Day 116

Walking over to my neighbor, I wasn't sure what to expect. When it became clear he had managed to get his tractor stuck in the softer earth, I felt relief as the tone of his voice had me a bit worried. In his call, there was a sense of urgency that worried me. As I approached him, though he voiced displeasure with getting stuck, he mentioned the real cause of his call. Then it started to make sense.

As he had already started to release his tractor from the land’s grip, someone had pulled their truck up to him from a nearby road on the other side of the property line. He stated the lady who exited the vehicle seemed agitated and was motioning for him to come over. However, with the tractor’s engine blaring and his focus being on getting it out of the mud, he couldn't quite make out what the individual was yelling his way. 

Interestingly enough, a few days earlier, a local farmer and I were chatting and he asked if I had any issues with neighbors about property lines. I hadn’t. He had and he wasn't shy about describing it. He said there was a lot of drama in the area regarding land ownership issues. Issues with fellow landowners. Issues with the municipality. Issues with developers.  To this point, we were not really caught up in any drama.

Until now.

I wasn't exactly sure what my next step was but with sunlight fading, I focused on helping get my neighbor out of the mud. Fortunately for both of us, the process didn't take long and he was soon free and able to start heading back to the house. Based on what we both noticed, we needed to get there as soon as possible.

As we started heading back, we noticed a truck had entered the yard and was driving laps around our barn, stopping to shine lights in our direction. I assumed this meant they wanted to talk, but I didn't feel the talk would be very friendly.

My heart rate steadily increased as I got closer and closer to the truck, which was now parked at our front door.