Are your neighbors growing gardens or lawns?
Evaluate My Land series – Homestead Property
True story:
Susan and her husband, both early 50s, decided to move out to the country. Mostly for the quiet and the famous Kansas sunsets.
Susan was horrified that her neighbors rode ATVs up and down the gravel road, and she could hear gunshots at daybreak on Saturday (a common KS rural occurrence, especially around hunting season).
Susan was even more irritated when she realized that her blacktop road led to a quarry and there was a lot of dump truck traffic. To make matters worse, there was a pumpkin farm nearby and the road was clogged with families in October.
The noise, noise, noise!
Susan, like many city people, endlessly protested and petitioned the county commission to shut down the pumpkin farm, and to put limits on the quarry. She partially won. But she was still upset about the ATVs and gunshots. Susan repeatedly called the sheriff, who only chuckled.
Susan was a real person, from a news story in the Lawrence Journal World (Lawrence, KS). A person who wanted to live in the country but didn’t want the country to live near her.
If you move in close by, Susan could be your nemesis. She will not hesitate to call the Dept of Making You Sad, and there will be only so far you can win her over with farm fresh eggs.
How to avoid a Karen situation.
It’s not just the Susans or Karens. And it is not limited to people from Blue cities. It happens just as much in a Red county or state, as people in Texas can surely attest.
It also has to do with land use. Are your neighbors growing gardens or lawns? What parts of the county are growing? Let’s take a look with some examples.
What’s in Your Toolbox? – the prerequisite tools
You can do this using Google Earth if you want to see growth trends over time. Or you can use regular Google Maps or another map software.
I also like to use On-X Hunting app because I already use the app and have the license. The On-X app shows the property boundaries, public vs. private land, and even gives the property owner’s name, vs. whether it is owned by a farm family’s Trust (a common finding in my NE Kansas county).
Are your neighbors growing gardens or lawns? – a real world example
I will show you the step-by-step to evaluate the land use. I am using my land in NE Kansas as a case study.
Step 1 – Find your land on Google Maps or Google Earth
This is my land – 10 acres in NE Kansas. House with pasture extending to the road on the West, and pastures to the South and East to the barn. Chicken house and gardens and orchards/food forests in a 25’x180′ strip north of the barn, along the North border.
Step 2 – Zoom out to the neighborhood
Who are the neighbors and neighboring properties?
Farmer across the road. Houses to the South are acreages. Some look like they have gardens. Some have animals.
Zoom out more to the North. Not bad. Mostly Hayfields.
Two properties to North you get a large McMansion house with no homesteading, garden, or farm use besides using the front for hay.
Too many of these types of properties and you start to get an issue with competing goals. It’s OK if they leave you alone. But very few people are “live and let live” and leave you alone nowadays.
Still, at this point it wouldn’t bother me unless it was consistent pattern.
Homestead Property – What is the land use over time?
Evaluate the land use over time – is it moving more toward your goals or more toward the city goals?
In Google Earth, you can look at the map over time. Click on the time button and scroll back to the left.
You can use this method to see the changes to your area over time.
If you see housing developments then you have to evaluate it. If they still have large lots and you can do what you want, then you may be still good with the tradeoffs.
Do an On-Site Property Walk – Nothing beats boots on the ground.
Check the County’s 2030, 2040 Plan
Most counties have a 2030 development plan. One county over from me, Lawrence and Douglas County even have a 2040 plan. You can use this to see where the county expects to have growth and what type of growth over the next 10-20 years. If your suburban acreage is in that zone, you may have some long term choices to make.
True story: In 2015, we lived in a townhouse on the outskirts of town. We had an acreage next to us. Looking at the county’s 2025 plan, we saw that they expected the highway to be expanded to 4 lanes, and they expected the on ramp to go through the neighboring acreage property – right outside our window.
If you own land in a situation like that, you may not be able to sell it if you intend to get out and recoup your investment before the state and county move in, since they are not known for paying anywhere near top dollar for land they are going to turn into an on ramp (can you say “eminent domain”?).
No Solutions, only tradeoffs – Thomas Sowell.
Your research may bring up some troubling neighbors and trends. This doesn’t necessarily rule out your land. If you are looking at a suburban property or just looking for a larger back yard to grow food in a mixed urban setting, then you have to make tradeoffs.
No property is perfect. You may have to add infrastructure. You will always have to make some tradeoffs. That is OK if aligns with your Vision and Goals. Check out the previous article in the Evaluate My Land series: How to Pick Your Homestead Property: Identify Your Goals
Good luck on your property. Leave a comment or send me an email to give an update on your quest.
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What I really liked:
- The Backyard Forest Garden e-book
- Agroforestry
- Restoration Agriculture: Designing Your Perennial Farm presentation from Permaculture Voices by Mark Shepard
- Permaculture Thorns, A Book About Trying to Build Permaculture Community, by Paul Wheaton.
- Plus 2 books by Nicole Sauce.
