When we found our land five years ago, we always intended to figure out a way to secure it for our family’s future. At the time, my folk’s purchased the land. It had been their dream to leave a piece of land as a legacy to their descendants, providing them a place to live or come back to. Once the land was purchased, we all began helping with the major purchases and building supplies — property entrance, storm shelter, well, community bunkhouse, etc. Still, the property was in our parents’ name until we could figure out how to make our intergenerational homestead “official.”
There are many options to legally manage family land. After we did some research, we thought a trust might by our best option. Last year, we contacted some attorneys in Springfield to get more information. We were shocked at how expensive and complicated a trust would have to be. Discouraged, we decided to pray more and research other options.
This spring, our mom decided to look for a more local attorney. She hoped someone from our rural area would better understand our needs. She discovered Janae Graham in Stockton and sent her an email. Our mom never heard back, and as summer set in, she got busy with other things. After a couple months, she reached out to Janae again. It turned out that Janae had tried to email her back, but the email had somehow gotten lost. After a brief exchange, my mom forwarded Janae’s info to my dad and I so we could help figure out our options.
After discussing several options with Janae, we decided to form an LLC to manage our property. My siblings and I are owner/members and equal partners of our LLC. After a lot of thought, we settled on a name — Ozark Highland Homestead, LLC.
After a lot of thought, we settled on a name — Ozark Highland Homestead, LLC.
Our name is a nod to our geographic region, but also our Ozark and Scottish heritage. Jeremiah offered to pay the legal fees with some money from the sale of he and Bonnie-Jean’s puppies this summer. While an LLC is much more affordable than a trust, it was still quite a gift. We were very thankful for his generosity.
Janae helped us draft an agreement for managing the land and ownership in the future. The LLC can also help us manage shared funds and any income our land affords us in the future. Our parents sold our land to the LLC for a tiny sum. We filed the paperwork this week.
Walking into the Dade County courthouse on Wednesday was incredibly surreal. It has been my folks’ wish to bequeath their legacy to their kids while they are still alive and well. They’ve never had a lot, but they worked their whole lives for this dream. They know firsthand how difficult it is to “make it” in today’s society, and they never wanted their kids to struggle the ways they had to as a younger couple. They wanted to offer us a place where we could live rent-free.
My parents had this plan years ago when they bought a piece of property in Arkansas. They never figured out how to make it official back then, which was a blessing — as we all decided we wouldn’t want to settle there long-term. The process of selling that place and buying the land we have now took about five years. This plan has been years and years in the making.
And now — as of Wednesday, it is a reality.
We came home from our monumental courthouse visit to get back to the projects we were working on all week.
Bonnie-Jean continued painting trim boards. She honed her paint-sprayer skills this week, preparing trim for the bunkhouse living area.
Bonnie has also been working on the slow and tedious process of pulling out our garden. This week she removed the okra and remaining melon plants.
Jeremiah and I kept installing exterior siding, working several evenings this week.
Grace worked on our bathroom shelf. It’s a very simple cedar shelf, but it was forgotten outside a couple weeks ago and had to be refinished. Grace also did a lot of cleaning and some extra cooking while she watched her growing puppy.
Levi has helped every day with yardwork when he gets home from work, trimming weeds that have gotten out of hand in our front yard area. Erin has continued sorting through their storage unit contents, which are now located in our wall tent.
Our dad was thrilled that he was finally able to get our 1950’s Ferguson T-30 tractor working. He and Jeremiah have spent hours trying to find out what was wrong with it this summer. They replaced the starter, a coil, the ignition, and more. This week, dad finally got the tractor running — and running well. He hopped on the tractor and started brush hogging. We can’t wait to get things cleaned up around here.
One afternoon, our brother Jeremiah helped Bonnie-Jean and I do some bee care — feeding our newest swarm and checking on our older hives. The bees seem to be doing fine, though I didn’t see as much honey as I would have hoped. We plan to do more feeding in the next weeks to help them prepare for winter.
Life goes on, the same as always, and yet — our dream to have a family homestead is a reality. The future of Ozark Highland Homestead, LLC is bright and brimming with both dreamed and undreamed possibilities. With so much potential, we have so many castles we’ve tossed hastily into the air as we’ve traded dreams and hopes. In the meantime, we will carry on our steady progress. I’m thankful to be where we are, and I’m looking forward to where God takes us next.