How private, is private enough?

We only have 40 acres but we are surrounded by protected lands (110 acres one side / 1,100 on the back, Water Shed Lands behind those). Our roads look about like the ones pictured here, we keep gates locked, we have outside showers and like someone above could walk around naked should we choose to do so (BUT that won't happen anytime soon since our kids would have a fit). We can hear some neighbor noise but most of it is "normal" stuff like dogs, guns and tuning up an engine on the weekend. The REAL nuisance is the "weekend" people who own a piece near here. They are only here 4 or 5 times a year (Thanks be to God) but make a nuisance of themselves with those 4 wheeler things and go carts and those small dogs that yap a lot.

I wish we had more land and more room between us and "them" but we probably won't expand.

I am not sure there is a place in the U.S. that is private enough. It was always my dream to own an island. I have had to settle for a lot less.

good to know others feel like I do about privacy. I have 6 acres in a pseudo-suburb near Nashville. used to be I could wander around in nothing but sandals, as another wrote, on the deck at least! House built on 15 acres behind us across creek ruined that. I always thought 40 acres might be enough...maybe. Seems 40 "select" acres...now I have to figure out where...Canada looks good on that picture of North America.

Vanessa

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Vanessa
Lebanon, TN

Mr. Hoppes, I WISH!

I'd be riding my horse all over a place like that...wish it had more trees..



EDIT: I looked at it again. ohhhh, makes me wish I could land the lottery. just BEAUTIFUL.....

yup, this would be great! I'd have a gate about a mile in to keep tresspassers out....then have to travel at least a mile further to find me,if not further... only the envited, please!

((((now i have a better picture of my dream location......sigh...wonder if that water in that lake is good water????

We live at the end of the county road. It dead ends at our mail box, that way the county maintains it, there is no other houses on our county road. and we own all the land on both sides so there will not be anyone else. Its a public road and anyone has the freedom to ride down it and back but no reason to get out and do anything. After 25 years they realize we just don't take to tresspassers. We only use about 10 acres and the rest is just expense and work but if you have land close to you you don't own it will be aproblem sooner or later., It will be sold, inherited someting and you will lose your privicy. I once long ago had a place with federal land on two sides and was just rite, then they decided to expand the federal land and with a stroke of a pen decided I would sell. So no thanks I will never own land next to public land. Also had a house next to a school and it was taken for a parking lot. So watch out for that ruining your garden of eden. What ever you have enjoy it every day thats what we do with ours.
As someone said I don't want to own all the land just the land that ajoins mine.

I don't think you can have too much privacy... it's limited by how many dollars you have.

The farm we sold a few years ago, was 96 acres with our home in the center. When we bought it, it was totally private. Wooded in front and behind the house, but both sides were pasture to the fence lines. One neighbor moved their parents in, in a dumpy old trailer and parked it right on the fence line, because we had a beautiful pasture view... then the other neighbors house burned down, and they build right on the other fence line, again because of our beautiful view.

So... that kind of killed it for me. When we sold that farm and bought land to build on, I hunted around (in the same area, we love our neck of the woods) forever for a piece that would could afford to pay cash for and never worry about seeing anyone.

We ended up with a unique 60 acre piece, that is shaped like a shallow bowl, once you're 100 feet or so in, you can't see anything but our land. The bottom is flat and where our home will be built. Most sound passes over the hilltops, it's wonderfully quiet, a couple of miles down a gravel road which is very quiet, and about 25 minutes to the closest town of 4000 or so people.

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http://tinksquared.com

I've always figured 200 acres would be pretty private. Put a house in the center . Of course as thick as the population is getting a section is looking better all the time.. Now if my income matched my wishes.

Know what they say about wishes in one hand and s**t in the other.. See which one fills first

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"Let the beauty we love, be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." Rumi

yes it is addictive...or at the least your perspective changes so much that it does somehting to you.i have lived in alaska and lived in alot of remote palces in the PNW and worked daily in the deep forest of these places.it changed me....i like privacy.i have a gate at my drive also.it has stopped people driving in on me.....sometimes i run naked through the yard too...roflmao...sooooooo....this alone as helped to stop people needing therapy after a encounter with me.....lol.i use to boat several miles every morning then catch a chopper to work daily....this is jsut one example that can change you....the daily commute and my work life is so boreing now.....sometimes i think i will die of it.its hard for adventure junkies to adjust....lol....now .....shhhhhhhhhhh......be quiet and cut the porch light out.

p.s. you are lucky to have 66 acres....i have 20 in a very remote place.i came and a few followed....i didnt cover my tracks good enough.next house will be accessed by chopper only.

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i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life,.......,and not,when i came to die,discover that i had not lived...Henry David Thoreau

So what's wrong with having neighbors?

As far as solitude, go to South Dakota or any of the western Plains states. You'll find it there. I've been out in the Badlands where you could not see a light, power pole, road or anything. The Milky Way JUMPS out of the sky at you. Or Colorado's mountains. Same, really, with the Corn Belt states, where many a farmhouse is surrounded by a thousand or more acres of corn and beans. It may not be forest, but it darned sure is secluded. I've either lived or spent extended time in those areas.

I knew a woman who was a winter parks minder, in a cabin in the Colorado mountains. Waaaay back in there. She'd get all her stuff up there by horseback in the summer, start cutting firewood by hand as soon as she got there (too far for chainsaw gas), and when the snows came, that was it. She was stuck there until the melt. No way to get to her except by chopper, and that would be for an emergency only. Then she'd come down, spend 3 months at her desk job, and head back up again. She said she got really good at provisioning, since what she had would have to last. A small chocolate bar tastes really, really good in the last month up there, she says. She made sure to have enough to indulge.

If that won't work for ya, head to the Texas panhandle/north Texas. I know a guy who's a winter hand there. To get to his cabin on this huge ranch, here's what he told me he had to do: From town, drive 20 miles by two-lane highway. Exit the highway in his pickup with a horse trailer. Drive 25 miles down a dirt pathway. Get to the end of it, where a barn was to shelter the truck and trailer. Load the horses with supplies, and ride 10 miles to the cabin. That's 55 miles from town, and once you are there and the snows come, that's it because the dirt track to the highway becomes impassable. He usually stays up there by himself for the winter and calving in spring. His job is to keep an eye on the herd. But one year, his wife and then 6-year-old son wintered with him. They got all the way to the cabin, and found they only had one set of shoes for the boy. So...you guessed it, all that in reverse, 55 miles back to town. No way his shoes would have lasted him a winter, or even been adequate if they had.

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Jim Steele
Sweetpea Farms
"To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing." -- Robert Gates

MY MIL lives smack-dab in the center of 350 acres. Drive is a half-mile, measured. Secluded, right? Well, her neighbor lady became a biker, and now she has two biker gatherings a year at her place. LOUD rock n roll all hours of the day and night for each 3-day event.

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Jim Steele
Sweetpea Farms
"To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing." -- Robert Gates

That 'light' map of the U.S. posted by FTT is south of my darkness area. It's private, remote, but easy access to where I need to go. Neighbors across the road and the other 2 a quarter mile down. The other direction is a mile before the next house. Privacy and wild lands around are key to the northern homestead life for me.

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The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man.

Hmmm...you people better be carefull what you wish for. Solitude like that suggested, sounds beautiful, but wait till the lonliness strikes you, and there's few to befriend you or a companion to seek. It is just you and yourself every day of your life, with a few of the same people you've seen ever since the beginning. When you live long enough in a lonely area, you really start to long for others friendship and ways of life. Eventually you will wish you did have a neighbor again, so life doesn't seem so empty any more. You'll appreciate people good or not so perfect again, when you live the shut out, clammed up lifestyle that sounds so romantic to many. Don't get me wrong, I myself love to live in an area, where the people that do call it home are truely genuine. I don't take my area for granted any more either, as I have never had to lock my house door, vehicle doors (even with keys on the dash and guns on the seat) or lock anything for that matter. If someone is in trouble they are welcome to make themselves at home wether I'm there or not. I know I can crawl into someone's house to, if I really needed to and just leave a note saying thanks. I never have to worry about urban sprawl or stuck-up transplants neither, cause they can't take our winters nor can they be too far from business. Yes, it can be painfully lonely at times, but if you add it all up and watch all the bull that frequents the news in other places of the world, I say to myself..."and I grew up complaining???"

I don't mind seeing neighbors, but I don't want to hear them or smell them (cooking outside type of thing).

I've often thought if I moved I go to a viable farming area. Having farmers for neighbors would be fine with me. Just no city types with their "toys" making noise all the time. If you have to run the tractor all night harvesting or planting, that's totally different.

Jennifer

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-Northern NYS

We live on 20 acres, some wooded, some pasture, and some swampland. And thankfully, on a dead end road! You can see the road from the house, as well as our neighbors about 200' from us, but some creative land clearing and tree trimming keeps them out of sight for the most part. It helps that they are also very kind, and very quiet! DH lived here for 10 years before we married, and I was a suburb girl. After my first year of privacy out here, I gotta say that I just died and went to heaven. Leaving the doors unlocked (where's my key?), cars unlocked, and windows open. No traffic, no noise, and little light pollution. And it sure is ironic when we go camping, always commenting to each other about how it is quieter at home than at the campground!

We have plenty of privacy, but there are times when I still feel just a tad bit nervous all alone out here. (DH works 24 hr shifts) This is a sleepy little town, our neighbors are great, and not much goes on. Was also just wondering if anyone else needed a little "breaking in period" to newfound privacy?

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Living Simply... Or at least making the attempt. Blessed Be.

Private is where the sun sets between your house and your mail box.