I remember that too! But that was someone else, not me.
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The previous owners of my farm had let a neighbor fence in some pasture and board horses. It was crappy 4â chain link installed by hand, along one side and the back of a pasture; the front had split rail already. After we got horses we planned to replace the fencing and told the neighbor that they were welcome to the chainlink fencing if they wanted it.
On Christmas Eve night, in the dark, I was feeding horses and heard noises in the pasture, and there were headlights shining toward the barn. I walked over and found the neighbor tearing down the fencing. Weeks before the new fencing was scheduled to go up. When we confronted them, they said âthey wanted their fence, since they had paid for it.â
We had some other temporary electric fencing up because we thought the 4â chainlink was so inadequateâŠbut still - would anyone think we meant âtake it down anytimeâ versus âweâll tell you when the new fencing is going in?â We would even have paid the fence contractor to roll it up neatly.
My ex-dh was kind of a dick about a lot of things - it was one of the few times it was nice to be married to him that night. He did not hold back in expressing his dissatisfaction with the neighborsâ methods that night. I seem to recall him saying âthis is no longer your fence - the day we closed on this property it became ours, you idiot (or more likely, something not quite as polite).â LOL.
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Took the gates, were called out on it, brought back cheap punky gates, not the ones they took, as I remember. I think they didnât re-install them, just left them leaning? Something like that.
I think I remember that that was another one with the problem of getting the old owners to clear their stuff. But some problems with them understanding the meaning of the clauses that everything attached to the property conveyed to the new owners, and so was no longer âtheir stuffâ.
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IIRC, wasnât there also an attempt to take the front door of the house, for âsentimental valueâ in that thread?
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I bought my place through a county tax foreclosure auction where you canât set foot on the property until you own it.
Mine was occupied by a couple of old bachelors with (it turned out) several small dogs that were evicted by the county before
I could close.
I knew about the collapsed barn and some of the trash, what I didnât know was that the single wide trailer was mostly trashed inside
because they didnât let the dogs out nearly enough and chain smoked. It was a good thing I was renting a farm month to month so I could take my time
getting a new barn built and cleaning up the place enough to live in.
I got possession in mid June and was able to get the trailer habitable by October first. I got the old barn demolished and a new
barn built on the old foundation, some fencing in and was able to bring the horses home by the end of October though I still needed to get water
and electric in the barn.
When I finally got possession the âlawnâ was 4 feet high, you couldnât get near the back of the barn, and I kept finding stuff that had
been done good enough to work but not done right. Like the wiring to the shop that went from the breaker box to the shop just laying
on the ground (since buried and properly installed) and the water line with ~30 feet of it on top of the ground under the trailer wrapped
in heat tape :eek: that I found in October, That made for an expensive electric bill that first winter. That has also been fixed.
All this in addition to the 10 yard dumpster that was filled in 2 days.
This was 6 years ago and I have the place mostly mechanically solid now and the inside of trailer is slowly getting finished.
There is a thread about it somewhere.
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Theyâre redoing Hoarders with a new season of 2 hour episodes, (A & E network) and one man moved to California from Connecticut, and that part of the move included buying delivery trucks, hiring drivers, and moving a lot of junk, and that part cost over $80,000. When the show filmed, between the inside and outside hoard, Matt Paxton (cleaner, for junk on the show) said they had moved 1,000,000 lbs. of stuff off of the property (Yes, one million pounds of junk). There was still a lot left on the back yard of the property.
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We looked for a year when we finally found our farm. A beautiful old foursquare circa 1911 with gorgeous, UNPAINTED original woodwork, leaded glass windows, and hardwood under the PINK SHAG lol carpeting. We are still here 27 years later.
The closing was pretty nuts, with a ton of 11th hour machinations with both the sale of our old house, and the purchase of the farm. I remember doing a âdry closingâ and had to run a check to the mortgage company the next day for some reason that escaped me.
When we first viewed the property, there was an upstairs room with a closed door and a sign that said, âSTAY OUT.â Turns out an older daughter had just been divorced and was holing up with mom and dad. We found out later she tried to kill the sale multiple times but wasnât successful. On the day of the closing, we were told she was there with the keys. We went over and she refused to leave, and refused to give us the keys. Luckily mom and dad eventually showed up, and she miraculously found the keys hiding in a corner. Pretty juvenile behavior from a supposed adult, but that was the last we heard of her.
Now the good part: Later that year an elderly man stopped by. Turns out his grandfather built the house. He told me all sorts of fun stories about the women pouring the concrete blocks for the foundation, the cistern in the attic (turns out early 1900s running water was courtesy of gravity), carriages coming up to the since decommissioned side door, and how they would open the pocket doors to reveal the Christmas tree for the children on Christmas day. A year later the entire family came for their reunion, and I loved hearing all the happy stories about our farm. This house has some lovely mojo and we are so blessed to have raised our kids here.
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What a beautiful story, downen! Love a happy ending. 
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