I’m pleased to see the landsharing movement growing rapidly.  yours2share also helps people share land for growing fruit [...]]]>

Last week Landshare announced that it is partnering with its US counterpart Shared Earth. The American site will use Landshare’s technology platform, but keep its name unchanged.  This moves Landshare into its third country, there is already a Landshare Australia.

I’m pleased to see the landsharing movement growing rapidly.  yours2share also helps people share land for growing fruit and vegetables, or keeping livestock, horses or any other use.  There is some good guidance here to help people set up the arrangement.

The first piece is called the birth of sharing law and examines the wide range of sharing initiatives [...]]]>

I recently found a couple of great posts on Shareable.net by Janelle Orsi about how greater sharing will need changes to the law.  Lawyers will also need to develop the contacts and frameworks for many aspects of sharing.

The first piece is called the birth of sharing law and examines the wide range of sharing initiatives that people are now trying out.  As these become increasingly mainstream, some will definitely require some amendments to the law.  The second article looks at some specific areas that lawyers are examining, particularly things like:

• how to get small amounts of funding from large numbers of people, say 200 people investing $100 in a cafe, without needing to go through a complicated compliance process
• how to handle the taxation of bartering
• how landsharing works on a large scale
• who is the employer and who is the employee in a worker-owned co-op

So far, goodwill, sensible discussion before starting to share, and the small scale of sharing means has been little litigation.  But as the sharing concept grows, the laws and contracts governing the arrangements need to evolve.  I think they will.

I’d love to find someone to keep a chicken for me alongside their other chickens and as we [...]]]>

I’d heard of cow sharing, where people pay for the purchase and upkeep of a whole, half or quarter of a cow which is then managed by a farmer, and this has always seemed such an easy idea.

I’d love to find someone to keep a chicken for me alongside their other chickens and as we will be moving to a permanent home shortly I may try harder to find someone locally that will do this.  We probably only eat half a dozen eggs a week and that equates to about one hen, and you have to have at least two hens or I’d think they would get lonely.  We have a further problem in that few hens would probably want to share a garden with our dogs.  Our neighbour’s hens lose a feather or two every time the wander over for a visit.

But I digress, I’ve just read this blog about sharing a farm: the idea being that you buy a $2,000 share in the farm and either get paid in dividends or milk.  I would have thought this concept could be interesting for many farmers, particularly those who are organic farming or workign with rarer breeds.  I would have thought that buying a share in a farm would appeal to the increaing number of people who want to know just where their food is coming from.

On yours2share we’ve had ads in the past for farm shares where the farmer is loooking for one or two people/couples/families to own a farm with them so that they could share the work and development of the farm, possibly as they near retirement age, and also enable the owners to take holidays or breaks.  We also have loads of landshares, where people looking for land to grow fruit and veg can find people with unused gardens.

Here’s another great garden sharing scheme: Garden Partners.  Age Concern and Wandsworth Council have got together to enable elderly people who are struggling to cope with their gardens to find people who want to find somewhere to grow fruit and vegetables.

Many elderly people worry about the fact that they can’t look after their gardens, particularly [...]]]>

Here’s another great garden sharing scheme: Garden Partners.  Age Concern and Wandsworth Council have got together to enable elderly people who are struggling to cope with their gardens to find people who want to find somewhere to grow fruit and vegetables.

Many elderly people worry about the fact that they can’t look after their gardens, particularly if they used to be keen gardeners.  At the same time there are so many people waiting for allotments and looking for somewhere to grow some fruit and veg. It is also great for societly as a whole if people help each other and find mutual benefit.

I’m beginning to think the the greatest benefit of sharing is the development of community, rather than the economic and environmental benefits that tend to drive people to sharing in the first place.  But it’s taken me a couple of years building yours2share to realise this.

I’m particularly pleased to see that Wandsworth is involved in this scheme.  I used to live there and my father worked there for many years.  If they have got involved, then the scheme is probably very well thought through and has commitment behind it.

Here are yours2share’s current listing of garden shares wanted and available.

I’ve just found that yours2share has climbed to third place in the listings if you search on Google for landshare, and following a few links as you do, found an enormous amount of information on allotments, growing your own fruit and veg, organic produce and sustainable food.  I suppose that given “Britain is a nation [...]]]>

I’ve just found that yours2share has climbed to third place in the listings if you search on Google for landshare, and following a few links as you do, found an enormous amount of information on allotments, growing your own fruit and veg, organic produce and sustainable food.  I suppose that given “Britain is a nation of gardeners”, I shouldn’t be surprised, but nonetheless there is a the huge amount of useful information here.

So I thought I’d point out the ones that looked the most interesting/comprehensive to me:

For everything to do with allotments, National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners

Promoting everything friendly food, the Soil Association

All about organic food, Garden Organic

For city farms and community gardens, Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens

Sustainable food at SustainWeb and in particular its list of projects

And there are loads more, but these seemed to me to be the central hubs for everything else.  I’m going to have to stop now, I’ve been buried in these websites for a couple of hours.

Here are the current garden and allotment sharing listings on yours2share.

I’ve finally managed to get yours2share‘s video onto YouTube!

If you want to see it in “high definition”, well much better quality, click here.