesticated animal population planning with soil fertility in mind.

That means, instead of NOT having cows, or having an entire herd of cows, you might have 1 or 2 cows grazing with your herd of hair sheep. Hair sheep (pelibuey, blackbelly, katahdin) are great for the humid tropics due to their lack of wool, and they are smaller so they don’t compact and turn the soil as much as massive cows.

And it means you might focus more on ducks and geese, whereas in a dry climate you might focus more on chickens and turkeys, and have a few ducks as a side interest.

What species are available?

It may be hard to find 39 different designer species of chickens like you can in the USA. But, in general, you have a variety of animals available, and a few breeds of each. If you spend some time searching and asking around, you can find some lesser-known breeds.

Ruminant Animals and Herbivores

It is easy to find horses, cows, donkeys, mules, goats, and sheep. For this climate, hair sheep breeds like pelibuey, blackbelly, and katahdin (which are all locally available) are more ideal.

Ecuadorians also commonly raise rabbits and guinea pigs, of which you can find several species.

Birds

Birds can be beneficial when you have insect problems. In the tropics, there are nasty insects such as bullet ants, that can bite you and cause lots of pain. Chickens and other birds patrolling your homestead can take care of these and reduce their population. Caterpillars can devastate the leaves of your young fruit trees, but ducks and chickens can devour these for breakfast.

There are various chicken breeds here, most commonly the “cubano” and “criollo,” though you can find others as well.

The best duck for this region is muscovy, since it is native to South and Central America, though you can find various other breeds.

Geese, guinea fowl, and quails are quite easy to find. Guinea fowl are excellent for scaring snakes (sneks?) from your homestead. Geese are great for protecting your ducks, and they eat grass, so they help you keep the weeds down.

Turkeys are not uncommon, though like I said previously, it’s best not to focus a lot of effort on large birds that scratch a lot, since soil matters. Remember, I didn’t say not to raise turkey! Many people do locally. It’s just more ideal for your soil to focus more on non-scratching waterfowl like ducks and geese.

Peacocks are easy to find for those who like a bit of flair in their homestead.

Emu and Ostrich both exist in Ecuador but might be a bit hard and expensive to source, and we are not sure if they would have any specific health issues in a wet climate

Fish

This author is not too familiar with raising fish, but it is very common in Ecuador to raise tilapia or trout in a manmade pond. It’s also quite easy to make a manmade pond if you rent an excavator. (We have a community excavator for rent at some of our community lands.)

Permaculture Considerations

To save you from watching hours of YouTube videos, I’ll introduce a few basic concepts:

  • Mixed grazing – grazing different ruminant animals together helps to disrupt parasite life cycles in the manure
  • Birds with ruminants – having various birds in the area of the ruminant animals helps reduce mosquitos and other insects that would bother the ruminants
  • Birds with birds – mixed bird species together can help disrupt parasite life cycles, and they can perform different functions. Geese can protect ducks, guinea fowl can alert you to predators or intruders on your property.
  • Pasture management – grazing small sections of pasture intensely then moving the herd each day helps conserve top soil as each section has more time to re-grow. It is also more efficient as it forces the animals to consume more of the grass and be less picky.
  • Erosion control – Pasture lands can have rows of vetiver, fruit trees, and nitrogen-fixing shrubs or trees to help control soil erosion, provide shade for animals, or mounting points for tied animals or electric fencing.
  • Clean and efficient feeding – nobody wants to feed glyphosate corn to their chickens and ducks, but it’s also hard to maintain a population with a good growth rate without buying it. You can incorporate things like kitchen compost, worm bins, black soldier fly bins, bananas, chopped banana stem hearts with dried yuca, local squach, and other things that are very easy to grow. We are working on efficient feed systems and will continue to develop and research in this area.

Did we miss anything?

Let us know if there is more information you’d like on this topic. Or, come on down to Liberty Homesteads and learn from us directly!