finished planting but not before the law was called on me

[DANOCHEESE]

back about 25 years ago I worked for a farmer and we were one of the first to have liquid manure. One field the farmer bought had an acre carved out of it for a house that was sold to a guy. This guy would complain about everything, manure smells, cows make nosie, Milkers are casuing his power to dip, he even got a petition out to stop liquid manure. This guy would swerve at us ( like a tractor with a 5000 gallon honey wagon is going to move for him) Now you have to know the farmer, nicest guy you could know, went out of his way to make this guy happy. We never spread near his house. Let him have an extra 50 foot of ground to make his lawn bigger.

Well one day a few cows got loose and ran down the town road and his wife drove over some Cow S&^% this guy comes over and demands the world from us in a not so polite way. I had to wash the jerks car. ever wash a car with a barn brush!!!

Well that Sunday the guy is having a ncie little party outside. Woman in nice white dress,s Farmer in no less words, says hook -up the manure pump and the honey wagon now. This guy never shouted an order in his life. So I hook it all up and fill a load for him Tells me to follow in the truck, off we go and spread the entire 5000 gallons around this one acre. I never seen so many cop cars. All the local sherriif said was farming is legal. The guy decided he better be a little more tolerant of farming.

I bet if he did that today there would have been thrity lawyers lined up.

 

[Soundguy]

That's a completely unrelated discussion, vs the previous one where the city person comes in them poops on the farmer who's bene there for years.

soundguy

May I offer another point of view? Some of us move out from the city (21 yrs ago) like we had always wanted to, and get the same treatment as all the spoiled whiners you've described here. Their whining and troublemaking makes us disgusted, too. Just because we didn't inherit hundreds of acres like a "real" farmer doesn't make us second-class country citizens. Keeping a full-time job in the city doesn't mean our hearts aren't country. Most farmers or their wives keep a job there. too -- have to just to make ends meet. Just because we try to buy a few acres, maybe don't use the normal commercial methods to raise afew animals or crops doesn't make us inferior neighbors. Some of us respect you for what you do, we pull over when your equipment comes down the road, we respect your property lines, and mean you no harm. I lived on less than one acre for years surrounded by crop fields, with 2 acres unused lot w/ unused barn right in back of me. Tried several times to just buy that little property, he always said no. Guess what? It' still sitting there unused and ugly.

 

[rox]

Yep.. I had almost the same experience when we bought our ag land. some guy moved in behind us, and calle dthe fire dept on me the very 1st day... basically lied and said i had started a fire over on his sid eof the property... when in reality, my fire was in a pit, covered by metal screeinging to control embers,,, I had a tractor on hand with a blade and a pile of sand to push over the pile to controll it, as well as a few buckets of water setting out there for emergencies.

After that day, i decided the hog pens, turkey pens, chicken and duck pens would all be built along that back side o fthe property. Taht was 8ys ago.. I don't think I have ever seen him in his back yard since then... especially not anytime it is warm... ( I keep the maneuer pile fromt he horse stalls down there too ).

I guess he shot himself int he foot on that one... hope he;s happy about extending the olive leaf that first day!

soundguy

Soundguy you are so funny! I cracked up reading DANOCHEESE's story also.
If you areout int he country and farming the people who move in around you should know what they are getting. What amazes me is that people want the farms around them for the pastoral estetic view, "Look I'm surrounded by farm fields" That was no doubt a big reason they bought. But then to complain about what has to be done to provide that pastoral view is unconsciencable. Deere755 I am glad you got your beans planted. We ahd so much rain that we missed one spraying of 3 that needs to take place during the bloom of the olive trees which increases our yield. So trust me I can sympathize with you about wet fields and about the need to work like a bat out of h*ll when the fields dry up.

Our uphill neighbor, great guy retired mechanic fixes our tractors for free, moved and plumbed in a hot water heater etc. he bought a horse. So now we get a few horse flys that fly down by us. No big deal. I might see one a day or one every other day. Is that something to complain about? I get free compost from the manure all we can use. He says don't even worry if I'm not hme, sjut come and get it. My husband does spray his olive trees when he sprays ours, not a big deal it's only like 20 trees. You ought to see the magnificent view our uphill neighbor has of our farm. All the olive trees all trimmed and clean fields, he likes living next to our farm. He helps us we help him.

Even the neighbor behind us, he can be a poop head. His 12 year old son snuck up on me when I was on a ladder prunning and threw a fire cracker at me. It had some kind of a shell to it which i retrieved and when my husband came home we took the empty shell and visited with the neighbor behind us. So the son has laid real low for 2 ears now because he got in trouble. We didn't make a big deal out of it, we were calm about the firecracker, kids will be kids and honeslty we are so remote that we are about his only target to prank. So anyway this srping the dad buys neighbr boy a mini bike. I can tell every day when school is out, vroom vroom goes the mini bike. So he gets tired of driving it on his smaller property so he starts driving it through our back field that is adjacent to their property. He makes a big circle using our back field to join up with a back foeld form his parents land. We are fine with that and that mini bike noise is not that big of deal.

When you live in the country you need to adapt to the country ways. It's not the city, if you want that then stay in the city!

 

[mjarrels]

Neighbor Dairy farms hundreds of acres... during corn harvest he chops corn for the silos until the wee hours of the night... doesn't bother me (rents our 38 acres too for cows and hay) Development aka 80 homes on my north side, 450 homes on the west side (golf course fairways) and 200 homes on the south side... Just waiting for the day for a court summons! Yep, we were here a hundred of years first... BUT we are not lawyers... $500,000 to $ 900,000 homes must previle. Funny part, we own a share of stock in the 36 hole golf course (45 shares is all there was)... Folks are compaining they can't affort to buy a share on the golf course that they built on... Went to vote last year to reduce shares to two for one... We killed that idea quickly. DO your HOMEWORK!

mark

 

[RonMar]

Those people probably don't have a clue. And calling the law is how things are handled where they come from(let someone in a uniform with a gun go face the possible angry response.

You could go introduce yourself and explain how the whole crop thing works... A house I rented one time in upstate NY had cornfield on 2 sides. As mentioned, 98% of the time it is perfectly quiet, but the work has to be crammed into that other 2%, and they probably don't understand that... Knowing what is going to happen next might keep them from going off the deep end next time, cause like the man said, farming isn't illegal and the fields were there first...

 

[L3650]

The township I live in is also suffers from sprawl. To protect the farmers before they are outnumbered, the town adopted a "right to farm" ordinance.

We too are surrounded by farms of various sizes. Large corporate dairy farms, fifth generation family farms and recreational farms.

The field directly behind me is leased to a family farm that is my neighbor (everybody within a few miles is your neighbor in the country). Two weeks ago they were chopping haylage and working their butts off to beat the coming rains. I took a cooler full of iced down soda and water down the lane where they were staging the loads. I left the cooler and told them I would pick it up later when I took a walk. Farming is a tough way to make a living.

 

[ray66v]

Those people probably don't have a clue. And calling the law is how things are handled where they come from(let someone in a uniform with a gun go face the possible angry response.

You could go introduce yourself and explain how the whole crop thing works... A house I rented one time in upstate NY had cornfield on 2 sides. As mentioned, 98% of the time it is perfectly quiet, but the work has to be crammed into that other 2%, and they probably don't understand that... Knowing what is going to happen next might keep them from going off the deep end next time, cause like the man said, farming isn't illegal and the fields were there first...

This is exactly the way to do this. The city people also have rights that sometimes are not accepted by the farmers. Sometimes a simple civil conversation, where both sides can discuss their concerns, can go a long way to everyone living together in harmony. (God help me, I sound like a liberal) Now hold hands and sing!

 

[LMTC]

This is exactly the way to do this. The city people also have rights that sometimes are not accepted by the farmers. Sometimes a simple civil conversation, where both sides can discuss their concerns, can go a long way to everyone living together in harmony. (God help me, I sound like a liberal) Now hold hands and sing!

We moved from city to very, very rural 23 years ago. You have it quite right IMO, up through "civil conversation." We tried to listen and learn what folks around here expected, and then fit in as much as possible. So I think you're still safe with that contention. However.....if after this civil conversation you experience urges to begin singing "I'd like to teach the world to sing" or anything written by John Lennon.....you might want to seek professional help

 

[Unclebuck257]

We have those kind of city folks moving out here from the Dallas-Ft Worth area too. They move to the country to get away from the city and then immediately start to try and change things to the way they had them in the city. Didn't anyone realize that rock and dirt country roads get muddy when it rains and country roads aren't paved?

The kicker was about a year ago when a new neighbor, from the city, bought the land that borders on 1/2 of one side of our place. He wanted our cows to graze on his place for the AG exemption, but then called one day shortly after and said to get them off immediately because they were "tearing up his land". It had rained and the cows were leaving hoof marks in the wet ground.

He then hired a bulldozer and was going to put in a new stock tank (farm pond), and directed the dozer operator to put in a dirt burm across the entire width of his property to divert all the rain water that fell to his tank. Our very well established stock tank, built in 1929, was at the bottom of the slope on that side of his land, on our side of the property line. I stopped him from putting in a full width burm, but not until after I threatened a law suit and was told that "Any rain water that fell on his property was his and he'd do as he wanted to with it". One of those city folks that believed he knew it all but really knew nothing at all.

He lasted about one year out here and my neighbors and I were very glad to see him go. He offended almost every neighbor close to him while living here. He told someone that "he and his family just were not cut out for living in the country"! We could have saved him about 11 months of misery and told him that after he was here about one month, if he had just asked!!

 

[MikeD74T]

My vacation/retirement home abuts land belonging to the largest dairy farm in N.H., milking in the neighborhood of 1300 cows. Two or three times each summer they spread with liquid manure. The smell will make your eyes water for about three days. Not great on a hot night in July/August. I grew up (1956-67) across the street from the farm when they milked 65 cows. It was not smelly then.
For me the good news is that the farm still owns the land and is likely to for longer than I will live and the fields are not likely to become housing developments. The smell goes away in 3 days, neighbors are forever. MikeD74T