[MAK]

How good ( or bad) have your neighbours been?

I start this to share our experience and let others rant or remind themselves how kind their neighbours are.

We have been very lucky to establish a good relationship with our 4 neighbours in our little hamlet. We all exchange jams,cake and pate etc and once a week we give each of the elderly widows and one young family our spare eggs. In our first year here we have been given wheelburrow loads of fruit and veg and our neighbours also feed our pigs and ducks their salad and  veg scraps daily.
BUT beyond "good neighbourly" stuff we have been touched by their kindness.
We have had our little water course cleared and the land levelled by the young farmer. He gives us bales of straw and he ( and the local hunt) humanely killed our 2 pigs the other month.
I have a partnership with one neighbour to harvest firewood from her large copse. This is a serious am mount of wood to see us both thru the very old winter we will get  ( her son will come today to cart her share up the hill) .
Each of our neighbours have their veg ploughed up by one of the visiting sons. Yesterday one old lady offered 2 "lines" of her plot for us to grow potatoes in.
Our neighbours seem to have expanded our opportunity and potential to be small holders and if all our ducklings hatch then we will have enough to populate neighbours abandoned chiken runs ( these have recently been cleared by a team of 12 visiting community helpers).
The downside is that we sometimes don't get all our jobs done or are diverted by the gift of free produe that needs processing eg. apples for cider.

[chairmanphil]

mine are a bit on the mad side of things. but now the land is coming together and it is looking how i knew it would they are backing off and leaving me alone! but no help whatsoever and 2 red setters that bark all the time! but i am used to that now so no biggy. sounds like you have it good at your place Mak!

[doganjo]

I have superb neighbours now, they ask me to see to their  two dogs if they need to leave them for longer than a  couple of hours, and they do the same for me.  They share extra seedlings with me, I pop round with any extra duck and hens eggs every now and then.  I organised for Network Rail to mend our shared drive and lay new gravel, and as a B & B they are delighted.  We trimmed back our leyland trees along the driveway together and had a lot of fun doing it.  Unfortunately I was unable to go to their son's wedding last year due to being away, but received a lovely thank you card and piece of wedding cake.  They are such really lovely, friendly people, and I wouldn;'t hesitate in recommending their B & B, as it is always so clean and tidy, and friendly, and they never turn anyone away.

As for the ones I left behind, apart from the lovely couple I sold my house to, they are a bunch of mean-spirited, back yard moaners, liars, cheats and NIMBYs.

[holz306]

mine are the most hideous form of human being you've ever come across.  The older crofters in the area don't like a woman working the land - but its nice to see their reaction when i'm cruising around the field on the fergie in my bikini 

I have two woman neighbours who enjoy leaving my gates open, and damaging property, and my direct neighbour on the left hand side enjoys seeing his sheep graze my hay field - what can i say, good fences make good neighbours and a constant smile and pleasantness from me is far more annoying to them than them leaving my gates open etc.  All of the neighbours who have nothing to do with crofting/farming are great and we all have a great relationship.....c'est la vie.

[lachlanandmarcus]

My neighbours have been unfailingly helpful and friendly, the only one who is a bit more tricky as he doesnt keep his fences well together is more of a cattle baron rather than a neighbour, he doesnt live so close himself.

It makes all the difference! Only trouble is, my neighbours are so well set up that it is hard to return favours as they have everything in hand!

[plumseverywhere]

We have one neighbour up hill who we barely see, I know they are 'crafts' type people and that the lady makes special knitting and crochet needles from tree branches. He sometimes walks down to buy eggs from us.

Then there are a row of 6 cottages that used to be the farm workers cottages for our house, going back some decades    One of them fires fireworks into our paddock on any date he chooses around 5th Nov without telling us first, another used to buy eggs from us but didn't like the speck of mud you get on free range 'real' eggs,2 young families - sweet but rarely see but have been known to knock on the door if a sheep looks poorly etc. then the elderly lady and her son next door are WONDERFUL!!! We worried about having 4 noisy children, a cockerel, goats, sheep etc but they tell me that they love it all and how fabulous it is for them to see the land being worked again, such a relief    we give them eggs and soap and they give us tomatoes and veggies

[jaykay]

The house right next to me is empty at the moment and I am keeping everything crossed it stays that way. I don't want complaints about cockerels and I find being able to hear or see other humans where I live pretty stressful (I know, I'm antisocial, but that's just how I am)

The next farm down are lovely, have been very kind and helpful to me, they seem to want me to succeed on my own. The rest of the farmers in the dale are pleasant enough ie waving when we pass.

The middle class, landless incomers are horrid on the whole, partly because I'm a 'traitor' ie I'm a middle class incomer too but I'm not prepared to get indignant with them about how tidy one old farmers' place is or whether the chap with the fields next to the church is muck-spreading on a Sat.

MAK, your situation sounds lovely  and Holz, I'm so sorry about yours, that would make me very miserable 

[TheCaptain]

We have a strange relationship with ours - their youngest is in the same class as our eldest so they play together alot but...
Their house is a converted pig barn that used to belong to the farm we live in, and our house was owned by their parents. the land used to be one big field but the previous owners (mum and dad) sold the acre behind the converted barn to the barn owners as they were worried about whoever moving in building on it. They're trying to sell their place and have been for over a year but they don;'t like the fact that we run our place as a farm (clue's in the name...) as the previous owners just kept a couple of horses and cut the hay once a year. We can see thier point, they've never really said anything, but they never buy our produce or are particularly grateful when we drop them off free stuff. However, if you don't like living next to a farm, you shouldn't have built your house next to a farm.

Essentially, to our faces they're indifferent, inside they're probably raging...

[holz306]

For a long time it did make me miserable, but to be honest i shrug it off now and just keep smiling, i'm a very happy approachable person and i know there is no genuine issue causing problems with them (the two woman inparticular) so i just get on with life.  I was brought up to believe its not what you say that counts, its what you do.....so while they're standing at the sidelines of life having a good bitching session about me - i'm busy on the tractor or dosing animals etc.  I feel these people have cut off their nose to spite their face - i can be the best neighbour in the world and i'm always the first to assist anyone if needed and i'm very community spirited - if they choose to not be part of it all, thats their choice, and their loss.  They've made life hell at times, but if ever they really needed help with anything, i know i'd be the first in line to help them, they know it too, and i think that pains them greatly.

[jaykay]

Why are they so miserable?

[holz306]

well, personality more than anything.  One of them is just a very bitchy jealous person, and the other one just manipulates the first one!!

  They fell out with my brother who is a direct neighbour to them, over croft land, and they were proven wrong, as a result he got rid of his livestock because they kept letting it lose on the road, and damaging his water supply (hill supply) , so he was too concerned to be able to leave his stock so he sold them - anyway, i've then just become an easy target i guess, and because they don't get a reaction from me regardless of what they do, i think it winds them up even more.   These two characters are not liked by anyone in our community as they certainly appear to act without reason or justification, just because they can. They're just bullies.  They don't have particularly happy lives - no.1 has a rather unpleasant husband who i believe is abbusive when drunk, and the other had a very nasty childhood, i believe they are just unhappy people and direct their anger towards the easiest target, i pity them. 

It would be a lot easier if their was a genuine conflict or if i did something that they didn't approve of because then it could be resolved, but in this case, that isn't the situation.

 Like i said, the situation used to make me very unhappy, but now i shrug it off, lifes too short to let people like them win by making me unhappy - and i'm a lot more productive than them because i'm not putting all my energy into negative behaviour, so i guess that makes me happy.

[TheCaptain]

Oh, and my immediate neighbours are my in-laws  and they're a fricking nightmare.

[doganjo]

Does anyone believe in Karma?   I'm not sure.  I was brought up to believe that if someone is nasty to me that you don't know what is going on in their lives to make them like that - pain, no money, lost jobs, lost family etc, and in your neighbour's case. holz, abuse, but sometimes it's difficult  to keep on believing that.

[Moleskins]

- but its nice to see their reaction when i'm cruising around the field on the fergie in my bikini 

Have you read the 'Members only' section thread "what do we all look like?"
 

[holz306]

ha, no moleskins, i've not....and nor will i be putting any photo's up - but if you looked at the youtube link i posted the other day, you'll see what i used to look like lol, but certainly no bikini-shots, i save them for the local crofters...