I just met my new neighbor to the north of me.\u00a0 He bought the old farm and 17 acres when the bank foreclosed on it.\u00a0 After the recession of \u201907 hit, my previous neighbor watched his housebuilding business dry up like a Dust Bowl swimming pool.\u00a0 He never was one to save a dime for a rainy day so when the drought hit, he was goner, just another casualty on Wall Street\u2019s gamble to enrich themselves.<\/p>\n
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My new neighbor and I met over the fence line where he\u2019ll soon be pulling out the old 7 strand barbed wire and updating to a mesh fence, keep his dog and horses in and varmints out.\u00a0 Hopefully I\u2019m not in the latter category.\u00a0 When I first came here the woods was pretty much unbroken from Dallman Road down to the Head.\u00a0 The cattle days being pretty much played out, there wasn\u2019t much need of fences except for an occasional perimeter around a vegetable garden to keep the deer out.\u00a0 Other than me and Colton, not many folks ventured into the nettle barrens.\u00a0 Fences would\u2019ve been a frivolous use of money and money was way too hard to come by.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Well, the Open Range is gone now around here.\u00a0 You can still wander the interior from me to the Head if you know your way.\u00a0 Still find duckponds and an occasional streambed lined with swamp cabbage, even a few hidden houses obviously off the grid and built without permits or government oversight.\u00a0 There\u2019s a few old homesteads disappeared except for their shadow in a periwinkle bed or a cluster of daffodils gone wild.\u00a0 There\u2019s even a 1950 Studebaker parked up a ravine near the last old growth cedar on the South End.\u00a0 No skeleton sits behind the wheel.\u00a0 The driver\u2019s probably back in the salmonberry jungle, still looking for a gas station.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Good fences, Robert Frost said ironically, make good neighbors.\u00a0 My neighbor was worried I might not agree.\u00a0 And, of course, I don\u2019t.\u00a0 My world shrunk another 17 acres, and before long me and the deer will have to share what\u2019s left.\u00a0 I\u2019m just hoping they remain vegetarians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just met my new neighbor to the north of me.\u00a0 He bought the old farm and 17 acres when the bank foreclosed on it.\u00a0 After the recession of \u201907 hit, my previous neighbor watched his housebuilding business dry up like a Dust Bowl swimming pool.\u00a0 He never was one to save a dime for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5008"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5011,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5008\/revisions\/5011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}