Friday, February 13, 2015

When You No Longer Trust Government





About 10 or 15 miles as the crow flies from the Small-Hold there is a little regional airport that has been trying hard for years to pretend it is a big city international airport. The college town it is attached to has been throwing government education over-spill money at it for decades and growing it for all it's worth.

Several years ago some guys with the FAA and some type of local officials came over here and told us they were taking our hay field. The reasoning was that our hay field was at the highest point in the region that was easily accessible with a road right next to it and hadn't been developed yet. We said no, they took the field, or about half of it by force using their eminent domain BS and weren't even going to pay fair market price for it.

Any long term readers have heard this story before but about a week after they served us with the papers saying they took said hayfield my neighbor had one of those big blue silos put up next to his barn. The FAA guys were absolutely LIVID over it. They even accused us of having talked my neighbor into it. Truth is we didn't know a thing about it and because there weren't any building laws or anything in this county especially back then there wasn't much the government could do about it. They gave our land back and went and built their little radar tower about 2 miles or so South of us.

I can see it down there all the time. It shows up really nice in night vision :)

To this day I look at the tall blue silo and smile every time I see it.

Lately however they been doing a bunch more work over at that airport. Widening runways and hyping how they are bringing in bigger planes with more flights to Chicago or Dallas etc. I start getting nervous every time I hear talk like that. It's 10, 15 miles away at least and in another county and I still have nightmares that they are going to try again. Maybe even try and take the neighbors place as well this time.

It isn't the land so much. It's good farm land although not a spread large enough to matter but enough for me to raise a couple hundred head of sheep on almost totally contained once I get the useless nags off it. What scares me most is the barn. It's old, it's HUGE in fact not many professional farmers in the state who are planting 1000's of acres can boast a barn as large as ours. Solid oak beams, stall doors so heavy I can't pick one up without help. A loft you could almost play basketball in. A low pitch roof that is still tall enough I can see into the neighboring counties when I stand on the peak. Yes a bit of dry rot and I am always repairing some section or another but the cost to replace that behemoth of early 20th century construction would run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I can't even get insurance on full replacement but have to settle for a price of a new metal one.

I worry about some government official deciding the road needs widening or a new highway needs to go in.

One reason I am all smiles over MoDot's recent financial misfortune :)

It seems like these days all you read or hear about is the government seizing this land, that property or money etc. All shady deals for underhanded reasons.

Another thing I won't miss once this decline get's us past that danger.

I go over and hug that silo every so often. My neighbor thought I was insane for a while until I told him what had happened. We dodged a bullet once I am just afriad if another comes our way we won't be so lucky.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!



23 comments:

  1. Give those Harvestores a hug from me. :)

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  2. What is going to kill you is the planned industrial expansion that would go with it. My guess is that the economy (and reality) are going to slow them up.

    The eminent domain rules have been that way for a long time.

    http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/regulation/2008/6/v31n2-4.pdf

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    1. Russ - Ya That city has been creeping ever closer the last few years. I don't know though with the aging population all I see is business growth no real hosuing going on around here.

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  3. They are putting a pipe line through here, I think a lot of new cemeteries are going in along with some old ones. If you need an archaeology site of say 1200 AD installed, let me know, I will throw in an african american cemetery for free (as they say, You can't touch that!}..

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    1. Sf - LOL that's a good idea... and Indian burial site from some extinct tribe hmmmm...

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  4. I think the economic slowdown will help. Also, I wonder if at some point the "change" in how we do our economic base will make a difference as well. Or good heavens, maybe based on the cost of education will go down as well.

    I worry here too. We are in a pocket of county land that is within the city zip code but outside of the city limits. Very little that is good comes from being incorporated into a larger entity - all for the public good, no doubt...

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    1. TB - As I said to Russ above most of the housing around here came to a complete stop back in 08 and hasn't really returned but that city that claims the airport is constantly building office parks, new schools, businesses, malls and infrastructure. They have prolly crept another 3 miles closer over the last 5 years.

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    2. The problem with regional airports - or at least my impression - is that the are not profitable, not without government assistance. Such things would be the first to go in the event of a significant downturn.

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  5. Some things you can't plan for I guess. Good job with the silo though, that really saved your bacon!
    Government taking land or people building things next door are things we can't control. I often think that I'm alright if I have to grow my own due to war or something but then the land would probably be seized anyhow and worked on a larger scale for wheat or potatoes anyhow. They might get more than they bargained for though...

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    1. Kev - Ya I guess that's always a possibility too. The government telling us what we are going to do with it.

      Never thought of that.

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  6. Now perhaps off tangent here PP but the talk of governments just being able to take what they want sparked a thought into my head (does not happen often fortunately). Now not wishing to sound paranoid but prepping, self sufficiency etc seems to have a growing following with more and more taking steps to help themselves through crises or just debt...but here is thing, do the governments know or have the resources to know where the major players are and could their resources be taken and 'shared out' to the appease the masses of the unprepared? Daft maybe, but then my thoughts usually are.
    John

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    1. In the American prepping society they have a thing all opsec which is operational security (I think) and that's why they try to keep it secret.

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    2. Ya that's why I try and not post too many pics of the general building set up or us people in my pics. Prolly doesn't help me much though.

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    3. Do they know who the major players are....

      Do you mean who is farming what and has what?
      The usda puts out a census that requires tallying up your stored comm. and crops as well as what you sold.pretty in-depth survey that includes fruit trees, bee hives, livestock. Seeds in storage. Not sure how often the census is though.

      I often speculate as i live in dairy country and if shtf/ the milk trucks wont pick up --- most milk tanks hold 2 days or 4 milkings, then it has to be dumped.

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    4. fjord - Having filled out that form a time or two, not to mention most of what you mentioned is also suppose to be reported annually to the county I can say they rarely follow up on it too closely. I am not sure how they would catch someone who failed to report anything.

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  7. I will try to keep this clean. Every time I think of eminent domain I get nuts. It happened to us. Don't sign anything. I don't know about Missouri but in FL they must pay for the land, court costs and your legal fees. We fought ours, took land but paid dearly plus our attorney. Of course, I almost had a stroke worrying. I don't believe in lawsuits but sometimes you are backed into a corner. Check out eminent domain lawyers ahead of time and fight if they even look at your property wrong.
    Peg in Florida

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    1. Peg - Oh we fought em back then. Went to court and the court told us to eat it and shut up. These days is they tried again we would be screwed because I think the farmers need permits to put those silos up now.

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  8. Yep; you definitely dodged a bullet. But chances are that they haven't stopped drooling over your field. Hang in there.

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    1. RP - I have no doubt they hope they will be able to expand out here eventually. Bastards.

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  9. Hate it when people take what really isn't theirs. They talked about taking our lot next to us in the city to use for a road to a landlocked development. That lot gives us about 1/2 acre of woods between us & the neighbors on the other side (whom we like & they like the wooded area as well). The contractor that was going to build backed off the deal, thank goodness. Hopefully we will be living in the country whe/if they try again. Your big old barn sounds wonderful!

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    1. DFW - Well I for one was relieved when I saw all the housing projects folding up back in 08 and 09. It was looking for a while like we were going to be swallowed up by suburbia.

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  10. The biggest lie from the government before B,O. is "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help"

    Why would they need land 15 miles from the airport??? What is the airport.?? So many cities toss money to get the airlines to fly, only to have them leave because no one wants to fly out of that airport or its to a city no one wants to transfer at, Chicago, New York, even Atlanta or Dallas. The nearest airport to use is St. Cloud, and they are losing air service again this time to Chicago. When we had small planes flying in that was ok, they flew into Minneapolis.

    That ended when the little airline moved to bigger planes and airfares went up. We have a small jet airline Alligaint fly's 2X a week to Arizona, a flew to Orlando just one winter and never restarted that service. I could go on and on.

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