The neighbors on the other side of our eastern fenceline rent out most of their eleven or so acres they own to a guy who has constructed some very dodgy animal pens. Most of the land is steep hillside, and the pens are built right on the fenceline and, in some cases, now falling onto our property.
In the above picture, the trees are on our side of the property, and the pens which house some horses and the asthmatic donkey are creeping down the hillside to join them. On the far left side of the image is a steel fence post. When we had the perimeter fencing redone last fall, we were unable to put fencing any further along the property line because of the condition of the animal pens. We had tried reaching the property owners over the previous five months; I left notes at their gate after popping over when I saw people were home. Then the property was up for sale last summer, and we spoke with the listing agent and asked her to have the owner call us so we could discuss what we wanted to do. I then called twice and left voicemails with the listing agent reiterating our request. When our scheduled time to do the fencing was near, I ended up doxxing them and located their Facebook accounts. I sent the couple living there messages explaining who I was and that I need to talk to them about the animal pens and fencing. They responded with a terse “here’s the number for the guy who has the animals, now go away.”
So we called the guy and spoke to him about the issue and told him we would very soon be putting in new fencing. English is not his native tongue, so being clear and concise was our primary concern. We pointed out that his animal waste was spilling onto our land and that, coupled with erosion, was causing the structures to now be on our property. We were very understanding though, as by this point the property, which had failed to sell, had now entered the foreclosure process. We agreed to wait to see what happened with that process.
Closeups of some of the mess:
And more shots showing the extent of things:
As you can see in the last picture above, the plywood walls end next to a stone wall with iron posts at the top. This wall then continues down pretty much to the road at the southern end of both their and our properties. Here’s a long shot of what I mean:
So when it came time to do the fencing, we simply could not address this section. (Our lovely fencing crew pulled out a ton of garbage that had been tossed over the stone wall though.) All we could do was wait. After watching the auction site each month to check the status of the property and seeing a reprieve each time, we tried again last month to resolve the issue. We recontacted the owners once again via Facebook as that’s the only contact info we have, despite providing them with our info on multiple times.
The response we got was less than encouraging. It was basically “fuck off how dare you complain”–although they did say they’d speak to the guy with the animals. So I responded by summing up much of what I already typed here, about how we’ve been trying for almost a year to talk to them about the issues and we’ve been ignored at every attempt. I pointed out unlike any of our other neighbors, they alone have ignored our attempts to be friendly and sort out any issues amicably. I didn’t get a response. We are not encouraged.
At this point we have only a few options left. We can get overly aggressive and use Tony to just push all the crap back onto their land while the animals are inside their pens, and there are a LOT of animals. In addition to the three or so horses, there’s at least one donkey, a dozen sheep and some goats that we can see. And of course this doesn’t include the cows that graze the land.
Below is a screengrab from Google Earth. In the upper right corner is our stables and in the lower right corner is the pen complex. It’s even more extensive than it appears from the ground.
Another option is to involve county code enforcement. This seems a bit mean, but we’ve spent a year trying to resolve the issue ourselves and gotten absolutely nowhere, so it may be our only option at this point.
Lastly, while the pens are an eyesore (here’s a shot of what we see from the south wing of the house, from which you can make out the pens between the two trees), we’ve asked the landscape architects working for us to include a screen of plants that will shield us from seeing the pens. We’d be fine with them existing if they weren’t spilling physical crap onto our land and sitting on our property at the same time.
