Lorihadams-- hi guys...been busy!

[justusnak]

Now, Im not a vindictive person....but..LOL, IF I were. I would come inside the property line about 10 feet, run a good fence...and put in guineas, turkeys, and ducks. Not a hugh pen....say, 10 ft from theproperty line....20 ft wide, and the length of...well...thier yard! Or...you could run HOGS over there. Sure, it would only be for a few months in the summer.,..but, in the heat of the summer...well, they would get the "best" of those hogs. Or, maybe a little Buck goat??

 

[Wifezilla]

I've got just the duck. Her name is Abby and she can be heard blocks away.... LOL

 

[valmom]

Hugs for you- family can really be weird sometimes.

I agree with everyone- 2.5 acres can be made to be enough to do most of what you want- and free and clear is worth a lot of money. I'd plant a huge hedge (maybe of hazelnuts so you can harvest those) along the property line so you don't have to look across at your "neighbors" and just pretend they don't exist.

 

[Wifezilla]

Good idea. I was thinking grape vines but those need some fencing or a trellis of some sort. Hazelnuts would give you food AND privacy without needing support.

 

[kcsunshine]

That's right Lori - block those nasties out of your sight and your mind. You don't need to dwell on the crazies of family, just fix up and use what you have.

You know in your heart when that man gets old and sick and no one will take care of him (most certainly your hateful BIL won't), he'll be sorry he treated you all like he did. It always happens. The one that gets all the perks will be the one who is suddenly absent when you need help.

So - put it out of your mind. You don't need to worry, his day of reckoning is coming.

 

[lorihadams]

Well, everything that we planted....10 feet inside the property line is all fruit. 6 high bush blueberry plants, 3 apple trees, 2 pear trees, 2 cherry trees, and 6 blackberry bushes. I'm just worried that he's gonna come right on the property line with some stupid leland cypress (that's what he says he is going to do now) and block all the sun on my fruit.

We called him yesterday and asked him how much he wanted for the front piece all the way from our property line to the road. Now he says that we are giving him an ultimatum because we told him that we would take up the fencing and relocate it on our property. This means that he cannot claim land use on his property to get a lower tax rate. Property taxes on 38 acres in this county is gonna be a B#!$@..... We could easily reconfigure the fence situation and include the goats. Hubby is just worried that they will turn it to dirt/mud. I don't think it will be a problem. We have some space in the front yard where we could put in another small pasture space for them to graze in but I don't know if hubby will agree to it. As far as a cow goes, his uncle will let us graze one with his cows so I'm not worried about that.

We could even relocate the garden to the front yard and put the goats in where the garden was originally allocated. We'll see. We talked about dividing the chicken/duck run in half which would give the goats a 40x80 ft enclosure.

I may have to downsize some of my laying hens but that is not a big deal....I have 10 right now but I was thinking of going down to 7 or 8 anyway. Still don't know if I may have a roo or not.....they are only 2-3 months old. Haven't heard anyone crow yet but I suspect that one of my EEs may be a roo.

On a lighter note....I have pictures of the fire pit and the chicken tractor....a bit gloomy cause it is raining today. No pics of the inside of the shed cause hubby is still trying to organize his tools and won't let me post a pic

The fire pit is a hole dug about 18-24 inches deep with about 3 inches of gravel in the bottom. We lined the inside of the edges with some leftover stone we had from the bottom of the house and then surrounded it with some of the larger rocks from my papa's property. Chad's cousin is in the tree business and made us some benches from some old poplar trees he had to remove from a property and they turned out great! We built a fire in it last night and ate dinner outside around the fire!!!

Here is the tractor
It is 11'6" x 11'6" and the top is done in a a-frame with 2x2s. The bottom is lined with chicken wire and we have a homemade door with a spring on it so it closes behind me. We put it on 4 wheels, drilled two holes at the base and attached a rope so I can pull it pretty easily. We moved everyone into it 2 days ago and everyone seems happier.

I put some ACV in their waterers yesterday and they all seem to have perked up a bit and are moving around more. Still have the lamp on them but I have downsized to a 67 watt bulb from a 100 watt bulb to try to wean them off of it....probably one more week and they will be okay without it. It was pouring down rain so I stood on the porch to take the pic.

 

[lorihadams]

Oh, we're hoping that we can use thetractor as a greenhouse of sorts in the spring to start some seeds. We are planning on covering everything with a clear sheet of plastic and hoping that the black tarp will help to absorb some of the heat inside. I have a small fan type heater with a thermostat so we could use that at night to keep up our temps.

 

[ksalvagno]

It really is a shame that the BIL has started a feud with you guys. So now at your expense, he should get a tax break. Well, good fences make good neighbors. You may want to consider just fencing in your whole property. Then you can move things around as you wish. Plus then you don't have to worry about your dog going on his property or whatever. Protect yourself and make sure that anything you do is legal. If you don't own the property that has the fencing up, then I would remove it and use it for your own property. Obviously BIL is not going to sell you anything and it would probably be best to assume that the 2.5 acres is going to be it.

We don't even have a problem with our neighbors but are so glad that we fenced in the last bit of our property. We didn't like that the neighbors didn't always have their garbage secured and some paper garbage would eventually blow into our yard. Now if there is any garbage around, it is against the fence in their yard. They have been much better at securing their garbage since it is now an eyesore on their property. Plus we have a pasture for our goats.

I bet you can come up with ways to make your place look beautiful and use the majority of it for growing food or animals.

The chicken coop and fire pit look great.

 

[PamsPride]

Awesome chicken tractor! Your fire pit is very nice also!

I would not being helping BIL out with any tax breaks either!!

 

[lorihadams]

Yeah, hubby wants to put in some horseshoe pits for the party cause everyone he knows loves to play. We are trying to focus on the positives.

Problem is that MIL and FIL went through a bitter divorce when Chad was like 4. FIL married again to a woman that is very controlling. We love her but she always has an ulterior motive. You have to be very careful what you say around her. She has never been to either of my kids' birthday parties btw....she always claims she has a cold.

Anyway, there were alligations of abuse when Chad visited with his dad and her and it blew up into a gigantic custody, child support battle. So Chad didn't see his dad from the time he was 5 until he was 16. At 16 he decided he wanted to know his father and went to his work and introduced himself. While trying to start a relationship with him his mother decided it would be a perfect opportunity to take him back to court for more child support. FIL and step-MIL thought it was all done on purpose and that Chad was in on it, which he wasn't....his mom just got greedy. She has her own faults and we have not always gotten along, although we do now.

Anyway....fast forward to when we got engaged. I encouraged him to start a relationship with his father again because I thought that it was only right that he have an opportunity to know his future grandchildren someday cause we always planned to have kids. I met FIL for the first time in the receiving line at my wedding. AWKWARD.

We hung out with them for the next 5 yrs and about a yr after we had Tyler Chad decided that he would offer to buy some of the family land from his dad so that we could be in a better school system, closer to his job, closer to his family, and just generally in a better situation. We never asked him to give us anything. We always offered to buy the land and told him that if he decided not to sell it to us that was fine.

3 yrs later, my granny offered us the doublewide and we went back to FIL and told him the situation and offered to buy the land from him again. This is after drawing up house plans and different land scenarios and showing FIL and BIL.

Apparantly BIL does not accept change cause he is pissed that we didn't build like we said we would and now we are land locked by his property but we did it this way because we always understood from FIL that we could use the front pasture until he was ready to sell or give it to us, whichever he decided to do.

So, now BIL thinks that it was all a ploy to get more stuff out of his dad again just like when he was 16. We have never asked him to give us anything and we only brought up the land issue like once every 6 months so over a period of 3 yrs. BIL says we hounded FIL every chance we got to get the land away from him. He is so spoiled, his sister had lots of choice words about him at the wedding. FIL's brother says that he would have slapped BIL if he EVER talked to him the way he talked to his mama and daddy. He curses at them, he yells at them, he calls them names. It just never ends. FIL has high blood pressure and heart issues and he always calls him and complains about stuff and orders him to do stuff for him (like pressure watch his house, stain his deck, put the floor in his house, paint, etc. He's lazy, spoiled and abusive.

So now he has roughly 38 acres and we have 2.5. The thing is that he doesn't want to do anything with it. We offered to give him a couple meat chickens and he said that his wife wouldn't eat a yard bird. His wife was raised on a dairy farm. Her father owns the largest dairy in the county she is from. He milks 1200 head around the clock. He is "wealthy country folk". She is as spoiled as BIL. I have only been in BIL's house 1 time in 5 years. We have had BIL over for xmas dinners, birthday parties, cookouts, my husband has made every effort to have a relationship with him and get to know him. 2 days ago he even went to help him get his car out of the shop. Then he drops the bomb on him about the property.

My husband gives and gives and gives and tries to be a good person. Everyone is mad at both BIL and FIL now. The whole family is ticked off at how they have treated Chad, not only now but over the years. He went to see his uncle yesterday and he says that he is going to go see FIL. Chad told him not to and he promptly told Chad that he was a grown man and he'd do what he darn well pleased. I love uncle....his son lives on the other side of us and they can't believe BIL either.

I'm just exhausted.

Hubby didn't want anything in our front yard cause he didn't want to block the view but the kids always play in the back yard anyway and so we may move the garden up front and keep the goats in the back. I don't know. We'll have to talk about it.

Thanks ya'll for listening.