The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: Rosemary on August 20, 2011, 04:14:42 pm
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A friend of ours posted on Facebook today that he had come home from the golf yesterday to find that his next door neighbour had not only taken in his washing, when the rain started, but also tumbled the towels and paired up his socks. Isn't that nice?
Our neighbours across the road hired a minidigger for the weekend, used it on the Friday and gave it to us for the weekend, along with their flatbed lorry, so that we could fill our vegetable beds. They wouldn't take anything for it. And he's taking Dan deer stalking.
Please add your good neighbour stories - we hear so much about bad neighbours but there are lots of good folk out there :)
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Whenever we make hay in our Top Meadow, the neighbour over that fence jumps over and helps us stook. She's 15 years older than me and I still can't sling bales up on my back and carry them across the field like she can!
This year, the neighbour next to our Big Meadow sent his French student for two full days' haymaking, and their foster daughter and her son came to help on two afternoons too.
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My neighbour down the hill one side digs out my track when I am snowed in, it takes 3 runs with his big tractor to get through! And my neighbours down the hill the other side ski up to bring me fresh bread and milk!
OH did a bit of a favour for a local chap too, and didnt want anything for it but the chap insisted on replacing our rusty old entrance gate with a lovely new one :-)))
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I cat-sat for my friends down the road ... they came back to find their hanging baskets filled with strawberries & flowers! I couldn't bear looking at the weeds where the cats fed by the glass door. And I hoovered & wiped down the kitchen in case I traipsed mud in. :D
And regularly return my neighbours' missing dog/children.
they have taken my cockerels to market & the other side neighbours used to give us apples from the tree, I think they've gone off us now cos of the pigs :D
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my neighbour made me my tea tonight a lovely chicken curry and homemade lemon yogurt, yum yum, :wave:
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Our neighbours are nice but we had wonderful neighbours in Market Harborough, they were odd balls, she was an aromatherapist and he was a majician with the majic circle and they used to sit outside with us and our G &T and Whsikey...he took my hubby to hosptial for an appointment, they were so nice, he passed away not long after we moved but she married another neighbour of mine and they are on my FB...godd neighbours are fun like ours now in Clacks...parties and fun!
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There's only two of us over this side of the railway line but we help each other. They take my wheelies up to the end of the road becasue they know my knees are bad, and I take them back down empty. I give them duck eggs as Neil adores them. They look in on my dogs if I am away all day at shows, and I let theirs out when needed too. So much better than my neighbour in my last house who used to deliberately make noises right next to the fence to get my dogs barking then phone the dog warden - he didn't know Margaret was a friend of mine though! ;) ;D If I'd had any idea what he was like I wouldn't have sold him the house. Apparently he told people I had buuilt my new house with his money! ::) Technically that is true but he did get a lovely cottage and 5 acres of fields for it! ;D
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mine is bringing my new big chook run tomorrow, its an old pheasent enclosure, and is taking a couple of pols. its good to work with your neighbours.
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Our neighbour shoots and brings us venison and rabbit as his wife won't eat anything other than supermarket meat(must be in a poly tray and film wrapped ::).
He and Dan were deerstalking last night (shot a fox) and are out looking for bunnies tonight. Dan's just there to carry heavy things - I don't think Alan will lend him his superduper rifle ;D
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Ours are very tolerant considering we have 4 energetic children, a hubby who plays loud guitars, a cockerel, mad bottle raised lambs who think they HAVE to bleat loudly and run down the hill every time they see us not to mention the goats...The neighbours have said they enjoy hearing the livestock which is nice.
One neighbour has shoo'd the fox away from the lamb shed/chicken pens at 5am and offered to stake them out with hubby. Another neighbour took my youngest daughter in when we found our cat had just been run over and they made biscuits while I went to collect toby and bury him, she has also heard my mum calling after a fall in the garden and arranged for other neighbours to lift her up and carry her indoors while we were out for a day (mum doesn't press her careline!) so we are very lucky indeed.
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Four years ago we had to go away for four days to a family funeral and associated bits and pieces. It was at the end of Feb when all the stock were housed and shortly before we were due to start lambing. One neighbour came in twice daily to check and feed the housed flock (approx 200 animals). Another neighbour came in to do the pigs and the poultry. A third neighbour milked the cows twice a day and fed the cats and dogs.
At least three good neighbours. They all know we would do the same for them if the need arose.
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One of our neighbours gave us a (fairly old) tipping trailer and a Hay tedder not long after we moved here, he's also helped to put a new clutch in the Fergie. We've helped him out too and fed his stock for several weeks when he was very Ill one winter.
We have an agreement not to "keep score" too. Just help when needed. :)
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Around these parts the farming community still helps each other out as a matter of course. People are liable to just turn up and start stacking hay when we're baling (as above), neighbours often stop and help if we're struggling with livestock on the road, a lot of the local farmers just collect, treat and return small flocks of sheep for their smallholding neighbours when they are doing their own larger flocks, and so on. Our nearest farming neighbour regularly visits to borrow bits of our equipment - and now he's bought a shiny new flatbed trailer we will return that familiarity! We keep an eye on any of their cattle that are close to calving if they are away, and they do the same for us - although the first time this happened we hadn't realised how different it is handling a beef suckler cow to a dairy cow, and apparently the neighbour and the farm-sitter had a right old night of it trying to get just the one calving cow in. (You would normally expect to bring a friend with a suckler cow, they are very herd oriented.) When BH lost his collie unexpectedly a few years back, just at lambing time, a local farmer who was having a dog trained by the local sheepdog trainer let it be known that if it suited BH then he could buy it. When my friend and I moved up here to the moorland sheep farm, our neighbours were incredibly kind in terms of putting us in touch with potential buyers for our lambs, helping us with transport when it was too big a job for our little trailer, and clearing snow from our lane when we were blocked in. One neighbour from a few miles away just kept turning up and mowing, wuffling and baling our grass - but when I tell you that he is now referred to on here as 'BH' we shall all wonder just how selfless all that haymaking really was... :-[ ;) ;D
The closeknit farming community thing is one of the reasons items often fetch way more than their face value at farm 'displenishing' sales - everyone wants to send the neighbour on his way with a bit of money in his pocket, and will bid some items up to ridiculous prices.
This kind of looking out for and helping each other, without expecting return or reward, is how I remember neighbours when I was growing up. The word 'neighbourly' meant exactly that. I don't think we've lost it all completely, far from it, but I do think it is less widespread than it used to be and that in the fast-paced 'rat race', some people would even wonder what you were after if you did them a favour.
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We've almost always managed to have great neighbours. The only exception to this was Ross when we lived on the Isle of Mull and he was a complete to$$er. He was barely more than a child though.
Our current nearest neighbours have been brilliant. They've not complained about us filling the garden with livestock, even when on occasion it has found its way onto their shed roof! (Thanks Alan)
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My neighbour has just brought me 8 round bales of hay - tho I am slightly worried as it is a bit damp and slightly warm in the middle :o
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My neighbour has just brought me 8 round bales of hay - tho I am slightly worried as it is a bit damp and slightly warm in the middle :o
Stand it on its side, with plenty of air flow around it - if it's not raining, outdoors. It needs a bit more airing before you stack it.
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Considering we are the weird foreigners that moved into the village our neighbours have been fantastic. None of them speak English and my German is only improving slowly (No German when I came) its marvelous how well we get on.
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Our adjacent neighbours are horrible. Really, really horrible. The things they said about us in objecting to our planning application were so vicious that the Council had to blank out large parts of the letters. Other people in the community, though , have been lovely. Really interested in what we are doing and friendly and helpful. One took our sheep to the abattoir the first time and others smallholding sat when our daughter got married. Pity these don't live next door!
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Our 'good neighbour' has been fantastic this year: he got us some leftover seed so we got half an acre of barley in; combined our rape for us; found a local chap with a small baler to do half of one of his fields so we could have a years supply of straw.
I've found the 'proper farmers' round here really helpful and interested in what we're doing - looking forward to being able to offer something in return as we get ourselves sorted out.
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I've got two neighbours that have offered to look after the animals if I need it and one who offered me the use of his paddock last year. Alas none of them are 'animal' people so there's a limit to what they can do, and it's hard to reciprocate such favors. They never complain about the state of the place (or me wandering round looking like a tramp). ;D
The only negative is that one neighbor's son has a very loud 2 stroke motorbike which scares the sheep ::) - but he does try to keep the noise down when he's near home and I think it's incumbent on me as a 'good neighbor' in my turn to just grin & bear it - the sheep are slowly getting used to it I think.
One of the neighbours is selling though and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the new people will be OK - you never know. :-\
mab
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The sheep will get used to it - we live beside a railway and an army training camp and neither trains nor mortars bother ours now ;D
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I live in a quiet rural road but right opposite the sea so none of my neighbours are farmers, however my neighbour opposite will always "chicken-sit" if we want to go away overnight. My OH works away 4 days a week and struggles with the up-keep of our large garden. Last week my neighbour came for two full days and weeded my whole garden. They're absolute gems; friends as well as neighbours. :)
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My neighbours (who are also my son and daughter-in-law ;)) came round last night with a bottle of four-year-old sloe gin in return for my help to them. That's what I call good neighbours (and the reason I've had to type this twice :D)
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Our neighbours are "proper" farmers,(incidentally their wives hate each other which makes parties quite difficult! ::)) the one on the left takes the proverbial, his cows and sheep graze across our land all year and we don't get so much as a lamb chop, he also borrowed our telescopic handler for nearly a fortnight and returned it with no diesel in it!! >:( and made off as quick as he could when dropping it back over!
On the other side the farmer is ok but his cows keep getting out, his fencing is the shove a pallet in the hole kind of job! and then theres my sister's place, she is wonderful, pig & dog sits whenever i need her and looked after me when my back was bad. On the whole not too bad :)
Mandy :pig:
ps think i'm a good neighbour i'm forever out returning roaming dogs, rounding up wandering cows, saving unexpected lambs, fixing their fences, checking their water troughs etc etc!
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I've got two neighbours that have offered to look after the animals if I need it and one who offered me the use of his paddock last year. Alas none of them are 'animal' people so there's a limit to what they can do, and it's hard to reciprocate such favors.
You have chickens (I bet they'd like some eggs) and grow veg (I bet they'd like some home-grown veg) and have a pony (if they grow their own veg and/or roses I bet they'd like some well-rotted horse manure!) And maybe you put some of your wether lambs in your own freezer?
:D
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Thank you SallyinNorth will give that a go :wave:
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We have a wonderful couple a few doors down from our field; they keep bees (backing on to our land) and we sell their honey on our market stall, she volunteered to start opening up the chickens for us on a sunday morning so we get to have a lie in! ;D Much appreciated! They also have one of our veg boxes every week, and we always make sure they get a little bit extra. Also the lady next door to our land (who we initially thought was against our 'polytunnel operation' - quote from the parish council minutes :o yes we get mentioned ::)) is alot friendlier these days, asked to pick some of our damsons & left us a few jars of damson jam & redcurrant jelly by the gate, think she's coming around now she realises we are quite serious about our Market Garden business! :)
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I have a really good neighbour. He has done loads for me over the years and I find it hard to repay him as he is so competent and never needs any help! I do bring his sheep in for him sometimes but he rarely asks me.
Recently he tubed my first ever calf for me and helped me save it's life, then he helped me get it back on it's mother and let me put them in his shed til the calf was strong enough to go outside, then he calved my second ever calf and I am sure it would have been a c-section if I had called the vet. He's given me hay and refused payment and any time I try and give him money for anything he says "all debts are paid in whisky"! Oh and he sold me an old crush for 50 quid, he wanted to give me it for nothing but I refused, it still is in working order and is a weigher crush as well! Saw one on ebay that wasn't a weigher sell for 250, exactly the same as mine.
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I have a really good neighbour. He has done loads for me over the years and I find it hard to repay him as he is so competent and never needs any help! I do bring his sheep in for him sometimes but he rarely asks me.
any time I try and give him money for anything he says "all debts are paid in whisky"!
A bottle of Famous Grouse is practically farmer currency around here. Some farmers you have to take two bottles as the first will be opened and drunk with you when you call round with your "thank you" ... hic!
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Yep that's the one ;D
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my "neighbours" (a short walk down the road, friends from work) have just given us a shed!
it took some carrying to get it back, 6 trips, its 8 foot by 6. think we're going to built pig shed mark 2...
And in all the houses in between,, folk just stared out their windows and watched us (me) struggling >:(
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Just about everyone in my village are really nice ;D. My immediate neighbours on one side are horrible but then nobody likes them, the other side are lovely and we help each other out when we can.
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My good neighbours are the farmers who deliver my feed and straw during the winter and take the bales across the field and pop them over the fence to save me rolling them through gates - one of the lads jumps the fence and helps unwrap them into the rings too and always stops for a wee blether. The hay man likewise, could deliver 6-8 at a time but comes with 2-3 to make sure I'm ok when it's snowy and always stops to chat too. When my 4yo pony died it was the first lot that came out with ropes to drag her away from the fence while we tried to get her up, and the second that came with a tractor to drag her body up the field so it wasn't lying out overnight til collected.. I know they keep a bit of an eye on me working on my own for days at a time, they're often the only people I see from week to week in the worst weather!
As for immediate neighbours in house terms, the couple next door moved out last week after 18 years and I was worried as they aren't animal or country folk but happily put up with muddy gateways, boggy bale areas outside their kitchen window, twice the flooding of field drains (first time into their garage, second thankfully diverted by the first's emergency runoff), phoned me if they saw anything untoward in the fields, and enjoyed the cats wandering over their garden and into their house on occasion.. I met the new ones yesterday and am very hopeful as he is from a local farming family up Newport way but ex military and civil service, newly retired while she is a university person and tho they have a rather nervous and yappy dog they are all really lovely and he has offered to try and help with anything he can - and is planning to buy a chainsaw :) so I may get my bigger logs chopped up finally in return for plums as he loves them and they're nearly ripe now ;D
The other side is another story but not for a good neighbour thread ;)