Day 152 - To Berm or Not to Berm

After having our farmer friends over and conferring with them, our anxiety was lessened.

Just a little.

They had personal connections with the village and the land management people. They were very confident that the people in charge would make sure that everything would be completed responsibly. While they had no insight on any specific builders, they mentioned that the person who would oversee the zoning and development process used a very “straight and narrow” approach and that he would make sure things were done appropriately for all parties involved.

That being said, they also mentioned if we had concerns, we could do something on our end as well.

Besides trees, we discussed the idea of installing a berm. We could then plant trees on top of the berm. This would serve two purposes. Besides serving as a windbreak, it would also create privacy and a more natural view than a towering house. They could provide trees at a cheaper price than the local nursery. All of this sounded intriguing, but our farmer friends mentioned that a berm would be overkill and unnecessary if the adjacent property installed a swale.

We had some decisions to make.

Would it make sense to be extra cautious and pay for the berm and trees at a pretty sizable cost?

Or would we put our hope that the new owners did everything they needed to do to protect our property?

Neither option was very comfortable. We didn't want to fork over tons of money for things we might not need. However, we also wanted to be responsibly assertive in the protection of the money and time we had already invested into improving our property.

After careful consideration, we made a decision regarding what direction we wanted to go.

Neither.

We decided to apply a “wait and see” approach. If we ended up needing a berm and trees on top of the berm we had done the necessary research and could budget and plan accordingly. If our neighbors did the work making that task unnecessary, even better.

Even though we opted out of adding this to our plate immediately, it was on the backburner and ready to go when needed.