Property Watch: A Collaborative Farm Life In Cedar

A new opportunity has popped up to join a unique farm community in Leelanau County (3387 Winberie Lane, Cedar; $585,000; MLS# 1892284), where neighbors share in the care of vineyards, a glorious vegetable and flower garden, plus beehives, goats, and chickens.

Listing agent Jennifer Hastings of Blue Lakes Real Estate Group of Key Realty Traverse City, explains that this 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom bed home on ¾ of an acre is part of Telford Farm, “an intentional community of individual homes that share in maintaining the common elements of the farm.” Each family or homeowner enjoys use of shared wooded trails, barns and outbuildings (including a pottery barn) and the harvest generated by the common farmland.

Those who have travelled the rolling backroads near Cedar know that this agricultural pocket of the county is breathtaking, and the design of the home is meant to be completely fluid with that setting — plus support a fully integrated life on the land. Case in point: the home’s adjacent handbuilt hoop house allows for an early spring start on the community garden, some winter harvesting within, and includes a root cellar to keep produce at the ready during the cold months.

Hastings adds that while everyone in the community owns their residence — and there will never be more than 10 of them — they all contribute dues to cover insurance, taxes and upkeep on the common areas they share. Those 80+ acres include some land protected by conservancy easement.

The idea, too, is that everyone partakes in work bees on specific projects.

Because of the special shared aspects of this homegrown Leelanau life, buyers would be able to meet everyone in the community, Hastings says, and “find out the nitty-gritty on the ways that the farm works so that it’s the perfect fit for all parties.”

+++

Property Watch is sponsored by Venture Properties, whose exclusive listings include 10-acre parcel with an open field to establish a Leelanau County homestead near Empire.