Hi Guys!
I just found this forum! This is great! I usually am in pets and gardening.
My hubby and I bought a 38 acre junk yard smack out in the middle of the Everglades a little over a year ago. We are diligently trying to get rid of the junk and turn this place into a modest farm and citrus grove.
It has been tough. We have had several rattlesnake/ dog bites and even one dead dog. The snakes are very aggressive and the alligators are worse. BUT ya can't top the neighbors...I feel like I live in "Deliverance"! Our neighbor, same dirt road but in front- no reason to come back this far, has terrorized me since day 1. My hubby has to stay in Ft Lauderdale until (hopefully in the next few years) gets transferred out here to the west coast. He has night blindness and cannot commute.
This place was abandoned for several years so the neighbors hunted and partied here. They took it really bad when we bought it. They even made bets at how fast they could chase us out. There are many incidences but the worst was when I found the neighbor in my house snooping! I am on cancer drugs and usually sleep from noon until 2 (what I call the barfing time). I work on the computer and with a pressing deadline, I decided to not take my meds but to get my work out. I looked up and there was my neighbor standing in my kitchen looking in the fridge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I said Hey Don, Can I help you? He didn't answer me but just left. The next day he came over and bragged how many times he has come into my house while I was sleeping and the dogs didn't bark. I felt so violated- I called the police. Ever since then it has been "war".
This is a "cut and paste" for what I added to a thread this morning:
As you know, we are in a boundary dispute with the neighbor. It has really caused problems for getting all the junk (metal, junked boats, trailers, etc--plain trash) off the entrance of our property.The neighbor protested that we were on his property so we had to stop work. It took us a few weeks to get a survey team out here. In the swamps everyone backs away. We finally did and they were out here today. $1000 a day!!!!! We have a 'metes and bounds' description but being that this is the boonies, nothing matches up. My neighbor is a real mean and nasty jerk so the outcome is actually funny. SO FAR....now that is because there still seems to be a 10' descrepancy ( to our advantage) of old survey markers. The funny part is our neighbor has thrown our company out of the pond area, harrassed the heck out of me and it looks like our property line goes thru his front yard. (chuckle). He has 2 acres but claims close to 10 acres. I know he isn't intelligent but MAN! I called the police for his "caretaker" sneaking in my house when I was sleeping and they turned it into a property dispute. We needed to get a survey just so when I call the police with a valid complaint- it isn't swept under the rug as anything else. That and we are considered "outsiders" so even the local sheriffs blow us off. Anyway, the neighbor is irrate but he pushed us into having to do a survey and it came back to bite him in the keister. As soon as the survey is certified, we are putting up a fence. :-)
We try to be good neighbors and are very disappointed that things are going this way. We are very outging people. We even gave them food AND A TRACTOR aft6er the last hurricane. There is alot more to it but this is good enough. I have been picked at for over a year and don't want to give them the honor of the time it would take me to tell you all of the disrespectful behaviour.
OK......Now that I am telling you how it is.... I have a question.
We hear there is a meat goat that literally has litters. Sometimes 7 at a time. I sure would like info!
I'm new, May I introduce myself?
Cyberageous:
Welcome to this forum!
I can't help you with the goat question but.....Have you thought of a restraining order or a protective order against the neighbors? Or would that just inflame the situation? I guess you have seen a lawyer about this?
Also, I like the idea of the fence......I can't remember who said it but..."Good fences make good neighbors"
Whats yours is yours and whats mine is mine and never the twain shall meet!
You are really brave to put up with the snakes....I guess you have to wear snake chaps when you go out? I hate snakes, especially the posionous ones....wish they were all dead.
My wife and I are trying to restore a small farm in southwest Virginia, if all goes well we should get cows this spring. We already have chickens and goats.
Good luck and keep us posted.
Virginian
Virginian, I'm outraged. Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall." http://www.bartleby.com/104/64.html
Cyber, welcome. I hope someone can answer your goat question. So sorry about your neighbor problems: I do admire your sense of humor in the situation. Ugh, it's nasty when you have someone bent on illustrating nasty stereotypes. I do hope the fence helps.
Stand your ground with the neighbor.. Sounds like you have a tough situation.
I too had to get a surveyor to prove that I was right about the property line. She had bulldozed out trees , put tons ( and I mean tons )of topsoil on her side.. It was truly horrible ... She called the Sheriff out to arrest the guy that puts crops in .. While he was on his tractor.. , etc.. Called me at work,, you name it..
Turns out she was wrong.. And really , I am pretty easy to get along with.
Zeppy:
Laughing here at your outrage! I thought it might have been Frost that wrote that but my memory left about the same time the kids arrived in our household!
Cyber:
Stand your ground as best you can, though I know it is hard at times. When you do get the point across to the neighbors to stay on their side of the line they will still probably resent you being there.
Hold your head high and keep going!
Keep us informed.
Virginian
oh, how awful for you cyberageous!
i have a friend who knows goats well, i will ask her. i know keikos are a great choice, with a higher meat ratio than boers, and i know they are also good mothers, but don't recall how many. also, they don't get feet problems, which could be an issue ina swmap area...
soemwhere i have some goat links, will post them if you like...
my friend had one goat that had four, but i don't know what breed, she has several.
tamara
I am astonished and honored with all the replies. I feel loved!! :-)
I will try to address each question..
Yep we have a "no tresspassing warning" given to my neighbor by the sheriff's department. Out here, we are outsiders so the neighbor had to push it and disobey the sheriff's warning, She, the sheriff, didn't want to make a formal complaint. it took our attorney's prompting to make it official.
Today ($1000 a day mind you) it's official. The surveyors have found the markers. Monday, my hubby will see the attorney to do an eviction notice to get all of their stuff off our land so we can put up a fence.
Being that I am here alone, my good neighbor (3 miles away) is concerned for me and says her and the hubby will be here in a heartbeat if they give me trouble. From what she went thru at her place, she expects them to terrorize me at nite with swamp buggies and guns. They even killed all of her livestock. It's crazy here! What century did I move into?!
My hubby hates that I have to fend for myself. I am on cancer drugs to boot and am not always up to par.
But then I have the evil snicker-snicker!.......That's what they get for being mean!
just make sure you have some protection to back up your evil snicker, like a BIG DOG, maybe two or three of them. i bet there is a place you can rent guard dogs...
still haven't heard back from my friend on the goats. gonna call her again right now...
tf
Good morning, tf! Have have 5 large dogs but they know the neighbor.
The real truth is, this guy has intimidated me so long that I am afraid of him so I look the other way if he looks at me.
Once the fence is up, I'll feel better. I still worry about my dogs going there and I hate that he stares at me when I am doing my chores.
On a good note, it looks like the goat pasture will be bigger than we planned!
We have 20 turkeys (I keep 13) coming in 10 days. We are so excited! We hope when they get large- they're the giant white meat kind, we can keep them in the goat pasture also.
I still haven't found out anymore info on the large littered goat either. A neighbor said she saw something about them before in a local paper so we just have to keep asking around.
We are living very "rustic" right now but our thinking is, get the critters settled in and they can grow while we do the gardening and work.
Our biggest road block is good dirt for planting the citrus trees. Being that we live in the swamp, we are sitting on a coral rock shelf that you have to bust thru to plant thigs, replacing the rock with good soil. We are in a drought now but normal we are a swamp so everything also must be in a raised bed. That's lots of dirt!
This year we will concentrate on getting the fruit bearing (mostly citrus) trees planted. We are learning from trial and error and had drowned the ones that we had planted last year. Also, a few shades trees would be real nice!
I started a website http://www.lifeintheglades.com it's not going very fast but you can see where I live.
WOW....the devestation was worse that I had expected. It must be an uphill battle cleaning all that up.
Please try to keep your chin up and not let the neighbors intimidate you. What is it that the Brits say?...."Keep a stiff upper lip."
The good shall prevail.
Did I see some daylilies in the plastic pots in your pics? I am a daylily fan myself....a.'hemhead'...LOL
Keith
ogng to your site now.
yes, a stiff upper lip! you can't let them know that they intimidate you! just smile and let them wonder what you are up to!!! what they think of you is, after all, none of your business LOL
my friend must be out of town. i will look up my goat links and see what i come up with...
tf
Each day is a better day in paradise! Once the fence is up,the stress will pass and I can really enjoy it here.
Yes the storms knocked us back a few steps but we are OK and that's what counts. On the good side, we have a friend with 10 kids who sold alot of our scrap metal and made some $ for himself. Actually after the 3 hurricanes this place was basically scrap metal.
I don't know what a day lily looks like but in pots, I know all of that and there aren't any daylilies. You might be looking at the hawaiian ti plants.
All that stuff in pots is what I have grown over the years with the hopes of finding a place like this. The only reason the government didn't pick it up first was because of how messed up it was. They didn't even want to deal with the cleanup. We are in the middle of Big Cypress Preserve which no one can believe we were able to buy in.
Once I get all those potted plants and trees in the ground, that will be my veggie garden area. As a cancer survivor, I want the healthiest food I can get!
good for you! you know, you can eat yourself well!!!
i finally heard back from my goat-friend. she has:Alpines, which she doesn NOT recommend, Nubian, LaManch, and i cna't rmember the other name. She believes it is how you care for them that determeines how many eggs they produce before breeding. She did mention concern about it being wet there, that you could have a problem with foot rot, and had a neat suggestion: build an are up with stacked cinderblock, like a mountain for them to play on. It will keep their feet scraped clean.
I still like Keikos the best, but they are high priced...
tf
Yes, I saw the Keikos in the Farmer's Journal today. That is probably what we will go with.
I agree, it's too wet here. We plan to bring in alot of fill but I love the idea of a play land!!! We can't get the goats during this summer- we need to get in the fences, hot wire them (bobcats & panther) and raise the land, plus get in a few shade trees. We want to do the best that we can for them. Right now, I am trying to get all my ducks in a row, so to speak.
Breeding wise, we would love to have larger litters and I don't mind supplementing bottles but it is whatever we can get our hands on that is the best that we can do.
I have been chipping away at the coral rock today to try and get a trough dug for electric (hot box) to the dog pen. I cannot go anywhere unless I take "the crew"........... 5 pits with me. It's getting too hot to leave them in the van and if I leave them home they are trouble.
We built a 50' square pen for them with all kinds of fun in it but NOOO they won't stay in it. They climb or head butt their way out. My neighbor says he'll shoot them if they go to his yard. The worst is that his dog comes and gets them. He fathered 4 litters from my girls last year- I gave up and had to spay them. The dog also yanked my cat ( I had her since she was a day old) off the porch and killed her right in front of me. He crushed her back so it was a long and agonozing death. We can't get a fence up fast enough.
What a beautitiful evening tonite! I love this time of year here!
yes, get that fence UP!
there is a good source for keikos in TN or kentucky, neither is far from you. might as well staret with good stock.
hmm, that coral rocks would make and interesting palyground too! and a pond liner. the coral should make the pond a good place to drink...
so sorrya bout your cat.
tf