'City attorney...refuses to work with farmer neighbor': New neighbor refuses farmer's trade offer, becomes infuriated when his taxes skyrocket

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Aug 3, 2023 5:00 PM EDT

This attorney moved from the city to the country without considering the consequences. It's a major life change, as u/USPO-222 writes. 

Social media often glamorizes life on a farm. On Instagram or Tiktok, people who act "trad" (meaning traditional) show off their relaxing, low-technology life. Some people will share their days of baking fresh bread, doing household chores, or feeding chickens. Farm life is all that stuff, but there's so much more that goes into it, especially for those who have made farming their livelihood. Farmers have a hard life — they wake up in the middle of the night to begin caring for their cattle or tending their crops, and most don't quit until dinner time. It's no 9-5 office job, that's for sure. There aren't really "vacation days" for farmers, since they always have to care for either their animals or their crops, or both. 

The attorney in this story decided to buy a 50 acre property on farmland. After moving from the city, he met his new neighbors, including a farmer who'd had an agreement with the previous land owner. The farmer tells the attorney that he will mow his fields a few times a year and harvest a few trees, and in return, the attorney would receive enough chopped wood to heat his house all winter. But the attorney seemingly thought he was too smart for this deal, and was convinced the farmer was taking advantage of him. After rejecting this offer, he must have regretted it. 

Next up, this HOA was tired of looking at this person's 30-year-old car, so they demanded they move it, but the car owner had the last laugh. 

Add as a preferred
source on Google
Advertisement
  • 01
    Plant - 'The attorney thought the former [property] owner was being taken advantage of and refused to do a handshake agreement'
    via Lucas van Oort on Unsplash
  • 02
    Font - Don't poff your farmer neighbor, you may have to pay for it. L OC So this didn't happen to me, but an attorney that I work with regularly as part of my job. He moved from a very high COL area to our rural community. Sold his $2,000,000 house, paid off and inherited from his grandparents, and bought 50+ acres with a huge house in a bedroom community that has a lot of dairy farms. He always used to say how it was much better living up here, both in terms of the lifestyle and monetarily, as
    via u/USPO-222
  • 03
    Font - Now, in addition to the huge house, the property was mostly fields, 40ish acres, and had a 10- acre or so large woodlot. After he moved into his new house, the attorney was approached by his neighbor, one of the area dairy farmers. The farmer told the attorney how he had a handshake agreement with the former owner of the attorney's home/property. The farmer would mow the fields for hay 2-3 times per year and would harvest a sustainable amount of trees out of the woodlot. In exchange, the
    via u/USPO-222
  • 04
    Font - The farmer wanted to keep this arrangement going, as it had worked out well for both parties for over a decade. The attorney thought the former owner was being taken advantage of and refused to do a handshake agreement, but told the farmer to give him a week to draw up a proper contract. The farmer was not overjoyed with making this out to be more than a gentlemen's agreement, but agreed to come back the following week. The attorney decided that what would
    via u/USPO-222
  • 05
    Font - be "fair" was that the farmer should pay him $1,000 each time he mowed the fields for hay, since the farmer would feed the hay to his cows for "free" otherwise (completely ignoring that the farmer was using his own equipment and time to do the haying) and that the lawyer deserved 50% of the chopped wood, not 10%, or at least the 50% of the revenue the farmer got from selling the excess chopped wood (again ignoring the equipment and time investment of the farmer). As you can guess, the far
    via u/USPO-222
  • 06
    Font - This all happened in late 2019, when the fields were rather bare and the supply of chopped wood for the house was full. Well here comes 2020 and now the fields start looking like garbage, because none of the other farmers will pay to hay the fields. In fact, after speaking with the first farmer, all of the other area farmers are unwilling to mow the fields unless the attorney pays them $1,000 per mowing. And, of course, come wintertime the attorney's woodpile is depleted and he has to use
    via u/USPO-222
  • 07
    Font - Now we come to early 2021, tax prep season. The farmer, being a good a dutiful community minded citizen, informs the town that he did not cultivate any of the attorney's land for the entirety of 2020, nor did he know of any other farmers who did. Well, as it turns out this is a big deal, because in our state farmland is assessed at a much lower value than residential property and additionally has a seperate and lower tax rate. The attorney's land had previously been entirely zoned as farm
    via u/USPO-222
  • 08
    Font - town sent out an assessor and rezoned the entire 50+ acres as residential, which more than tripled the taxable property value and imposed the residential tax rate rather than the much lower farm tax rate. The attorney was quite surprised and furiously told me, and everyone else we work with, all this past week how he's going to sue the town because they now expect him to pay $50,000/ year in property taxes.
    via u/USPO-222
  • 09
    Font - tl;dr - City attorney buys huge farm estate in rural community. Refuses to work with farmer neighbor who used to maintain the property. Property now looks like sh attorney has extra bills, and the entire estate got rezoned costing the attorney $50,000 / year in property taxes.
    via u/USPO-222
  • 10
    Font - Dendad1218 Not quite the same but my friends have been on the same farm for 200+years. Some city folk came to the grandfather and said how much they liked the country life. Would he sell them some land for 4 houses. He did. The next spring they took him to court because his dairy farm smelled. They lost. The following winter the barn collapsed. Spring they built a new barn. Right next to the 4 new houses. It was closer to the road after all.
    via u/Dendad1218
  • 11
    Font - OmegaGoober +1. What kind of idiot turns down free maintenance of his property and no- labor restocking of his wood pile??? Did he plan to mow all 50 acres himself? Unless he has a way to harvest, bale, and sell the grass it's yard waste he'd have to deal with.
    via u/OmegaGoober
  • 12
    Font - JaschaE +3 Can't imagine anybody who ever mowed a lawn turning down this deal...
    via u/JaschaE
  • 13
    Font - flipflop180 2 We own a house with 20+ acres of farmland on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. We rarely use the house, but a local farmer farms the land. He is supposed to pay us a rental fee for being allowed to use our land. In twenty years, we have never collected any money from him. Why? Because he watches the house for us. He would probably pay us and watch the house, because he's a nice, honest man. But we don't need the money, so we don't collect. Why spoil a good thing?
    via u/flipflop180
  • 14
    Font - s_burr Grew up on a hog farm. Luckily, wasn't much inflow from the cities yet, so no real issues with "new neighbors" What is always fun (at least in my state) is fencing laws. Getting a neighbor to pay up for their half of the fence on the property line usually ends up in court. Even more fun when the neighbor is "The Railroad".
    via u/s_burr
  • 15
    Font - My dad is currently suing his neighbor for cattle rustling. Dad's cattle went through fence to neighbors land, and he went over to neighbors to receive his cattle and pay for any damages incurred. Neighbor kept giving him the run around ("Not right now") for a few months and then we find out he sold them right before Christmas. Says he contacted my dad but nobody was ever home (which was a lie because my mom was going through chemo) so he sold them. Didn't go well in mediation so now it's
    via u/s_burr
  • 16
    Font - fjzappa +1 This could become a very costly move for our attorney friend here. Not sure where this is, but in Texas, it takes 5 years of agricultural production to get a property recognized as agricultural property.
    via u/fjzappa
  • 17
    Font - ronnevee I started to grin as soon as you got to the tax part and I realized where this was going. A knowledge of tax law from the start would have well served this attorney.
    via u/ronnevee
  • 18
    Font - userdmyname With this guys lack of due diligence in all aspects of this situation, I would be very skeptical to use him as a lawyer
    via u/userdmyname
  • 19
    Font - bossybabedomme I live in a city that has a cardboard recycling factory. It used to be in an industrial zone. Now they have built shopping and condos all around it. Cardboard recycling often involves lots of wet paper and steam. It also smells like someone v ted in a sewer and then boiled it. People complain and I always ask them if they didn't notice the factory when they were viewing their shiny new condo a few blocks away spewing steam hundreds of metres into the air.
    via u/bossybabedomme
  • 20
    Font - patb2015 Yeah, He should have continued the handshake deal for a year while he got oriented and figured out the economics. when I moved to the Midwest, one day I noticed some spanish dudes mowing my backyard. I came out to ask them what's up and they said "We mowed this yard for the previous owner and figured you would want to continue the deal". I asked how much, they quoted me the typical 'per mow' and
    via u/patb2015
  • 21
    Font - i said "Okay" and went in got some cash. Oftentimes I would come home find the yard mowed and an invoice sitting in the mail box. I would send a check and I never had to do lawn stuff.
    via u/patb2015
  • 22
    Font - Tom_Marvolo_Tomato Another case of "penny wise, pound foolish." Good on the farmers!
    via u/Tom_Marvolo_Tomato
  • 23
    Font - El-Ahrairah9519 Lol what "yeah I basically do a s load of work for essentially free, you cool with that?" "The nerve! The audacity! You should pay me to do all that maintenance of my property!" Haha buddy got what he deserved
    via u/El-Ahrairah9519

Want More? Follow Us and Add Us as a Preferred Source on Google.

Tags

farming rural neighbors hay farmer attorney malicious compliance house city malicious-compliance-reddit legal farm agreement property field
Scroll Down For The Next Article