Thursday March 8, 2007
"The Rules"
Today a neighbor who's new to our little canyon was being a jerk and suddenly I realized she doesn't know the rules. To help out anyone who is new to living rural, here's the basics
- If the gate is closed, leave it closed. If the gate is open leave it open.
- Don't let your dogs roam off your property, bark excessively or kill livestock on other people's property. Keep them licensed, their vaccinations current and neuter or spay them unless you show them.
- Trespassing along the edges of fields or orchards, in streambeds and on private dirt roads may be OK if you are on horseback or on foot, but may not be if you let your dog run free and can't control it.
- Do not drive cars, off-road vehicles, motor bikes, snowmobiles or ATV's on private roads or driveways, across fields or in streambeds without permission.
- Slow down when on two lane or dirt roads - you need to watch for animals and pedestrians.
- What you do on your property is your business until it affects my property, in which case it is my business too.
- Good fences make good neighbors (Robert Frost said this first but he was right.)
- Bad fencing (including ugly tarps, cactus and other thorny bushes and barbed wire) makes neighbors less friendly.
- If I can smell your animal housing, it's not clean enough.
- Use some kind of fly control if you have livestock or poultry. (Fly predators work great.)
- If you don't want to know your neighbors, move back to the city.
- I won't call the city planning department about your illegal tree trimming or unpermitted construction if you don't call them about mine.
- Bright street lights installed where they shine into a neighbor's property and house is a kind of trespass. (They are also known as "fraidy lights.")
- Do not divert rain runoff from your land onto your neighbor's property.
- Do not keep roosters in your henyard unless your house is at least a half-mile from the nearest neighbor.
- Keep your trash picked up, your lawn mowed and your animals fed.
This seems like a good starter list. Contact me with more rules and I'll send you a bumper sticker.
