Cohousing-L Mailing List: rural sites

[Chris Blaisdell (Chris_Blaisdell]

        Scott Cowley has a point,  I think.  Its not as if the 94 acres of mixed
fields and woods that we have under contract in Maine is being taken out of
agricultural use by our buying it.  This land had been on the market for
three years at a price way beyond what any one who would use it for
agriculture could afford to pay.  The vast majority of land we walked looking
for our site (and we've walked alot of peices in four years!!) will never be
put back into ag. use.  Most of it will end up as standard developments
within a few years.  Our site would probably end up cut up into 5 acre lots
with a house on each one.  Gone would be the fields, the woods, the stream,
the wetlands.
          Instead, it is going to have the majority of the woods put into 
permanent
"open space" designation, never to be developed, the fields will again have
horses running on them as well as the fruit orchards and berry bushes we're
envisoning. And of course, our community gardens. We've also been talking at
times about doing Community Supported Agriculture gardens.   We will only be
building on a small fraction of the land.
         We've been having regular meetings with the neighbors keeping them 
updated
with our plans and designs and have received mostly supportive responses. 
They know what could have (would have) happened there if it weren't for'
those folks'.    And though, yes it would be great if we all,  including all
developers, stuck to the cities or stayed in the sprawl,  in real life it
doesn't happen that way.  I've got to think that it IS better that the more
environmentally minded people, be it CoHo or whatever, get ahold of some of
this land to help preserve its rural charateristics.

                                                                      Chris
Blaisdell
                                                    Cumberland County CoHo
Community
                                                                    
Brunswick, ME