Anyone here have or has had a farm next to a major roadway? We are interested in a property located next to a 4 lane limited access highway. I want to know just how bad the noise, fumes, etc are. I do have the concern of animals getting loose and godforbid make it over/through multiple barriers and onto the highway.
Thanks!
I would be more worried with trespassers.
The way animal rights extremists are getting into everything today, you never know what may happen.
Being right in their eye is never a good idea, they may think your napping horses are dead and call in animal control on you.:rolleyes:
Happened to a friend with her pastures by a four lane expressway, many times.
Size of the property will make a difference – I mean, on 5 acres next to the freeway, you can’t escape the noise, but maybe on a 100 acres, you can.
I’ve never lived near a freeway of any sort, but just staying in a hotel near one…no way could I live like that. The noise would drive me crazy. I did look at a rental once that was next to a 4 lane highway and it wasn’t so bad (noise) in the house, but outside was just unbearable…and when you are doing horses, you do have to be outside. Not for me.
I own a farm adjacent to a state highway, but we have a large tree line buffer between us and the highway. The house and farm are not directly on the highway. Also the road ends at my property. When I first looked at the farm, the highway was a big issue, but the farm and house was too good to pass up.
The road noise from the highway is not that loud and only busy usually during typical rush hour times. When I am in my house, barn, riding in the ring and on the XC trails behind my property you do not hear it at all. You only hear the noise when you drive up the street. On occasion you hear a truck backfire, but I figure that is good for the horses. Just like when you are trail riding a dirt biker comes past. No big deal.
The highway is fenced, so if a horse ever got loose, you are safe. That was one of my biggest concerns. Plus my barn and paddocks are not directly on the highway.
Best part of the property is – NO development in the future. Dead end, neighbor has 25 acres that also abuts highway and zoned for one residence. We are also adjacent to 100 acres that is land locked and cannot be developed. A huge plus to me. Will the highway distract from resale – most likely. But I rather have no development, open land, good neighbors and a little highway noise.
If interested, send me a PM and I can show you an aerial view of my set up.
We live four miles from the interstate and three from the train and can hear both pretty well, not to distraction but definitely when the wind is right. I went to someone’s house on the other side of the freeway, had to drive thru an underpass and then parallel the freeway for a quarter of a mile and then turn away for about the same, and no noise whatsoever, they live down below the freeway grade with a big hill between it and them. We on the other hand live high up at about the same elevation as the freeway and tracks.
I had another friend in a subdivision with acre lots that backed up to an interstate. Somehow the hwy dept paid for the fence between the highway and their back yard - six foot chain link there - if they wanted pretty they just put it up inside of the freeway fence.
On the down side of that though, cars do lose control and plow through the fence. This happens anywhere there is a fence along a roadway though, it happened to me as a teen shortly after we quit using our pasture for horses, wham some young lady missed the turn, clipped the big pine tree and sailed down the hill into the pasture through the open gate.
An awful lot of it has to do with whether it’s hilly or flat, easy to access from the freeway side or not. Some guy had his horse stolen up in Eastern in maybe 2007 by folks that cut the freeway fence.
ReSomething – Never thought about the grade? Maybe why we don’t hear it. I always said it was the tree line, about 100 - 150 feet, trees, brush, etc. The state also put up a chain link fence, at the end of the tree line near the highway. Have to do a little bushwacking to get to it. I always check for holes. So far in 10 years, no accidents, holes, tresspassers, etc.
2ndyrgal has her barn right off the highway. She’s never posted that it’s a problem.
I’m close to buying a farm that has highway road frontage, thankfully the driveway is off a side road. The plan is to put a gate up across the drive way and not use the pasture along the road for turnout unless we are home. We got lucky that it’s already fenced with Ramm fence. My only concern is keeping my JRT from exploring, there is a fenced yard but I’ll let her run freely as I’m working in the barn or riding.
I’ve lived on a few busy roads. For me the biggest thing is proximity to traffic lights, intersections or exits. If you’ve got cars going past on a straight road at 55mph it’s just white noise.
If you’ve got trucks braking and accelerating to stop, start, corner or merge it is a lot louder and more variable, so much more noticeable.
While we are not on a 4 lane highway, we are on a busy 2 lane highway with a lot of semi truck traffic ( highest volume before and after livestock auction day). We have never had a problem with fumes and we do sleep with the windows open and the traffic is something you do get used to. There have been a couple of times that people have pulled into our yard to see our goats but our dogs make them exit quickly! We did have to put up secure fences( no electric) and taught our dogs the road was off limits. All that being said I would rather live on a gravel/ less traveled road myself.
The highway runs along the long side of the property. It has less than 10 acres with the house sitting in the middle. The whole property sits up hill from the highway and it would be nearly impossible for a vehicle to make it up that far. There is about 25 feet deep of trees/heavy brush with the states wire fencing on one side and the properties fencing on the other side. The property is not fenced for horses. We would double fence the highway on our side and the property’s front with no climb and a top plank.
I do have concerns of people walking up from the highway, but again it’s pretty steep embankment. The resale value is a big concern. However, the house only needs cosmetic changes to suit us and has the potential to be a home we would stay in for the next 15 years at minimum.
I wanted to add the highway speed is 70mph, does that change things?
I lived in a house that was right next to a freeway (8 lane) – but, we had a sound wall, and the freeway was limited to passenger cars only, no semis etc allowed. Wasn’t bad at all, noise wasn’t worse than when I have lived in cities, and really never noticed any smell (but it was a fairly lightly traveled stretch of the highway, not a parking lot during commutes etc).
I also boarded my horse on a 20 acre ranch next to the freeway (also 8 lane) – this one DID have big rigs etc, and was noisier. The ranch house was on the other side of the property from the freeway, and I do not think they were greatly impacted by it.
My young horses pasture was along the freeway as well – They had a 3 board fence with rail road tie sized posts and hot wire. Beyond that, they had a 8 foot tall, heavy duty chain link fence.
Never had any problems with lose horses etc, and the freeway did a great job of bomb proofing my horse. Main concern would be a big wreck on the freeway and a vehicle coming through the fences letting animals out – but knock on wood it has never happened there that I know of.
Never had any problems with “RARA’s” but did have a number of people call my BO interested in buying my filly – and coworkers who passed by the place on their commute would give me updates on miss filly’s shenanigans out in the field. “Oh YOU own that spotted horse next to the freeway!”
Here is a photo of my filly in her next to the freeway pasture – you can see the wooden pasture fence, then the chain link fence beyond. The “hill” is a freeway over pass – you can see a bit of the freeway bridge as well.
The seller of farm I’m looking at seems to think that the 3 acres of road frontage makes the property more expensive, it could be zoned commercial eventually. Oh and the long side of the property is along a less traveled road and a cemetery.
What I did was look at the house, lay of the land, and location. ‘My farm’ is a forever farm so I don’t care about having road frontage and the cemetary as property lines, I have kind of gotten to where I like that because then I don’t have to worry about neighbors putting a trashy doublewide next to my nice farm. I’ve lived in the middle of nowhere where the driveway was 1/4 mile long and I loved it, I would prefer the privacy. But I’ve been looking for a while for farms and in my area there aren’t many farms with any kind of acerage for sale so I have slim pickings.
Well, I’d just look at the place and think of the freeway as being like the train or a river or some other feature. You’ll have traffic flowing along and rarely stopping, things change if there is a good wide spot or a nearby exit or even a rock outcropping - for some reason somebody always hits those or the lone trees and up sprouts a memorial.
Every once in a while will be sirens, every once in a while some trucker is going to be tearing up a tire or riding the rumble strip, but it’s not usually a problem for you the landowner. If there’s a vegetation buffer that’s great.
It’s not a plus like a horse farm might be (but they get subdivided up sometimes so . . .) but it’s not really a negative like the dump. You NEVER want to live on the road to the dump. It might be tolerable to live on the back side of the dump, next to their buffer or expansion zone, but the main road to the dump is really horrid, IMHO.
If it’s in KY it’s a shame if it misses the automatic farm designation being less than ten acres. That’d actually be more of an issue for me.
I lived in a place that was only a block from the major highway through town, and because the bedrooms were on that side the noise was very irritating. i don’t think the windows were double pane however. If the bedrooms were on the back I don’t think it would be as much of an issue, and in the winter when the trees have fewer leaves you might notice it more then also.
RedRyderKy just curious what you did? We are looking at property next to i71 (4 lane hwy). noise is my concern. it is non issue in the house, but I’m never in it! At the barn & outside. : )
I board at a farm that backs up to an interstate highway. There is woods and a large pasture towards the back of the farm. You can hear the highway, but get used to it. The woods has trails in it and we always ride back there. There is a wire fence all along the highway, plus there is an embankment up to the property where the horse pasture is. No worry about a vehicle getting that far plus there are trees all along. Makes for a great bomb proofing tool.
[QUOTE=RedRyderKy;6863196]
I do have the concern of animals getting loose and godforbid make it over/through multiple barriers and onto the highway.
Thanks![/QUOTE]
We had a Morgan mare’s rider fall off, the mare looked at the girl on the ground turn and trotted home… across several streets and a four lane divided highway… according to the police who were following her, she stopped before stepping on any of the streets looked both ways then crossed when clear … on the divided highway she stopped in median again looking both ways then crossed … then trotted on home… it was about three miles
The police said she appeared to know were she wanted to go so they just followed
We are double fenced more to keep the horses away from the people/kids than anything else
We are right against a major highway (two-lane) with a horrible curve right after our driveway which I could do without.
However, it’s not so bad. We have a large piece of property and no close neighbors. However my personal home is literally yards from the highway, though separated by fencing and we have a decent tree/brush buffer all along the highway.
The noise is constant but I tend to not notice it, much like I don’t notice the constant goat talking, turkey gobbling, guineas screaming, rooster crowing, and dogs barking.
We did have a horrible fright where my ponies knocked down an old gate and got onto the highway, but everyone stopped and helped me get them back in and secure the gate. This is Texas, not that unusual to see loose stock.
The worst part is idiots blowing around the corner at high speed, and it does make me nervous when pulling out. We actually extended our driveway so that we could pull the truck and hay trailer all the way in - before, we had to stop in the road and get someone to open the gate, or get out and open it. Scary scary with that curve.
Otherwise, it really doesn’t make much difference to me. We’re easier to find which is nice for the sales season. Good fencing is an absolute must of course, strong gates with locks, and the vegetation buffer.
Don’t worry so much about trespassers. Nothing steps foot on this property without the fowl and the Livestock guardian dogs letting us know. We do have people who stop thinking we are open to the public at all times (we are a dairy) but a few signs cut down on that majorly.
Our property is five acres along a very busy two lane highway. Vehicles travel at 60+mph and the flow of traffic is constant.
I. hate. it.
Luckily, we are leasing, so we are not stuck here. We started out with the intent to purchase the land, and I’m very glad that we didn’t.
The property is long and skinny: the house sits about 100+ yards (maybe?) off the road, with a couple acres in the front/side of the house that aren’t fenced in. The barn and three acre pasture are behind the house. They barn is enclosed within the pasture so the horses don’t ever have to leave the fenced-in area.
No issue with fumes, but you can’t escape the road noise. You can hear it in the barn and pasture constantly-- even at the bottom of the pasture furthest from the road. You can hear it in the front half of the house constantly. Luckily, the master bedroom is in the back of the house, so you can’t really hear it when you’re trying to sleep. While they don’t show any signs of being bothered, I do often wonder if the constant noise irritates the animals in any way.
Knocking on wood furiously, but we have not had any escapees. If were to purchase the place, I would like to utilize the two wasted acres in the front yard as paddocks. But at the same time, the prospect of having the horses that close to the road makes me very nervous. Lots of my neighbors have their pastures extending to the road frontage without issues. But since we have been here, we’ve had a number of car accidents wreck into our front yard. If there had been a fence along the front of our property, it would have been taken out in some of those accidents. I don’t even want to think about the consequences if someone hit the fence and drove off while we weren’t home…
