Two events at the farm this week: The Reading of Names, on Sunday morning, and a hands-on work day for an Environmental Anthropology class from KU on Thursday. Directions to the farm are located at http://pinwheelfarm.blogspot.com/2007/12/directions-to-pinwheel-farm.html.
We'll try to have the circle drive open, and shady parking available, for both events. Entrance to the circle drive is from the main house drive, as normal. It just makes getting out easier if there are a lot of cars. Please always park so as not to block the driveway, so that other vehicles can still get in and out. Thanks!
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
What's the Fuss?
I had just posted the last entry, when Luna started barking furiously, and I heard the unmistakeable screaming of a chicken in dire distress. I jumped into shoes, grabbed a light, and ran to the chicken coop. The desperate screeching and squawking continued unabated.
Normally (yes, this is a "normal" "everyday" experience in some seasons, I'm afraid...and around the full moon it's usually worse...) the squawking would have moved across the field as the fox or coyote ran off with its bounty, or it would have stopped with the bird's demise. But this time the squawking just went on and on, from the coop.
As I approached the coop, I could see that several birds were in the outer pen, acting agitated. All the sheep and the guardian llama were gathered close outside the chicken pen, watching. Eventually I got to where I could see into the coop. A chicken was screaming and beating its wings frantically, upside down, near the roost.
WHAT THE ?!?
Somehow the poor bird had gotten ONE toe caught in a wire lining the wall of the coop, about 3 feet off the ground, and was hanging very unhappily by that toe. I quickly cradled her body, taking the weight off while I worked the toe loose. She flapped away into the yard, apparently unharmed.
How DID this come to be?
I ran the light around the coop, looking for clues. A shadow in a nest box rated a second look...no, not a shadow but a skunk, huddled in a lower nest, staring back at me without blinking. He was so motionless, I thought I might be able to run back to the house for the camera. I laid the light on the floor, to encourage him to stay put. When I moved the light to floor, the hens all panicked and flew at the walls of the coop. Evidently the skunk had scared them in a similar fashion, resulting in the stuck bird.
Mr. Skunk was still there when I returned with the camera, as still as a statue. He remained motionless while I boldly crawled under the roost to get a close picture. I actually was holding the camera about 2 feet from the nest box for the above photo, and he never moved.
It was very late. I was tired. I decided to just go to bed and let Nature take its course. The skunk could choose either chicken food or chicken for dinner. I mean really, what was I going to do about it? Pick the skunk out of the nest box and throw him over the fence, and say "Bad skunk, go home now!?"
The chickens were all fine in the morning.
When J. and E. came for the livestock seminar on Thursday, they expressed concern about our potato planting activities. They had come Wednesday while I was at work, to plant a few more beds of potatoes in between the recently-planted tomato rows. "What's up with the southwest block in the southwest quadrant? Did YOU plant there, and forget to write it down on the bed map?" J. asked.
"No," I replied, puzzled. "I'm very careful to write things down...and I haven't planted any potatoes this week. What makes you think I did?" (The bed maps are our only record of what's planted where, so we keep careful track. The maps also include information about planting dates, varieties, sources, soil management, etc.)
"It looked like someone had dug all along the row, just like when we plant potatoes through the mulch. But nothing's marked on the map."
I thought for a bit. "Maybe the skunk?" I replied. I'd noticed skunk diggings in several of the mulched blocks. They like to look for grubs under the mulch.
"But they're in perfectly straight lines, right down the marked rows!" We all puzzled over that for awhile. Why would the skunk dig in straight lines?
Then I realized that was a block where we'd put very rich sheep pen waste only along the planting bed area, and mulched the paths between the beds with "unsheeped" old hay. Evidently the grubs were in the manurey sheep mulch, and not in the plain hay, and the skunk knew it. We all got a laugh!
All in all, I have a soft spot for skunks...have had, most of my life. Among other things, I like the looks of black and white animals...one glance around the farm gives you a clue about that!
When I was little Mom read us "Jimmy Skunk books" as bed-time stories, over and over again (M., does this surprise you?). There were many wonderful animal characters in Thorton Burgess's nature stories, but Jimmy Skunk was my favorite by far. Thorton Burgess really knew his animals, and in personifying them he vividly portrayed the natural animal's temperaments as a key part of the stories. (Sadly, his books have fallen out of favor, because his animal characters also portrayed racist and political stereotypes of his times.) Pushing the camera into the chicken coop skunk's face was thinkable mainly because Jimmy Skunk made it very clear when I was little that skunks are slow to anger, and would just as soon walk away from an argument. Treated with respect, they show an indifferent, detached, benign tolerance of just about anything. I have even brushed agianst them in nest boxes, gathering eggs in the dark, in the past!
My first (and pretty much last) childhood stuffed animal was a skunk. Mom sewed it out of velveteen for me for Christmas when I was about 5. I loved that skunk! Alas, it was left at a picnic area while travelling between California and Tennesee, and the loss was not discovered until many hours down the road. Probably the greatest loss of my childhood was the loss of that beloved velveteen skunk.
But now I've got the real thing. And he may be even cuter.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Past Entanglements, Present Tense
It's ba-ack....
One knows the inflection of that phrase from hearing it in common use, in so many contexts, even if one doesn't even know what movie it's from. Such is our culture.
Last year, we only discovered one tiny plant of dodder, in a fallow area.
This year, suddenly there was a large, vigorous clump of the eery orange tendrils strangling one of our precious Pink Wink potato plants. EEEK!
At least it was a chance for apprentice J. to examine this pernicious parasitic weed. We carefully gathered up every fragment, pulling up the weeds it had attached to. We treat dodder and affected hosts as biohazard waste...which it is. We pulled it ever so carefully off of Pink Wink, and left the plant. We'll watch to see if it truly does regenerate from material remaining in the host plant vascular tissue, even though we've removed every external trace. (Sorry, I have not been able to figure out how to rotate photos since a computer revamp changed my photo viewing program.)
This parasitic plant became established on the farm while the tenants were here during my sojourn in Canada a couple years ago. Instead of doing some research and doing everything they could to eradicate it, when it started taking over patches of vegetables they just ignored it! They allowed it to seed, then they ran a rototiller through the contaminated bed and spread it all around! It was also allowed to seed prolifically on the pasture, and spread by animals dragging fragments of the tendrils onto host plants. It can regenerate from a small fragment that falls on a host plant.
Favorite hosts in the garden include tomatoes, potatoes, and onions...some of our favorites, too. In the pasture, it favors the best legume forages--red clover, for example. Though it's not supposed to attack grasses, it certainly seemed to be inserting itself into the vascular tissues of the foxtail grass in the potato bed.
It has no clorophyll. It has no roots. It draws all nutrients from the host plant. It wraps around the host, inserts itself into the host's tissues, and draws all water and sustenance fromt here. It isn't affected by herbicides because it doesn't grow like a plant; you can, however, use herbicides to kill it indirectly by killing the host. Not much gain there, if it's in a crop!
Where it attaches to a host, it can send out up to 25 tendrils, seeking other hosts to attach to. each attachment point can grow those 25 tendrils at a rate of several inches a day. Small severed fragments can attach and grow if they fall on a host.
The one plant-like thing it does is reproduce by seed. Thousands of seeds that can stay viable in the soil for 30 years.
This plant is one serious reason for not wanting the City to run construction euipment through our farm to build the pipeline. If seed is transported to our neighbor to the east, it could be a real disaster in his soybean field. Even one seed from my farm could result in a totally infected field, if he fails to notice that seed establishing a colony. He doesn't walk his soybeans nearly as frequently as I walk my pasture, and likely woulnd't notice a patch before it seeded profusely.
Where did this plant come from, to begin with? At first I suspected vegetable seeds. But then I discovered that dodder seed is banned--zero tolerance--in seeds offered for sale in all 50 states...the only such plant. Now I suspect it came steathily in a bale of hay, nearly-ripe seeds entwined around a bit of alfalfa.
Like the snapper, a bit of biodiversity I wouldn't mind doing without. Even if it is extremely fascinating, in its own creepy way.
Feeling Blue
Finally getting a bunch of photos out of the camera and into the blog. When I get a bunch backlogged in there, it's hard to have time to sort through them. Not that I have time now...but sometimes I just have to get out the shoehorn and MAKE time!
This is a sad photo. The subject's name will be read with a different, more solemn inflection that it would have been read a month ago, because now I have seen this one dead, and I know its form in death more intimately than in life, and I know the weight of the thing in my hand.
The indigo bunting is one of the greatest avian joys of the farm, to me. Never before the farm have I definitively seen this gorgeous creature the color of a South American butterfly. They are birds of the woodland margins, the edges where the meadows meet the trees. They frequent the shady spaces...I see them most closely along the west sheep pen lane. They are not given to perching on telephone wires in neatly mowed right-of-ways along highways.
In death, this one proves all the more beautiful for being able to hold it in my hand and turn it this way and that, seeing the light play on its incredible azure plumage. The colors shift from intense sky blue to deep violet-indigo. And the diminuitive size surprises me--it's smaller than a sparrow, about the size of a tame finch. In life, they seem larger.
I am comforted that there are others on the farm...I saw one later that same day. I might worry about why this one died--West Nile Virus? Bird Flu?--but realize that there are many reasons for a small bird to be dead, and that an isolated death is not cause for alarm.
Thank you, little bird, for your beauty in death as well as life.
Snap Decision
I'm weeding along like a maniac in a fallow bed, hastily pulling big morning glory vines out of it so I can plant the last of the leek transplants (special for M., one her favorite veggies), when a clod of dirt starts moving.
This is not really that unusual, even though it's disconcerting every time. After I jump, I'm excited and curious.
Usually it's a big fat toad, well camouflaged by speckles and warts. We love seeing toads (hm...none so far this year, but the weather is still quite cool.) This time it was a baby snapping turtle!
We have not found a snapper on the farm before. Usually they hang out in ponds and streams, going cross-country mainly in the fall as they seek out wintering spots. This one had probably been wandering around in the ubiquitous mud, thinking the whole farm was a wetland, and ended up just outside the chicken coop.
I treat snappers with extreme respect. They are dangerous animals. They can grow very large, and they are very strong, and when they bite they don't let go.
But this little guy wasn't very active...seemed like he had had a hard day for some reason. Maybe he had been IN the coop, and the chickens had tried to have him for breakfast? And he WAS only about 4" long...shell the size of the palm of my hand. So I picked him up gingerly by the tail, and went to show him to M., who happened to be talking to the tree service guys bringing in a load of wood chips.
One of the tree service guys was captivated. I don't think he'd ever seen one before. "I'm a biology major at Haskell (Indian Nations University). Let me take him and I'll release him in the wetlands (on the Wakarusa River, near the Haskell campus...a beautiful place)."
I debated. Normally my policy is that creatures found on the farm stay on the farm...aimed at preventing enthusiatic 5-year-olds from dragging home hapless frogs, etc., to unimaginable, unintentional torture. Also, well...this is their HOME! I don't want to be dragged off to some strange place, either! Microbial compatibility between the critter's destination and its original habitat is also something to consider. Moving across town, to a different wetland, might be the turtle equivalent of going to Mexico and having to drink the water.
But in this case I relented. Though I'm excited to be aware of a wider diversity of reptiles on the farm, snapping turtles are not high on my life of good neighbors and esteemed community members. It's bad enough that garter snakes and herons go fishing in the stock tanks, depleting our populations of essential mosquito-larvae-eating goldfish. But at least they are not likely to seriously bite hapless fingers cleaning muck out of a tank. Sort of in the same class as ticks...part of a diverse ecosystem, and I'm sure God had SOMETHING in mind when He created them, but I'm not "getting" it.
And, I'm sure snappers are like mice...if you see one, you have ten. This guy was hatched this spring, I'm guessing, and probably had quite a few littermates, so I doubt I've decimated the population by contributing this youngster to the young man's education. I'm also pretty sure Haskell wetlands already has LOTS of snappers, so we're not likely to introduce anything new there, unless he had hitchhikers like leeches. He looked pretty clean, though...I've seen big ones with whole water gardens on their backs, including various "pets". Turtles can be significant vectors for spreading other life forms between bodies of water.
His name...as much as I know of the names that scientific humans know him by...will be read in the Reading of Names.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Reading of Names Planned for June 22, 2008
'You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.' - R. Buckminister Fuller
Here is something I am planning to do towards making explicit the 'new model' I have been building--DEVELOPING--at the farm for more than 12 years:
Sunday, June 22--the day after the Solstice--I will go out to the 'tabernacle' in the middle of the pasture at dawn, and at sunrise I will begin to mindfully read aloud the names of all the beings who are part of the Community of Life at the farm. I am inviting others to join me in person for whatever span of time they are able throughout the morning--to take turns reading and/or add names I may have forgotten--or to join me in spirit by praying for this Community of Life sometime during that time.
I have no idea how long the reading will take. It will begin with reading a list of scientific and common names of species that were keyed out by a naturalist friend in 2000--at that time, he definitively identified more than 450 species that had established themselves at Pinwheel Farm without intentional human agency, and we have added many since. Then there are ones we know only by 'farm names'--the 'green, curly earth worms' and 'fairy parasol mushrooms', and things we know only by broad category--slime molds, insects smaller than 1/4' long, etc. Then there are all the species we've deliberately planted here, and all the livestock and their parasites and disease organisms. Family members, friends, housemates, volunteers, visitors, customers, suppliers. Far-away supporters who know the farm through my writing. The elements, both chemical and weather. The machines and tools that we use, that come to life in our hands as we learn to know them. Everything that is woven into the web of life here.
I will read these names to let all these beings know that they are recognized, welcomed, and respected as equals in God's creation at the farm...a way of balancing the negation of these beings by the engineers who declare this to be 'undeveloped,' uninhabited land. To let these beings know that changes are coming, so they have time to prepare. To read to them the letter I received from the City. To ask them to share with me, in whatever way they can, their wisdom and ideas for the challenges that we will face together. I do not own this land, I only am its steward, and a spokesperson for its Community of Life: that has been my solemn understanding from the very beginning.
I will ground this reading with interspersed scripture readings, and invite those of other faiths or traditions to contribute as they wish.
I will keep these lists, and keep adding to them, and read them at each turning of the season (God willing), inviting all to share in those readings.
As I am able, I will post these lists online somewhere, to share them with others. If possible, I will have the reading recorded.
I would like to invite anyone who wishes to have their name read as part of the farm's Community of Life, please send me an email (natalyalowther@hotmail.com) and let me know. If you plan to attend in person, it would be nice to know ahead, but feel free to just drop by. The way out to the pasture will be made obvious in some manner.
Here is something I am planning to do towards making explicit the 'new model' I have been building--DEVELOPING--at the farm for more than 12 years:
Sunday, June 22--the day after the Solstice--I will go out to the 'tabernacle' in the middle of the pasture at dawn, and at sunrise I will begin to mindfully read aloud the names of all the beings who are part of the Community of Life at the farm. I am inviting others to join me in person for whatever span of time they are able throughout the morning--to take turns reading and/or add names I may have forgotten--or to join me in spirit by praying for this Community of Life sometime during that time.
I have no idea how long the reading will take. It will begin with reading a list of scientific and common names of species that were keyed out by a naturalist friend in 2000--at that time, he definitively identified more than 450 species that had established themselves at Pinwheel Farm without intentional human agency, and we have added many since. Then there are ones we know only by 'farm names'--the 'green, curly earth worms' and 'fairy parasol mushrooms', and things we know only by broad category--slime molds, insects smaller than 1/4' long, etc. Then there are all the species we've deliberately planted here, and all the livestock and their parasites and disease organisms. Family members, friends, housemates, volunteers, visitors, customers, suppliers. Far-away supporters who know the farm through my writing. The elements, both chemical and weather. The machines and tools that we use, that come to life in our hands as we learn to know them. Everything that is woven into the web of life here.
I will read these names to let all these beings know that they are recognized, welcomed, and respected as equals in God's creation at the farm...a way of balancing the negation of these beings by the engineers who declare this to be 'undeveloped,' uninhabited land. To let these beings know that changes are coming, so they have time to prepare. To read to them the letter I received from the City. To ask them to share with me, in whatever way they can, their wisdom and ideas for the challenges that we will face together. I do not own this land, I only am its steward, and a spokesperson for its Community of Life: that has been my solemn understanding from the very beginning.
I will ground this reading with interspersed scripture readings, and invite those of other faiths or traditions to contribute as they wish.
I will keep these lists, and keep adding to them, and read them at each turning of the season (God willing), inviting all to share in those readings.
As I am able, I will post these lists online somewhere, to share them with others. If possible, I will have the reading recorded.
I would like to invite anyone who wishes to have their name read as part of the farm's Community of Life, please send me an email (natalyalowther@hotmail.com) and let me know. If you plan to attend in person, it would be nice to know ahead, but feel free to just drop by. The way out to the pasture will be made obvious in some manner.
Friday, June 13, 2008
At Ease about Easements? InDeed....
Here is something that all "landowners" should be aware of, assuming this is not just a Douglas County quirk. Not all easements across your property are necessarily filed with the Register of Deeds at the County Courthouse. There may be easements that are not part of the public record at all...not accessible to your title insurance company...not easily accessible to you, unless you happen to know where to look and everyone happens to be standing around the office a little bit before quitting time.
A few days ago I emailed the City's legal staff to verify my understanding that they did not already have an easement through the farm that would have allowed them to blithely survey without permission to be there. The response was that they didn't know off the top of their head, they would have to look it up. Apparently that wasn't a high priority task.
Instead of bugging them about it (I do understand that bureaucrats are busy and their time is valuable to them), I took myself to the Register of Deeds office this afternoon to look for myself.
Probably many of you have never had occasion to do this. Perhaps you aren't even aware that you CAN. And if that is the case, you have no idea how willing and ready the good people there are to help you find the information you seek among their solemn shelves of giant volumes. Try it some rainy afternoon when you have a spare hour or two.
I learned about doing title searches when I worked at DPRA Incorporated in Manhattan, Kansas, a number of years ago. (I hope they missed any major damage by the tornado that struck very close to their offices last night. Mom and Dad's place, several miles away, was untouched. The building at KSU where Dad worked from the time I was in middle school until the time he retired was damaged.) I think that job, as strange as it seemed in context of my life before and after, was one of God's ways of preparing me for the work I am doing now, shepherding the farm through these governmental challenges.
This is how finding an easement or deed works:
You walk into the office, way up on the third floor, and people look up and move to greet you at the ancient marble counter. The sense of hush is far beyond what any modern library could imagine.
They escort you to a very impressively modern computer nearby, type in your name, and thus are able to find the Township, Range, and Section of your property's legal description. Of course, you could bring this with you (from your property tax statement or a mortgage), but they will be happy to look it up for you.
Then you are escorted to The Room. It appears to be a vault. The walls are lined with shelves of dark, worn volumes. There are cryptic labels on the shelves. Your guide refers to the scrap of paper she jotted down your legal description information on, draws out a volume, and opens it on a large table in the middle of the room.
The pages in the volume are small, about 5" x 10", and form tabs along the outer edge. They are bound to the book with rings, perhaps a dozen of them, so that new pages may be added as the decades slowly march through the turning-over of property. How easily she turns to the series of pages for your Township, Range and Section.
And here you begin. In this case, since we were concerned with easements, of which there would be few, we just started in 1912 (or so) and scanned down the column that indicated a code for the type of recording. E for easement, M for mortgage, D for Deed, various other arcane descriptors. For a title search, you would look for your name to appear about the date you bought the poperty, and note who you bought it from. Then you would look backwards in time to find when that person bought the property.
We found no easements recorded for the farm. I lingered a few minutes to note important names and dates in the farm's life: Dale Black, whom we purchased it from (11/16/95), had purchase it from a Taul Hibbard in 1950. We could find no record of it coming into Taul's hands...but some transfers of property are not recorded, if it is inherited for example. Or that deed may reside at the Jefferson County Courthouse, dating from before the Douglas County line was moved north of the river course. Niggling curiousity that might be answered by a reading of the deed transfers we did identify, but not enough to spend the time reading them, white letters on black background, on the microfiche.
"Well," I sighed a relieved sigh. So at least they don't already own an easement that I'm not aware of."
"Um, actually there could be easements that we don't have records of here," the nice lady informed me. The fellow at the microfiche reader seemed to perk up his ears a bit.
A cold feeling washed through me. We had done quite careful research into this land before purchasing it, exactly to prevent such an occurrence as this. Had we missed something major that could undo years of planning and hard work?
"Yes, the County Public Works may have Road Right of Ways that aren't recorded here."
"Where are they recorded?"
"Public Works would know. Here's the name of the guy you can call."
"Would my Title Insurance Company have known about this? How do people know where to look for all the easements?" I asked, bewildered.
The nice lady turned to the fellow at the microfiche, who was now following our conversation quite intently even as his hands nimbly handled the file reader. "You're with a Title Insurance Company," she said. "Do you have access to the Public Works files?"
"No," he replied. "They aren't a part of the public record. That's why every document has that wording on it about "subject to easements."
You think you own your land. The Register of Deeds thinks you own your land. The Title Insurance company thinks you own your land. But no one is really sure whether there is some other party that has rights to your land that you do not. Just keep that in mind when you're making plans...someone else might be making plans, too.
I called the County Public Works guy she referred me to, expecting layers of bureaucracy and frustrations. "You're just leaving the Courthouse?" (The marvel of cell phones!) "Why don't you just run over and we'll have a look."
I did. He did. We found nothing. Just to be sure, we went in search of another fellow with a faster computer and checked somewhere else. Everyone was very nice, that ready-to-go-home-but-we-have-half-an-hour-to-kill kind of nice on a day when probably there hadn't been many other visitors. They delighted in printing me out a copy of the aerial of the farm area with all the property lines in clear blue.
Interesting. Very interesting. Go do your homework! If you own property, it would behoove you to know who else is entitled to use it without your permission. If you are purchasing property, by all means wring as much information as you can (in a friendly and respectful way) from the various government agencies. Because you may actually turn up information that the Title Insurance Company can't.
A few days ago I emailed the City's legal staff to verify my understanding that they did not already have an easement through the farm that would have allowed them to blithely survey without permission to be there. The response was that they didn't know off the top of their head, they would have to look it up. Apparently that wasn't a high priority task.
Instead of bugging them about it (I do understand that bureaucrats are busy and their time is valuable to them), I took myself to the Register of Deeds office this afternoon to look for myself.
Probably many of you have never had occasion to do this. Perhaps you aren't even aware that you CAN. And if that is the case, you have no idea how willing and ready the good people there are to help you find the information you seek among their solemn shelves of giant volumes. Try it some rainy afternoon when you have a spare hour or two.
I learned about doing title searches when I worked at DPRA Incorporated in Manhattan, Kansas, a number of years ago. (I hope they missed any major damage by the tornado that struck very close to their offices last night. Mom and Dad's place, several miles away, was untouched. The building at KSU where Dad worked from the time I was in middle school until the time he retired was damaged.) I think that job, as strange as it seemed in context of my life before and after, was one of God's ways of preparing me for the work I am doing now, shepherding the farm through these governmental challenges.
This is how finding an easement or deed works:
You walk into the office, way up on the third floor, and people look up and move to greet you at the ancient marble counter. The sense of hush is far beyond what any modern library could imagine.
They escort you to a very impressively modern computer nearby, type in your name, and thus are able to find the Township, Range, and Section of your property's legal description. Of course, you could bring this with you (from your property tax statement or a mortgage), but they will be happy to look it up for you.
Then you are escorted to The Room. It appears to be a vault. The walls are lined with shelves of dark, worn volumes. There are cryptic labels on the shelves. Your guide refers to the scrap of paper she jotted down your legal description information on, draws out a volume, and opens it on a large table in the middle of the room.
The pages in the volume are small, about 5" x 10", and form tabs along the outer edge. They are bound to the book with rings, perhaps a dozen of them, so that new pages may be added as the decades slowly march through the turning-over of property. How easily she turns to the series of pages for your Township, Range and Section.
And here you begin. In this case, since we were concerned with easements, of which there would be few, we just started in 1912 (or so) and scanned down the column that indicated a code for the type of recording. E for easement, M for mortgage, D for Deed, various other arcane descriptors. For a title search, you would look for your name to appear about the date you bought the poperty, and note who you bought it from. Then you would look backwards in time to find when that person bought the property.
We found no easements recorded for the farm. I lingered a few minutes to note important names and dates in the farm's life: Dale Black, whom we purchased it from (11/16/95), had purchase it from a Taul Hibbard in 1950. We could find no record of it coming into Taul's hands...but some transfers of property are not recorded, if it is inherited for example. Or that deed may reside at the Jefferson County Courthouse, dating from before the Douglas County line was moved north of the river course. Niggling curiousity that might be answered by a reading of the deed transfers we did identify, but not enough to spend the time reading them, white letters on black background, on the microfiche.
"Well," I sighed a relieved sigh. So at least they don't already own an easement that I'm not aware of."
"Um, actually there could be easements that we don't have records of here," the nice lady informed me. The fellow at the microfiche reader seemed to perk up his ears a bit.
A cold feeling washed through me. We had done quite careful research into this land before purchasing it, exactly to prevent such an occurrence as this. Had we missed something major that could undo years of planning and hard work?
"Yes, the County Public Works may have Road Right of Ways that aren't recorded here."
"Where are they recorded?"
"Public Works would know. Here's the name of the guy you can call."
"Would my Title Insurance Company have known about this? How do people know where to look for all the easements?" I asked, bewildered.
The nice lady turned to the fellow at the microfiche, who was now following our conversation quite intently even as his hands nimbly handled the file reader. "You're with a Title Insurance Company," she said. "Do you have access to the Public Works files?"
"No," he replied. "They aren't a part of the public record. That's why every document has that wording on it about "subject to easements."
You think you own your land. The Register of Deeds thinks you own your land. The Title Insurance company thinks you own your land. But no one is really sure whether there is some other party that has rights to your land that you do not. Just keep that in mind when you're making plans...someone else might be making plans, too.
I called the County Public Works guy she referred me to, expecting layers of bureaucracy and frustrations. "You're just leaving the Courthouse?" (The marvel of cell phones!) "Why don't you just run over and we'll have a look."
I did. He did. We found nothing. Just to be sure, we went in search of another fellow with a faster computer and checked somewhere else. Everyone was very nice, that ready-to-go-home-but-we-have-half-an-hour-to-kill kind of nice on a day when probably there hadn't been many other visitors. They delighted in printing me out a copy of the aerial of the farm area with all the property lines in clear blue.
Interesting. Very interesting. Go do your homework! If you own property, it would behoove you to know who else is entitled to use it without your permission. If you are purchasing property, by all means wring as much information as you can (in a friendly and respectful way) from the various government agencies. Because you may actually turn up information that the Title Insurance Company can't.
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