Keeping Produce From Garden After House Sale?

Oooooooh! Good ideas as always, Lynda!

The garden really could be a selling point. It looks especially good when everything's growing all over the place, but I can get an early start on some stuff, maybe even go so far as to start pole and bush beans inside.

We have lots of containers (Nick gleans them at curbside whenever he sees something good). I can easily plant those with compost and a soil lightener. That would take care of at least SOME of the compost out there.

And putting the canned goods on display is right up there with making sure there's some fresh bread baking in the oven for a showing. :

Pony!

It is hard to let go, and as a farmer, the crop is everything, how can I leave that.....

I know.

But on a garden next to a house, it would be difficult to encumber the new owners with clauses that you will continue to be in the yard all summer long, & they should not have the right to enjoy their new property for so long.

What will be difficult for you is to see it a week after closing, 7 see the garden rolled down & new sod rolled over it.

Letting go is difficult.

--->Paul

Ouch. Yeah. I had not considered that POV.

It's not so much the harvest as that lovely soil I've been building for 10 years. Every year got better and better, we've not added any chemicals to the lawn or the gardens (great selling point!) The soil in my beds is so lovely... To me, gardening is not so much about the plants as that lovely, lovely dirt...

I think I will go cry for a while now...

Pony!

You could always plant quite a bit in pots that you can take with you.

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Well there you go darlin, tell them you'll sell them the house but you'll be back with a front end loader and 5-6 40yd dump trucks to get all of your special garden soil. (I hope you know I'm kidding you on this---don't haul off the dirt. Dang it, there I go kidding again.)

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Does that also mean the person that planted the crop would be able to come in every week to work in thier garden? A garden is harvested over several months, not just in the fall. I wouldn't want the previous owner in my yard every week all summer long. I'd just let it go.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

Most farming states have laws that protect a renting farmer from getting the crop taken away from them after working, fertilizing, or seeding it.

In my part of the country, if you want the current renter off your land, you need to notify them in writing by the end of September. If not, they have the option to continue farming for the same rent the following year. (If you have signed a rental contract, any wording in the contract can change this of course!)

Even if the land is sold, if this notification is not done right the renter can pay the new owner the same rent & continue to farm it the following summer.

In wheat areas, the timing is different to account for winter wheat. Etc.

These laws would not apply directly to the land owner if they sell their property. It would only apply if someone were renting the garden from Pony, for example. It protects that person from having a growing crop taken away from them.

As well, they typically only apply to ag cops in larger fields.

Interesting stuff if you happen to buy farm land that was being rented out to another party - it could be a lien on your property of sorts, but not applicable in this case.

Pony, didn't mean to make you blue, I am a farmer, 'rent' 4 acres of crop land from my brother in law for free, and still cringe every time he knocks a stem or 3 of corn over with his mower..... The land & the crop are important to us. I could see by your first message, control of that is important to you. If you sell, you need to be prepared to truely give it up.

A garden this time of year????? We have about 1-2 feet of frost, 6-8 inches of snow, what in heck would a person plant this time of year to worry about? Snow won't leave until mid-March if lucky, ground won't thaw out until April, freezing won't leave until May.

--->Paul

I'd go for planting a moderate garden and keeping it very neat and pretty as a "staging" selling point for somebody looking for a homestead-ish place, but not so big that it screams "work" to a potential buyer who is not so keen on growing. You can put anything you want in a counter-offer, but what you can't know is how the buyer will view that. Asking to come back to harvest could be just fine, or might sour someone, who then looks elsewhere. And it's clearly a buyers' market these days in most of the country. When we bought our place, the person left a piano, we had it in writing they'd come in a particular number of days. Some weeks went by, no show, no call, no reply. Ending up costing us a letter from our attorney saying it would be considered abandoned if they didn't come in a given time period. They did then arrive. OK with me. even though I play the piano, because this one was beat. Then the seller's father sees my husband's ax near the door, and has the gall to say he was missing one like that, had he left it in our barn? Man!!! Sue

One other thing about asking to come harvest later that you may not have considered -

Do you really want to go back there after you sell it? There's a good chance that the new homeowner will have had a clogged toilet or a flake of paint come off by them, or found that the rain gutters aren't graded quite right and don't drain the way they'd like them to. You could be going back to find folks that want you to right small flaws on the house that they find after purchase, and that think they are entitled to do so since they are letting you harvest produce.

It's often best to NOT have any sort of ongoing relationship with the next owner. You can always find something small that needs fixing on a used house, and you really don't want to give them opportunity to try to put the repair work back on you. It's worth losing produce to make a clean break from and older house.

Lynda