I thankfully do not have any scary stories to tell on this. However, I do have stories to tell!

We don’t live in a traditional neighbor hood. We live out in the country with a main road in front of our house. We have neighbors all around us but they are spread apart. There’s a house on the right side and a house on the left side and horse pastures across the street. One of the houses beside us have no one living in it but the owners are keeping it for now. On our other side we have had two different neighbors live in that house. These are the neighbors I’m going to talk about! 😀

The first neighbor was a wonderful, elderly man. His sister came to his house daily to help him with his wife whom had Alzheimer. I never had the chance to meet his wife since she wasn’t mentally there anymore. He spoke highly of her and told us stories of how she used to can. I wish I had been able to meet her. I think we would have gotten a long very well.

When our first chickens reached 1 year of age they had discovered that his driveway had the perfect trench beside it for dirt baths. Almost every day they went out, there they were scratching and rolling around in the dirt. He never mentioned it but just put boards down making it undesirable for the birds. Then again he probably got a good laugh when I had my first kick box match with Henry. How embarrassing. I don’t know if he saw it or not as I wasn’t paying attention to the window since I was busy in my flip flops, kicking and blocking Henry’s attacks. Embarrassing!

We always kept an eye on the chickens. If they went to the neighbors yard, we would call the chickens back and throw food. Until one day I saw the neighbor’s sister feed the chickens. 😮 The chickens excitedly ran for the food. I brought this up to Jacob and he said that he knew the sister was feeding the chickens. He once talked to her and she said her brother could just get over her feeding the chickens and them coming into his yard. That was settled. The chickens were welcomed over there. We even found out that our rooster, Little Roo, would go over there early in the morning before dawn, crowing for food.

We did give our neighbor and his sister eggs when we got more chickens.

A couple of years later we brought home our first goats. The neighbor came over and talked with us. He said that the goats were cute but didn’t said anything negative about them.

That neighbor was a great neighbor. He wasn’t noisy, didn’t complain. He was perfect. He unfortunately passed away one summer.

His house sat vacant for almost a year. We were anticipating the new neighbors. Would they be nice? Would they be mean? Would they have animals? We were glad that his family had made the decision to sell the house versus renting it out. We thought selling the house would mean a permanent neighbor. I have heard some horror stories of renters. Not saying all renters are bad just some.

The dreaded day came when the house sold. I was glad for the family since they didn’t have to deal with the house anymore but nervous about the new neighbor. We never met the neighbor. He ended up in a car accident so we didn’t see him until several months later.

Hercules came to live at our home before the house was sold. For along time he stayed in the front yard with Jedi. Sometimes he walked around the house, going into the back yard. Keep in mind that Hercules had never seen a neighbor at that house.

One day I hear Hercules barking. I find that he is in the neighbor’s yard barking at two people. The two people ended up being the neighbor’s mom and brother. The mother told us the neighbor had been involved in a car accident and wouldn’t be at the house for a while. She also said that the neighbor had been excited that we had chickens and goats in the backyard. She brought up that they used to own chickens but stopped since a fox kept killing them. I let her know that we dealt with foxes too and now we were dealing with the hunting dogs.

We didn’t talk long since they were leaving. Hercules at the time didn’t have a collar. I called him which he came and walked beside me but turned and started circling the car when the neighbor’s family got in. I chased Hercules around the car and ended up dragging him to the house. Embarrassing. Not only did I chase him around the car like duck duck goose. I had to half way drag him home. At that time he wasn’t the size of a small puppy, he was about the size of Jedi who is 70 lbs.

Our neighbor finally moved in. A single man about our age. It was hard to meet him since he worked all night, getting home real late. We would see him once in a while. The chickens still went over there.

In fact, one time I looked out the kitchen window and saw all the chickens run across the yard to that neighbor’s house. What did I see? He was feeding the chickens! Yes! We have seen him several times now feed the chickens.

One time at 2:30AM in the morning, I awoke from the chickens squawking. I go outside to see what’s going on. I find a huge flame coming off the neighbor’s grill. I guess he was about to cook food but it looked like a bonfire. Something had spooked the chickens and I figure it was him starting the fire. Not sure. I did check to make sure all chickens were still present later that day. Which they were. 🙂

Several months after the neighbor officially moved in, Jacob met the neighbor. FINALLY. He had a short conversation with him. The neighbor said that he liked the animals, they were one reason why he bought the house.

That is great news to hear! Last thing we want is someone that hate animals since we have a bunch of them!

Still to this day, the neighbor throws food out the back door. All the animals flock over to see what it is. One time he threw out lettuce or cabbage and only a few chickens ate it…so he had green leaves sitting there for a couple of days.

Even though he stated he likes the animals, we still try to keep them in our yard. We don’t want the animals to wear out the welcome mat!