A Tale Of A Nosey Neighbor

As you know we are working on a huge self sustainability project and building a backyard farm complete with chickens, rabbits and fish for meat as well as a large greenhouse for a coming aquaponics growing environment. This old house is inside the city limits of an old railroad town in central eastern indiana and used to belong to our grandmother before us. Unfortunately for us, we have the same nosey neighbor lady that grandma did for all those years. This lady has been complaining about our activities for more than twenty years, and now is no different. 

A few days ago we were visited by the local sheriff with a report that we had buried something, (maybe electric lines ) over our property line and on our neighbors side. Of course we had done no such thing but this was their initial plan to have our project shut down. We greeted the sheriff courteously and answered his questions with no hesitation. You see, back in the 1990's our uncle,( who is no longer around) built an addition to their garage which placed it 2 feet over onto our property. I was personally here and remember distinctly the uproar it caused with my grandmother and although at the time nothing was done about it the fact has always been that they are on our property with their garage. 

This lady is so ridiculous she has been trying to convince my mother that they own that property and never built over the line. This came up of course in our conversation with the sheriff along with our plans for the chicken coops. He concluded that we had in fact buried nothing there and that we are well inside of our property line. The sheriff stated he was satisfied with our answers, that he saw no problem and left quietly, allowing us to continue our work.

 Again this morning our nosey neighbor reared her big nose and gave mom a bunch of grief this morning stating that she would have a survey and that we would be forced to stop our operations and continued building. Why must people be so nosey, and push their way into things that are really none of their business? We are Americans and supposed to have the right to pursue our happiness so long as we don't infringe upon others and this is something we have not done.

 To solve this problem we contacted the Building and Planning Commission to see what permits or fees we would be liable for and if our plans fit into county or city zoning, raising the question, "Would we be allowed to continue our project and build our BackYard Farm?" I am pleased to report that for a $5 fee to the Area Planning Commision we were able to obtain the necessary permits not only to continue, but we are able to build through to completion of our dreamed of BackYard Farm. Funny  thing, the Area Planning Commissions Maps of the city we live in clearly show their  garage over our property line, so survey away lady.

We are thinking of sending her a thank you card. We wondered if we would be able to  build the greenhouse as planned and now we have our answer. We can build it now start to finish, the sky's the limit. Thank you nosey neighbor lady.