New Neighbors
 

Well, the rumor was true: a couple of Amish families have bought the quarter section across the crick from us.

We met them today out on the road. He said the deal is done and they are going to split it into two pieces with two different driveways. They were looking at house sites and meeting with a well driller this afternoon.

Now the question will be if they can get the crazy old man that they bought the place from to move off their land. He is still living up there in his shed. It will be a great day for us when he is finally gone for good!

This is the guy whose dogs killed another neighbor's sheep some years ago, and who accosted me out on the road about 18 months ago and threatened to kill me. Of course the sheriffs wouldn't do a dang thing about it.

Re: New Neighbors
 

I wonder how long it takes an Amish family to drill a well.

Re: New Neighbors
 

Fingers crossed that this lunatic A-hole moves on.

I had a similar situation. My father in law passed away and left my wife a nice house. The only problem was my FIL never lived there. And he rented it to his friend who was bat ass crazy. This guy was scary crazy. And now it was my job to kick him out. I wasn't looking forward to it.

But when I got there he was gone. It seems that all the neighbors had chipped in for a bus ticket to get him back to Syracuse. They didn't want him there any more than I did.

This guy was truly scary. When I was cleaning up the house I found a bunch of guys driver's licenses. :confused:

Who leaves their drivers license at some weirdo's house? I called the Sheriff's Dept. But I never heard back from them. It was just weird. I gutted the place. It was a mess. It's nice now. It better be. It cost me enough. But it was a freak show when I got there.

We dug up the backyard to put in a pool and I was waiting for the bodies to start popping up. Thankfully none did. I rent the place to my friend now. He has no complaints.The bad mojo is gone. :)

Re: New Neighbors
 

Maybe the Amish people can bury the crazy guy in Paul's back yard. :lol:

Re: New Neighbors
 

They apparently had a professional "English" well driller out her to look at it, so it will be done with modern equipment. Funny, they won't drive (or have a drivers license) but they will hire "the English" to taxi them around when needed. There was some guy in a big van that brought them out here yesterday.

The "lunatic A-hole" had an outfit out here drilling a couple years ago. Apparently they went down 100' and didn't hit water and that was the end of it. I don't know if the new folks are going to have that well drilled deeper? Unless you're right in the crick bottom you have to go pretty deep to hit water around here, and sometimes not at all. Our well is 300' but the water came up to 50-60 feet from the surface after they hit the aquifer. You could almost siphon it down into the coulee.

The "lunatic A-hole" was real nice when he first bought the place. He and his brother stopped by to meet me and we chatted for a couple hours. We called them the "Georgia Boys" :) Jolly old Rednecks, my kind of people. Then I guess he started taking pills for his back and got addicted and started pulling stunts to get more pills. He had a bunch of dogs and would let them run loose even when he (apparently) went to town for several weeks at a time to stay with his brother. That's when the trouble started but it was like six years after I shot one of the dogs and we hadn't talked to him all that time that he stopped me out on the road when I was on horseback and threatened to kill me. (I think I told that whole story on the old "neighbors" thread a while ago.)

It's really pretty sad but still he's been a real detriment to an otherwise nice little community so I don't have much sympathy. I don't think he has any bodies buried up there, but I don't know about the other place behind us because of the now long gone guy that owned it when we moved out here :uhmk: One of my daughters used to have a cadaver dog and I always wanted to have her check out the place. There's a nice young couple back there right now, but we've told them that if they ever want to sell that we will be first in line to buy it!

Re: New Neighbors
 

Oh heck, they have 160 acres for that now :lol: :devil:

Re: New Neighbors
 

Hell we drilled down 1000 feet for water but we. Are on a summit tho

Re: New Neighbors
 

Wow. My well is 30 feet deep. The water is at about 12' from the surface. The water level does not drop when running.

Re: New Neighbors
 

Another neighbor drilled down in the creek bottom and got water at about 15 feet.

That's not necessarily safe drinking water for humans. Basically just the creek running below the surface. They put in the well for livestock because the creek doesn't run on the surface all the time.

Re: New Neighbors
 

:lol: They'd have a hard time doing that now. It's all concrete. They could throw him in the pool. :lol:

And I wouldn't suggest going in that yard. My buddy has the world's meanest psycho German Shepherd.

When I rented the place I forgot to tell the pool guy about the dog.(Whoops! my bad) :dohh:

The pool guy called me and said Paul there's a big azz mean dog in your backyard. I opened the gate and it came running. I barely got out. I'm not going back there. :lol: Then he quit. Now my buddy has to clean the pool himself. What the heck. It saves me money.

Re: New Neighbors
 

dont be surprised if you see a car shaped lump tarped in the side yard. I did radio work for dealers and some customers were amish, they openly drove cars but eschewed the modern accoutrements. meaning: it was pretty standard to remove the radio from the DASH and install it under the SEAT, so common that we pre-made the harnesses.

Re: New Neighbors
 

Not exactly a "side yard" - the place they bought is 160 acres of mostly cliffs, but some trees and grass. With two families I guess they will each have 80 acres. One household will be crossing about an eighth mile of our property.

We have some really nice sunsets with the bright light on those cliffs to the east of us :)

Re: New Neighbors
 

Did you get brave and google any of the names?

Re: New Neighbors
 

:lol: Nope. I don't want to know. I just wanted to get all the weird stuff out of the house. And there was some weird stuff. Like a full sized Spiderman outfit. WTF is up with that? :confused: :lol:And there were picture frames on the walls with no pictures. Just the frames. The toilets didn't work. Nothing did. No washer and dryer, the water heater didn't work. No heating or air conditioning. I don't know how this guy lived there. The neighbors said that he was carrying laundry in a bathrobe with only one slipper on. :lol: And there are no laundromats anywhere near the place. I don't know where he was going. What a nut. :crazy:

I tore everything out and tossed it in the dumpster including Spiderman. When I was done the place was nice.Everything was new. And I was down about 100K. So much for a free house. It's like a free puppy. It's not free. You're going to pay. And this place needed literally everything. Doors, windows HVAC, flooring. You name it. It needed it. It did have a good roof thankfully. But that's about it.

I got it fixed up and then my wife got another job up here. So we moved. All that work and we were only there for a few months. But I can't complain. It keeps going up in value. My buddy takes good care of it. It's currently worth about 700k. :) Although it doesn't matter. I'll never sell it. Let my kids do it when I kick the bucket.

Re: New Neighbors
 

When that guy "moves out", but you don't see him around, don't buy any "homemade" sausage from your new neighbors.

Re: New Neighbors
 

Or BBQ ;)

I've heard about the BBQ, along with a side of fried green tomatoes.

Re: New Neighbors
 

Seriously though, I hope they get him to leave without anyone getting hurt.

We had a hell of a time with the crazy woman that we bought our house from. Everyone around was so happy to see her leave that we were pretty welcome to the neighborhood.

Re: New Neighbors
 

Amish and Mennonite have bought up much of the farmland around my wife's grandparents place as the old farmers die off and sell out. They're great people, great neighbors but they definitely have changed the "feel" of things. They use the land hard (build, excavate, clear, farm outside of modern practices for short term gain). And they hunt whatever, whenever and wherever they want. It used to be great deer country, that's over. At least it's still mom and pop farmland and not owned by China, Bill Gates or huge corporate farms. And they don't allow crazies lol.

Re: New Neighbors
 

Well, I don't know exactly what they're going to do with this place because a lot of it is vertical cliffs! Basically this land around here isn't good for much of anything except grazing cattle or sheep and you need thousands of acres to make that work considering how dry it is and how much of it is barren forest and rock formations.

There was a big ranch that was subdivided into quarter sections back in the 1970s, and then split into 80s, 40s, & 20s for rural homes like we have. We had 40 and now we have 60. There are other big ranches 1/4 mile south and 1/2 mile east from our place, and we can ride and hike on the one to the south. Also several miles to the west there are other real working ranch properties.

The Amish fellow that I talked to said they did construction back in Missouri and that he worked for the fellow that is buying the other half. But I am somewhat at a loss as to how they will make that work out here where you might have to drive 5, 10, 20, or 50 miles to a construction site ??? I'm sure that they can get a few jobs real close right away - I might even hire them for something after they get settled.

There have been Hutterites out here for generations, but they live in communal colony farms, most of which look like minimum security prisons. They drive vehicles and use modern equipment on large ag operations. It's pretty much a slave labor camp except for the elders in charge and those that manage to escape to normal society. Our experience trying to do business with them has been less than positive.

Re: New Neighbors
 

And just to be clear:

I shook my new neighbor's hand and neither of us were wearing masks! :lol:

Re: New Neighbors
 

It sounds like you might have some good neighbors. It certainly couldn't be worse than what you had to put up with before. :crazy:

Re: New Neighbors
 

I've learned not to say it couldn't get worse...

Re: New Neighbors
 

I stand corrected. I should have learned that after I divorced my first wife and married my second wife.

It can get worse...A lot worse. :waah:

Re: New Neighbors
 

I have nothing to add to this thread except this:
I am from Western Montana and I chuckled when I read the word "Crick".
That made my day.
-Russ

Re: New Neighbors
 

Well, this property is sort of catty-wampus to ours ;)