Hi Randy and all you other Okies! Greetings from Dawn's Wildlife Ranch in southern Oklahoma. (Just kidding....it only SEEMS like a wildlife ranch here.)I don't know how to tell you this, Randy, but the Bobcats and/or Coyotes have eaten all my Mexican Plums in the last two weeks. My fruit was still green too. They also have been eating the regular plums and peaches that they can reach. Luckily for me they can't go way out on the small limbs and get every single one of them. The bobcats usually eat the fruit only when they can't get enough small game OR when the local creeks/ponds have dried up and they are desperate for water, which has already occurred here. If you happen to have any of the native persimmons, they will eat the fruit green too, although the coyotes are more likely than the bobcats to get the persimmons. (Have you ever eaten a raw persimmon? I think I'd have to be truly desperate to eat them green!) Some years, were it not for the native fruits, I don't think the bobcats, foxes and coyotes would survive the summer. Since moving here to the middle of nowhere six years ago, I have learned that the wildlife will eat practically anything to survive. Is that bobcat stealing your fruit or just thinking about it? I guess it might be hanging out in the tree hoping to get birds when they come for the fruit! We had a bobcat last summer who liked to hide under our vehicles and catch rabbits that were trying to get into my veggie garden. If he caught one, he'd take it to the picnic table and eat it there, leaving us a little fur and blood to show he'd been "around". This year our bigger probems are black panthers. It's always something! Dawn

Well, we had our first viewer today! The lady [50's and single] very impressed! Exactly what she has been looking for. Loved the location, property, and privacy. We shall see what will happen. Loralee: 1) We cannot subdivided any smaller than what we have. We have a large Dairy farm 1/2 mile North [cannot smell it], and a large beef farm to the west. Even if we could, it wouldn't be worth trying as those neighbours would fight it, as it would cause problems for their livelihood. If you look at the one photo I posted with the 2 cattle sheds you will see in the far distance our dairy neighbours house. Ours is small and plain in comparison, so I do not think we over built. 2) We built 5 years ago as our old mobile home we had already lived it for 17 yrs old just wasn't cutting it anymore. We built with the intent to live here till we retired, but life has a way of changing plans, and my husband's job place closed down and he bought into a prospering business, everything we do is in town, and with your farming background, then you know what the BSE meant to cattle farmers, which we were as well. Sometimes you need to know when to cut your loses. Its time for a new chapter of our lives to begin. 3) We are renting our our cultivated acres to our dairy neighbour, and rent out our pasture as well. My husband manufactures large bale wagons as well from his shop in the back. No more farming for us. 4) The quality of our land is not exactly for potatoes. We live on a gravel ridge, with awesome drainage, but is better suited for cattle. The cultivated land is great for alfalfa, or cattle corn. We know our property is directed at a specific buyer, and are willing to wait. It only takes one person. Not too worried if Wpg people aren't interested. 5) Yes, we did get different realtors opinions.

I struggle with the clay tile roof, which to me calls out as Mediterranean, and swiss anything but then again I’ve never been to Switzerland. I wonder if anyone more knowledgeable can confirm or set me straight on that? Setting that aside, doesn’t this house beg to be a southwestern ranch? Won’t anything else look Disneyish? Again, I call out to those more knowledgeable about architecture.

Ipls8xx - you state that " No surveyor or government official has authority over land boundaries." That's far too blanket a statement. It may be true where you live, but not where I live. Here, a survey conducted by a licensed surveyor is registered with the government and regarded as being considerably more than just an opinion: in the absence of a competing survey, it is considered definitive. The actual surveys where I live are based on objective data measurements (GNSS, etc), not on usage, so I'm not sure that previous owner history or the existence of fences is particularly relevant. Of course, historical surveys are known to contain errors in measurement. The methods and equipment in use 80 or 100 years ago were not nearly as accurate as modern techniques, so there are disputes over where the boundaries actually lie. If there are two surveys showing different boundaries arising out of these historic errors or inconsistencies, or if there is a single survey highlighting an area of conflict, then in such cases, there is specific legislation in place allowing the government here to decide on the correct property boundaries. So yes, governments, or at least some of them, do have authority over land boundaries. This is a different issue than "adverse possession," in which the real boundaries, as defined by an objective survey,have been encroached upon by the neighbor. That's more an issue of whether the neighbor has in fact acquired part of someone else's land simply by long-term occupation, and it's up to the courts to rule on that (assuming, of course, there is such a thing as adverse possession in the jurisdiction - it doesn't exist everywhere). If the court rules in favor of the encroacher, then the land is transferred, the boundaries change and the new survey, done by a licensed surveyor, will reflect the new boundary lines.