Home Well
Choosing a place to authentically belong. Land, gardens, seasons, and the ordinary work of creating home in every season.
What is a Land Trust?
A land trust is how you write down what you want to happen with your land as a part of your legacy. It holds legal title under terms you set: who comes after you, what the land is for, and what should never be done here. Your intentions stop being something your family has to remember, and start being something enforceable.
They protect property from speculative turnover, preserve ecological and cultural integrity, and help ensure your land remains in trusted hands for generations.
How This All Started
My name is Aelah Bardelmeier.
I've spent more than fifteen years in land use planning across the US, founding an eco-community, and working as a licensed real estate agent in NC and SC. I've stewarded homesteads in three states — including a garden that feeds my family most of the summer, six eco-friendly rentals, and a long list of things I got wrong when I started.
I started writing these documents because we needed them for our own land, and couldn't find anything genuinely helpful out there.
What I've created here is about translation. I'm not an attorney, and nothing I offer replaces one. What these documents do is give your attorney something to review — a clear statement of what you want for your land. In my experience, arriving with your intentions already clear changes that conversation entirely.
The larger reason for all of it: I want to see land returned. Through the 2050 PACT I'm working toward returning one million acres to Indigenous peoples and the descendants of enslaved ancestors. Most of the work on this site is ordinary — deeds, trustees, wills. But that's why I do it.
💼 Connect with me on LinkedIn
Personalized Guidance
1 hr 30 min
495 US dollars
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2050 Pact
In the next 25 years, we are actively working to returning 1 million acres to Indigenous peoples and descendants of enslaved ancestors—less than 10% of the 10 million acres seized from the Cherokee, Muscogee Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw during forced removals.
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