Survey Stakes and Encroachment

I am linking up with Scrap Basket Sunday over at Kim's Big Quilting Adventure.  You can find the linky over at the right.  Thanks Kim for the linky party!

I know I have mentioned over and over we live in DH great, great grandparent's home that they built.  We live on the family farm, or what is left of it.  When DH purchased the house, the bank would not finance for the 40+ acres too.  What happened was that the land was sold with a stipulation that it could not be subdivided and would remain farm land.

The story goes that it was sold, and immediately the person who purchased it had the stipulation thrown out and subdivided the land into 5 acre parcels.  What is behind our property are several McMansions.  Of course they all had to have their homes elevated---how to get the elevation?  Create gigantic ponds.  In creating these elevations our property ended up being the low area and all water runs onto our property and all the fields flood,  and the gigantic ponds are breeding grounds for mosquitoes during the summer.

What is your point you are wondering?  Well the gentleman next door passed away a couple of weeks ago, and there are people who want to purchase it and turn that farm into a housing development, and gossip around here is that the McMansion behind us -- the people are losing it, so we need to know where that back line is too.  What is it about human nature that they feel the necessity to spread and blur their property lines?  I am Thankful for my spouses job.  He works for a municipality and if there is something we need we can just check it out from the city.  We checked out a magnetic detector that is used to find the lids to catch basins.  The tool alone costs several thousands of dollars.  We used it and locate 4 of 5 found  survey stakes visually.

This is a survey stake.  They are about 6-12 inches in the ground, and painted bright orange.  This one is 25 years old., the last time that the land was surveyed was when DH purchased the property.  We can pinpoint the back southeast corner stake, but the McMansion behind us had to put in a drainage swale, and culvert.   It appears that their drainage culvert may be on the top of the stake.  If we had to pay for a survey it would cost about $1,000 at least.  Saving $1,000 and finding 4 of the 5 stakes visually is definitely something to be thankful for. 

After freezing my patootie off I had time to come in and sew.  I finished 3 more Farmer's Wife blocks!

Square Dance

Darting Birds

Hovering Hawks

I have my 8 farmer's wife blocks for the month completed!  I have 50!  Whew this is quite the journey.  Not quite halfway there since there are 111 blocks in total.

While I sewed and the weather is still decent.  DH went and helped find the survey stakes for another neighbor and then raked leaves at the next door neighbor's house.  That's what neighbors and friends do.