How many of you found garbage buried around your place from past owners?

[Dan Hunter]

You didn't mention ages of people. If you have grandkids, buy each one a metal detector and rent a small track backhoe. You'll create beautiful memories of the strangest scavenger hunt. And make the place safer.

When clearing the property next door that I had sold to my daughter there were parts buried galore. We always joked that we were waiting for a car to start growing.

 

[etpm]

When we bought our acreage back in 1997 it was trashed. There was a condemned cabin that was built in the thirties on the land that we had burned by the local VFD. But boy was there crap to be hauled off. I hauled off 7 tons, tons!, of steel scrap, and 5 tons of aluminum scrap. 95 tires. And about a dozen cars were hauled off by the local scrap yard. So we got all that cleaned up, along with a lot of glass. Then we started to find stuff that wasn't obvious. Like the 55 gallon drums that were buried to act as a septic system. 4 of them. And then years later I found another. As we made trails through the woods we found very old fire pits. Some not so old as they had burned shoes in them. The worst finds have been the barbed wire fencing. It was strung through the woods in various places. Then for some reason a lot of it ended up low to the ground. So it would trip folks walking through the woods. I HATE barbed wire, it should be outlawed. Oh yeah, I also found a tire on a wheel that was quite old. I was digging the root system of a huge alder out to put in a road. About 6 feet down I found an old wheel and tire someone had buried. The wheel was cast and about 30 inches in diameter. Huge and heavy. I just left that wheel with the old tire attached in the ground. It's under a road now.
Eric

 

[NUTTERDW]

We found golf balls for years after we built our place in 2009. The neighbor next door had used our property for a driving range. I still occasionally find one.

I picked up close to 100 golf balls this past summer alone . We live close to a large housing development and have a large wooded area which golfers think is their driving range. I also found a drone and a softball which bounced off of our house. this past summer we heard chain saws running and someone from the housing development was cutting trees on our property. She told us the leaves were gettin in her gutters and she didn't think we would mind. They were just going to cut them and leave them lay, which was across a trail I brush hog once a year so I can walk the dogs there.

 

[paulsharvey]

The price of scrap steel makes digging a hole pretty attractive...

 

[Torvy]

There was no real previous resident. Our place was part of a large tract that had been owned by a large corporate entity.

The garbage existed as people are too cheap or lazy to go to the actual dump. We had tires and an old TV, in addition to cans, bottles, etc.

Pretty sure the road used to be a place kids would go for private parties. We still get garbage (and unwanted pets) dumped in the ditch.

 

[EscapedSuburbia]

The price of scrap steel makes digging a hole pretty attractive...

I set it out by the road and post a message on our town's Facebook page and a scrapper will have it gone in hours. It's not worth the gas for me to haul it myself.

 

[Torvy]

I set it out by the road and post a message on our town's Facebook page and a scrapper will have it gone in hours. It's not worth the gas for me to haul it myself.

We're lucky that way. There are a couple of scrappers nearby and one is less than 5 miles. Even if they don't pay, it is cheaper than the dump and legal.

 

[Jstpssng]

I HATE barbed wire

Ditto here. It's strewn through the woods in the oddest places. Hard on boots and even harder on dog's legs.
You don't have to walk very far to find where something has left skin on it.
Sometime around WWI, the orchard I worked at put up two tiers of page wire fence topped with barbed wire. The page wire is mostly gone while the barbed wire is sagging- often right at throat level.

. She told us the leaves were gettin in her gutters and she didn't think we would mind. They were just going to cut them and leave them lay, which was across a trail I brush hog once a year so I can walk the dogs there

Is that the definition of "entitled" ?

 

[BnRidge]

You folks find more stuff than I do. But one day I was cleaning up around my shop and found two gas pump hoses partially buried. Neighbors said original owner had fuel tanks buried somewhere on the property. Spent a bit of time with a metal detector and I found the fill ports for what I believe to be the tanks. They are only about 2" above the ground and buried in leaves.
The county has no record the tanks are there.... I'm not opening that can of worms and I'm going to leave them.

There was an underground tank here also. I dug it out and sold it for scrap. Installed in the 50s, there was no record of it, and I'm not sure how the state or county would know anything about it if I didn't tell them, which I wasn't about to do.

 

[cholland]

I hauled off 8 or more pickup loads of carpet when I moved here. Some of it was rolled out in the yard, two layers thick. There was an old single wide trailer that had 4 layers of carpet in it. I still find pieces of old shag 18 years later.