Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[Baymule]

Your place is beautiful. All your hard work is showing!

Land here is stupid high. The school district is one that everyone wants their kids in and people are willing to pay the price. Land goes from $8,000 to $12,000 for unimproved land.

 

[Mike CHS]

That is why we eliminated South Carolina from our search criteria right away. Land prices were super high in spite of being high crime rate areas and boring scenery to boot.

 

[Latestarter]

It is kinda funny how that works sometimes... I mean I understand all that location, location, location stuff, but when the location clearly aint "all that", I marvel at what some folks expect to sell for... and even more so at those willing to pay what's asked.

 

[Mike CHS]

Joe - we found out long after we had our place that one of the neighbors wanted to buy it but they were planning on doing a low ball offer after it had been on the market for awhile. What they didn't know is that we came to see the property and bought it the day the bank lowered the asking price from the original pre-default price of $119K to what we paid for it. The listing never reflected the price drop so nobody was aware it had been sold until we started showing up on weekends.

 

[greybeard]

It is kinda funny how that works sometimes... I mean I understand all that location, location, location stuff, but when the location clearly aint "all that", I marvel at what some folks expect to sell for... and even more so at those willing to pay what's asked.

Visuals can be very deceiving, depending when one looks at any piece of property. Right now, I can walk anywhere on this 124 acres and never get muddy or wet, but that place has flooded badly just a few months ago, and of course all this place was under 2-8 feet of water last Fall and the 24 acres in ? was under water 4 times total in 2017.

All a seller and his/her agent is required to divulge is that it is in a flood plain and does flood. It's on the potential buyer to perform due diligence beyond that.
It would put me in an ethical tight spot if one were to come to me and ask the simple question "How often and how bad does that property flood?"
(I would feel badly, but would have to answer honestly.)

This property has been in the family since 1964 so I know how to deal with most high water ( a Harvey type flood notwithstanding). I now look at the Harvey flood as a tool to work from. I now know how to fix my East/West running fences so they won't lean again, and will probably start on that little project as soon as the current rain period is done.

Joe, your own area that has the dry creek that sometimes turns into a torrent..you will need to do some things there. As well as the tee posts, you will, on the inside of the wire, need to plant the the same diameter posts that you use on corners. 6" minimum diameter, planted deeply, preferably cemented in. Why? It's not just thesmall diameter of tee posts that allows them to lean. As water runs by anything (bridge pilings, homes, light poles) vibrations set in. The vibration is noticeable in the wire, which is transmitted to the tee posts and as the post vibrate, water gets down around the posts. The vibrating posts makes the soil/water mix soften to mud and the thin posts give way--lean. Larger posts offer more resistance to the vibration and will hold the wire in place much much better than tee posts alone. If it's not in the way of your mowing, you can also use a floating brace on those bigger posts as an added measure. (I won't brace mine, even tho I do not mow, but will plant them 4' deep into the consolidated clay that naturally resists water incursion)

 

[Mike CHS]

GB I may need to do something like you suggested to Joe if I fence in the last 1 acre section of our place. I have a storm drain ditch that goes from dry to about 3-4' of white water with some of the really heavy rains. The water moves fast enough that it will wash out stones that are 3-5 pounds in weight.

We have been keeping the garden beds in good shape and should have a bumper crop of bell peppers soon. The tomatoes are really putting on and we should be able to start canning some soon also. I have about 4 hours of weed eating a week and let it get behind enough that I had to do almost 3 hours worth today to get it caught back up. That was mostly what we had Jay doing every week but taking it back over my shoulder is getting back in shape a lot faster than it was. I want to be caught up when Teresa heads out Sunday for the sale in Sedalia since I'll be picking up her chores next week also.

We have the Blade Runner remake playing right now and an hour in I'm still not sure I know that it's worth watching but my Teresa seems to be enjoying it so that's good enough.

 

[Baymule]

Our neighbor Robert has a weed eater on wheels that you can just push. MUCH easier than holding one. We borrow it from time to time to whack down weeds. Since we don't have a lawn, we get to skip a lot of that sort of stuff. LOL

Glad that your shoulder is healing up and doing better!

 

[Mike CHS]

Most of my weed eating is on steep slopes outside the fence so it's by hand or Roundup and so far I haven't completely given in to Roundup.

I do use it in the sprayer on the driveway but that's almost 2000' long and I'm not doing that by hand.

 

[Mike CHS]

I forgot to mention that I again was not aware of what was around me when I was trimming grass along a fence that has hot wire above the gate. Yep - I was on a roll getting it done and soaking wet with sweat and managed to again hit the ground wire and hot wire with my forehead. It's amazing how fast that wire can set you on your butt.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Yikes! I've done it once - and same place - right across the forehead. Feels like getting hit in the head with a hammer. But, I've got to say that I wasn't depressed afterwards. Electric shock therapy apparently works, lol.