Making friends?

[oosik]

My mother taught me - If you can't say something nice about a person, just don't say anything at all.

I have two neighbors. One on the north - one on the south. Both are BIG ranchers with thousands of acres of open range land. I have 80.

The neighbor on the south - the salt of the earth. The neighbor on the north - ah, hum. Fortunately - the north property is now being run/operated by his son. I get along quite well with the son.

 

[MossRoad]

Received a letter last night from a new neighbor. We have an adjoining property line. I was put on notice that due to issues where they used to live, I and my livestock are not welcome on their land (liability issues). Neither I nor my livestock have been on their property. I have not met these people and now I have 0 desire to. Rumor was they moved from city to country life, it kinda shows.

Just ignore it, go about your business, smile and wave if you see them. They'll either eventually wave back, or turn and ignore you. Either one doesn't hurt.

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

To make friends, one must show themselves friendly.

When a nastygram came from a new neighbor in the mail, I just ignored thier lack of social skills and were continually friendly to them.
Offered to help them out when a wind storm blew through and knocked over two trees on thier driveway. They had no chain saws or equipment and they needed to get out to get to work.
After that they changed thier attitude towards us and after the three years they watch our livestock for us if we are out of the area.

 

[Rustyiron]

They (apparently) have jumped to a conclusion about either you, farmers or country folk.
Make a fool out of them with your response or actions.
In the "city", those types rely on hired services or officials never experiencing a helpful or thoughtful neighbors.
There's a good chance that they'll realize that it's nice to have people that you can lean on and hopefully they can be of some use to you one day.
Then, they might just be flaming aholes, relieving your conscious
when that blizzard, power outage or other situation where you kindly want to help (normal human behavior) and just look away, minding your own business with a slight smile on your face.

 

[JJT]

I've said it numerous times, "Good neighbors are priceless". We're on 45 acres and can see 4 other houses, (800' - 1000' away), when the leaves are off the trees. 2 are fantastic, 1 is ok/cordial and 1 is an absolute ass. It sounds like your neighbor is in the later category, sorry.....

 

[Dftodd]

We're fortunate in that we have about 7-8 neighbors and get along fairly well with all of them. One used to be trouble now and then, but the decades of alcohol and pain killers took the fight out of her, so she's pretty quiet now. Plus, her son is in and out of prison. Very quiet when he's on vacation.

We had a similar neighbor at our last home.

She was something else. She bordered our neighbors property so they got the brunt of her ire.

One day we were talking to the neighbors who bordered her property.

All of a sudden she crossed their property onto mine and started accusing them of doing all sorts of things from poisoning her plants, to mowing over the property line to intentionally tossing their grandkids trampoline over the fence destroying some of her flowers.

Just an FYI, it was Tornado that actually relocated the trampoline.

About a minute into her rant I threw her off our property.

About 2 years later she got picked up for cooking meth in a vacant building with a few other people.

That explained some things

After that, she really chilled out. I'm not sure if she got sober, or what. But nobody really heard anything much from her after that.

 

[dodge man]

You and your livestock? If it just said your livestock I might get it, sort of. But to include “you” as part of the letter kind of puts you off.

 

[Dftodd]

We had a neighbor from he$$ for a bit. The house next door was a rental property.

The couple from California that was renting were the worst busy bodies and passive aggressive, back stabbing so and so's

They came over once and got into it with me because they said my dog was outside freezing his butt off.

We had a sunroom on the back of the house with doggy door and it was heated and cooled.

Apparently my dog decided to dig out of the yard and go visit. They said he was shivering really bad. I pointed out that he has a doggy door and heated and cooled area to go to when we aren't home. If he decided to freeze his butt off that's on him. And then promptly forgot about the conversation.

5 months later during a heat wave, they called the cops saying I was leaving the dogs outside when it was too hot. And they didn't have any water.

Cop shows up and starts asking me about the dogs, the heat, and the water situation.

So I walk him to the side gate into the back yard. He saw the kiddy pool by the water spigot in the shade with good clean water.

I then walked him around the corner and showed him the doggy door and heated and cooled sun porch.

At that point the cop said he had seen enough and the people were FOS.

I then said "Hey, while your here, can I show you something???"

And walked him over to the side of my yard that bordered the neighbors. I introduced him to the sweet old nag the neighbors had.

I showed him her hooves and the obvious neglect. Offered the nag an apple off my tree, and he saw the difficulty she had with it. Her teeth needed to be addressed.

Well.... he walked over and had a really good come to Jesus meeting with the knuckle heads next door.

A few days later I see the farrier put there working on the nag, and that California couple stewing about how much money it was costing them

 

[ponytug]

Received a letter last night from a new neighbor. We have an adjoining property line. I was put on notice that due to issues where they used to live, I and my livestock are not welcome on their land (liability issues). Neither I nor my livestock have been on their property. I have not met these people and now I have 0 desire to. Rumor was they moved from city to country life, it kinda shows.

To me, that's just a weird, weird letter.

We were guilty of having sent a letter to our neighbors a few weeks after moving in, but it was a "Hey, we are new and having a BBQ, and we would love to meet you" type letter.

I'd be tempted to bid on the work for their GC, as a way to break the ice. Who knows what they went through at their last place?

Like anywhere, most of our neighbors are nice, and a few are wonderful, and two, well, as @oosik wrote, the less said the better, but one was convicted as part of a murder for monetary gain scheme that was apparently carried out. Out of prison, but not showing much respect for law and order.

All the best,

Peter

 

[Dftodd]

You and your livestock? If it just said your livestock I might get it, sort of. But to include “you” as part of the letter kind of puts you off.

I'm not sure how you feel about it this.

But if someone is trying to retieve their animal that went on walk about, I could care less if they ask me permission first before coming into my land to get it.

If they need to get their animal, come get it.

I came home last spring and one of the neighbors calves had pulled a Houdini

She was wandering around my yard checking things out. I got some cute pictures, texted the owner, and laughed about it.