Time To Till
This goes back to nearly 45 years ago when I built my first house. The neighbor at the back was immediately angry that I bought two lots directly behind him and would not sell them to him or swap. His antics were beyond deranged.
The dude would call the county inspectors and report my “violations” constantly. After we moved in the next spring, I began to regrade my property.
I also did things like plant grass and plant 20 trees, including six 5-feet blue spruce trees towards my property line, which I shared on the west with this neighbor.
They were a good 10 feet in from the “agreed”-upon property line that HE was using. I spent two months doing all this, and one Saturday morning my neighbor and his wife were out and measuring their property and such.
I paid no notice until he knocked on my door and handed me what appeared to be a “bank survey” of his property that he had for 15 years.
It indicated the location of property lines, his house and garage location, etc. He explained that my trees were on top of the “property line” and I need to move them.
I kind of agreed with what he said based on his site survey and I proceeded to move them. Then I looked closely at the survey.
What I saw made me gasp. It also indicated the location of an abandoned alley we both had 1/2 possession of with dimensions off his garage.
This clearly indicated not only was he claiming ALL of the alley, but a 20-foot strip along the entire back of my yard. Matter of fact, ALL the neighbors were claiming this and did so for years.
My house was the first one built on my side of the block. What makes this interesting? My neighbor had a huge strawberry bed (over 10 years old) along almost the entire backyard ON MY property. 500+ plants, all prime producers and HIS PRIDE AND JOY.
I immediately got my own REAL survey done with steel pins driven and stamped hard copies of the site survey. His bank survey was basically correct.
But this was truly bad news for him. It meant that he and his neighbors really were freely stealing this strip of land across the entire block. 12 households in all.
This is a small rural farming town (fewer than 800 people) and in all this dust up, I found out this neighbor is THE TOWN’s big enormous jerk.
So I took my survey over to this guy and said, listen, no rush to move your plants (this was July) but you need to get them off my property in the next few months.
He tore up the survey and threw it at me. Now it was game on. I worked second shift and commuted 25 miles to work. My wife would go out into our garden, which was a huge one, when she got home at night and do some work in it.
About three or four days later, she is out there and the rear neighbors are disrespecting her for all the trouble “us new people” were causing.
She told me the next morning and I went to those neighbors (who all refused to talk) and left them copies of the REAL survey in their doors.
A couple of days later I am at work and my wife calls me pretty upset. The bad neighbor along with two of his neighbors screamed at my wife when she was in the garden in such a bad way that she was driven to tears. I told her I will be home in 45 minutes.
I called my brother-in-law (a farmer, less than mile out of town) and explained the situation. He told me he can have his John Deere tractor with his tiller at my house at 6 pm.
I next called the country sheriff’s office to request a deputy to be at my house at 5:30, and then I called our police chief and requested the same.
I get home and minutes later, both officers show up. I handed them my survey and walked them to show them the steel pins.
I asked them what property are the strawberry plants on? They say clearly on my property. Then I asked them, it’s my property and I can do whatever, right?
They said sure. Now, we have about 20 people mulling around, though not my bad neighbor who ran inside the house.
He was not going to face me after how he spoke to my wife. Instead, he sent his wife to the door to order me off his property or he will call the authorities. I said, too late, I already did and you have 15 minutes to relocate as many of your plants as you can.
It was almost exactly 15 minutes later when my brother-in-law showed up, and now it’s getting fun.
I showed my brother-in-law where to start tilling. Took him 30 minutes to completely grind up all the strawberry plants. The silence was awesome.
The rear neighbors were shocked and I became a legend. Story credit: Reddit / (decaturbob)