Question of the Day ...

Laura: "Were you having trouble w/ people coming in (besides 8 year old girls and dogs)?"

September 11, 2:52pm comment via Blogger

You'd think, being 800' off the road - scratch that - a DIRT road that is one-way 78% of the year because the dippy -out- is covered/swamped with water (that people try to drive through and their little cars and get STUCK! but the bus drivers know better and say WooHoo! there's no way i'm coming down there to get your kid), would deter people from traveling down our driveway. First, there really can't be that much traffic down our road. Second, the traffic that is coming down our road we'd assume had somewhere down the road to go, I'd coin it "Purposeful Driving" even. Third ... Really? People? STAY OFF OUR LAND!

So one of the reasons that we got this land, one of the things we prayed that we could do when we bought this land, is to share it with other people. And I still hope we can do this, but with the trouble that we've had so far with others coming onto our land when we're there, we wondered how many people were trespassing when we weren't there.

Before we laid paid bucko bucks for the driveway, there was a littler amount paid for a 2-track. On this 2-track we had 1. our neighbor's son's friend get stuck in his 'burban off the side of the 2-track. they did not clean this up, in fact, we just ran over the shovel tuesday night and scared the crap outta me that we broke our transmission. 2. someone dumped 2 broken lazyboys and a broken plastic lawnchair. ... 600' off the road, down our 2-track.

Then we paid for the driveway. And for this reason, I am very protective of our driveway. Did you know, Driveways are NOT cheap? even Gravel? Since we the driveway has been in we've met 1. a jeep of unknown origin "checking it out", 2. a quad and dirtbike "We thought a subdivision was going in back here", 3. a man on a horse "Just checkin' out the barn", 4. a person who formerly hunted on the property "Seein' what your doin' back here". 5. our nieghbors dog, who ate a chicken and scared the eggs out of another (really, she doesn't lay anymore), 6. our neighbors daughter, visiting the horses. This is all while we've been at the property (and the ones i can remember, i'm sure there's a couple more i'm forgetting) - and we are there 2ish (sometimes more, sometimes less) hours a day. So, our question has been, How many people are taking liberty to trespass onto our property when we aren't there? How many are we missing?

We wouldn't be concerned about other people being back there, except for the liability that surrounds having farm animals. And that (this may be pessimistic thinking, i apologize) people often on quads, dirtbikes, and other similar items are often looking for mud to mess in. And that we have these animals to protect as well. If something happened to the baby, when born, I'd be SO upset. If they ran over a cat? chicken? let the horses out? the list goes on...

Hence the gate. No, it's not locked. And yes, there are (many) ways around it, yet if people really want to get back there, they will no matter what we do. We're thinking the gate will at least announce that this is private property. Hopefully, someday, we can modify it to look more welcoming, but most likely not until we're living out there full-time.

Wow. Long answer for a short question. Bet no one else will ask a question for a while!