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!!!