Co-steading, starting in Louisiana
AUM is gathering families who want more room, more quiet and more say in how they live. Each household gets a small home on its own homesite, and together we build a community with shared gardens, shared skills and neighbors who look out for one another. In an uncertain time, it is solid ground: a home that is yours, a place you belong, a living from your own work, and a voice that counts.
Life here
A gated entrance, a security service paid for in the community fee, and neighbors who know each other by name.
Every homesite has its own water access, and homes are built to catch and keep rainwater for gardens and dry spells.
Homes run on their own solar panels and batteries first, with the grid as a backup. The community adds a shared solar and battery system as it grows, so the lights stay on.
Children and adults learn side by side: growing food, building, and using technology for their own work, through our Green Thumb · Tech Thumb program.
Kids can roam, gardens can spread, and grandparents can live close. Homes can grow with you, and the community grows around you.
With every home
Shared, opening as families arrive
The programs that open as more families arrive are our plan, not a promise. We share progress with every household as each stage gets close. See how the village grows
Why AUM
Our team has surveyed these sites and lived on the land for more than two years while we prepared. We know where the water runs, where the shade falls and how the seasons feel.
The land is farmed today, and Relax Farms is part of the AUM family. New households join a working farm, not an empty field.
Your home, your harvest and your craft are yours. AUM keeps the land and the shared spaces in good order so you can focus on living and making.
Because AUM keeps the land and builds small, a home here costs a fraction of a typical home in these parishes. You spend less on housing and more on the life you came for.
The land
The Natchitoches site sits near the Cane River, on farmland held by an Indigenous family for about 150 years. It is river country: rich soil, old trees and slow water.
We want the community to honor that history. The family that held this land for generations is part of how we tell its story.
In Converse, the families who started this community have held their land for generations, since before one of the country's oldest historically Black colleges was founded, and they helped found it. They know its neighbors, its roads and its rhythms, and they will be your neighbors too.
Sabine Parish is quiet, wooded and close to the Sabine River, with room to grow and a strong sense of place.
Anyone may apply. AUM is an Equal Housing Opportunity. Anyone may apply, and every application is judged on the same criteria.
How it fits together
Every AUM community starts with three partners who each bring something and each keep something.
Households
Bring their work and their families. Keep their homes, what they make, and one share and one vote in the co-op.
Landowners
Bring the land. Keep it in the family, and share in what it earns, in writing.
AUM
Brings the network: planning, building, partner farms and grocers, and the day-to-day running, until the families take more of it on.
It starts here, in Louisiana.
Ownership
AUM keeps the land and does the heavy lifting. The households own the co-op that runs everything you share.
You buy your home outright. Your homesite is leased to you for 40 years, a lease your family can inherit.
Every household holds one share in the AUM Community Co-op: one household, one vote. The co-op runs the shared spaces, the tools, the market and the programs.
AUM pays a set share of what it earns from the land into the co-op's Community Fund. Members decide together how it is spent.
Each year the members vote. By default, the co-op's surplus pays for the next addition: the shared solar, the greenhouse, the learning center. Members can also choose to return part of it to households, based on how much each one used the co-op.
You own your home and your work, and you co-own the operation around you. You are not working someone else's field. You are building and running your own. We call it co-steading: homesteading together, with real value in savings, skills and a share in the co-op.
You co-own the community
Every household holds one share in the AUM Community Co-op, with one vote. You buy the share to take part, not to sell for a profit. If you leave, it is refunded at the price you paid.
The Community Fund
AUM pays a set share of what it earns from the land into the co-op's Community Fund. Each year members vote. Surplus pays for the next community addition unless members choose to return part of it, based on how much each household used the co-op.
Final terms are set in the co-op's founding documents, reviewed by our lawyers, before anyone signs.
What a homesite makes possible
A small home on its own homesite, at a fraction of the price of a typical home nearby.
Ground to grow food and raise animals, or a Maker building for a workshop, small factory or kitchen. What you make is yours to keep or sell.
Every household co-owns the AUM Community Co-op, with one vote, and helps decide what the community builds next.
Green Thumb, Tech Thumb and Field & River: neighbors who share what they know, and tools you could not afford alone.
Skills
The know-how that makes a household strong: growing, technology, and reading the land and water. Everyone can learn all three.
Growing food, keeping animals, preserving the harvest, caring for soil and water. Taught by farmers from our network and by neighbors who have done it for years.
Using technology for your own work: online selling through the growers' co-op, simple tools for orders and records, digital skills for remote work, and the machines in a Maker workshop.
The third kind of know-how: reading the land and the water, safely and with respect.
As we grow
Stage 1 of 5 · 5 households
What opens
Entrepreneurship
Maker Circle: neighbors meet monthly to share skills, ideas and first sales
New in the village
Stage 1 of 5: 5 households, First neighbors.
What opens as we grow. The programs that open as more families arrive are our plan, not a promise. We share progress with every household as each stage gets close.
Together
A good community is shaped by the people who live in it.
Rules we make together. The families who live here help make the community's rules. A residents' council starts with the first households, and families take on more of the running of the community as it grows.
What it costs
| Package | AUM home | Typical home | About this much less upfront |
|---|---|---|---|
| Builder | From $66,000 | $171,300 in Natchitoches Parish | $105,000 |
| $123,100 in Sabine Parish | $57,000 | ||
| Homestead | From $80,000 | $171,300 in Natchitoches Parish | $91,000 |
| $123,100 in Sabine Parish | $43,000 |
How we compare prices. We compare today's prices with typical homes in these parishes, using public figures. AUM homes are smaller, and your monthly includes ground rent for the land. We never promise what a home or the land will be worth later.
Prices start from here. The prices shown are starting prices. Each one includes the homesite set-up: septic, water and power runs, and solar. They are estimates while we lock in builder and material costs. Your contract shows your final price before you commit to anything.
Typical home values: Typical home value, Natchitoches Parish (2020–2024); Typical home value, Sabine Parish (2020–2024). AUM homes are up to 800 sq ft, and your monthly includes ground rent for the land. Maker comes with a production building as well as a home, so we don't set it beside a house.
Join us
Bring your family, your friends or a group that already works well together. Neighbors who arrive together can ask for homesites near each other, and every application is judged on the same criteria.
Ready to build this with us?
Ask AUMi anything about life here, or send us your details and a person will reply within two working days.