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

[scott_vt]

Good Morning Tompkins,

Dunno what's wrong with people. But do you guys run across this?

Yes we ran into the same problem. At our Vermont house that we purchased right after 911, we discovered an old dump on the north east corner of the property. It was a small section of mostly cans and bottles, an old metal chaise lounge etc. We cleaned up what we could, from the looks of the bottles and cans I’m guessing it went back to the fifties or earlier. The beer cans we found needed to be opened with a church key

I honestly think a lot of this went on back in that time period and even before !

 

[BnRidge]

After the 80s we had weekly garbage pickup. 90s added recycle to that. Before that we were on our own taking things to any kind of a township landfill. Every farm had a ravine out back for glass bottles and cans. Most iron went for salvage ($). I wonder if before the 40s people didnt have all that much that wasn't reused or put on a burnpile. Waste not want not. I've found where they dumped the clinkers from the coal furnace. Coal is an odd thing to find here now. Glass bottles, like mrs watkins tonic and ink well bottles. A giant nest of baling wire. The 60s ushered in a whole different mindset - packaging, throw away.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

Part of my property was literally a junk yard. There was a scrap yard next door and the previous owner let his cousin bring junk in to tear down to sell at the scrap yard. 100's of tires, an old RV, PILE AND PILE of junk. The PO ,who was my friend, made his cousin clean it up mostly, they hauled most of it off for scrap. It took them a few months of pretty hard work. Some of it (not that much) got moved onto his property next door. One of the things is an old Uhaul truck that got away from them while they were moving it and it went off into a ravine, it still sits there. I still find some random stuff every once in a while but it is mostly cleaned up now. I wish I had more pictures of it when it was at it's worst, it was pretty bad.

 

[dodge man]

Mine was all above ground. It didn’t look like very much but after about the fifth truck load I hauled out I was wishing I made the previous owner haul it off.

 

[Mtsoxfan]

Where to start...
Used to be a classic car graveyard, that was mostly clean up before our purchase, two areas of piles of bottles, car hoods here and there, a 1948? Crosby with a stream running through it, no motor or interior, old Boston MA paddy wagon turning into a trailer, old pop up camper, remains of a small fiberglass boat, bucket of watch parts, too many old tires, shingles, mattresses, fence wire, and the list goes on. I started to clean up and soon discovered it is easier to hide/drive around.

 

[Rockbadchild]

It was common in one point in time, everyone was doing it... I have old cars and dumping spots at a few places a few building that burn in place and never cleaned up, there's nails, horse shoes, broken glass and what ever else you can think.... if only it was buried it would be out of mind... I clean what I can but it is what it is...

 

[riptides]

Part of my property abuts to a few parcels of vacant land. They have not been developed, other than farmed. We routinely run across old wire between the lots. The vacant lots also hold old equipment, seeders, rakes from the early 1930's. In addition there are a few bottle and garbage dumps present. Not uncommon to find an old bottle in the stream or showing up close to the lot lines. I know one of the families that abut on the other side of the vacant lots, never asked them about dumping. Heck, I still find the occasional metal whatever popping out the ground on our property. I have an old rake sitting on the other side of my back property. Stuff just got pushed off into the woods for a long while. Shame really.

 

[John0829]

I have found a lot of junk on our place, thing you have to remember is back in the day and the "DAY" can be traced back to as close as the 50's and 60's, there was no landfill, trash disposal or recycling as most people know it today so what could be burned was and the rest went into depressions or ravines that were close by.

Our area did not have a designated landfill until the very late 60's, some old strip mine pits that are no longer pits but rather LARGE hills that keep getting higher.

 

[paulsharvey]

So, around here, vacant property means dumped RVs, boats, carcasses, and general trash, as well as a few tree companies that dump entire 40 cy truck loads.

So, part of issue; ill go to the dump, and so will most people, upto the point you start making it hard on me. You want to limit to 5 tires per year, fine; but the county is going to be fishing 15 more tires from their ditch... I took a entire hot tub in for mom, and they refused it. So, although I was tempted to just throw it off the trailer somewhere, i ended up cutting into like 8 pieces are sneaking it into the trash

 

[EddieWalker]

The biggest factor in what I paid for my land was all the junk that was dumped here. It was owned by a corporation with a guy here in charge that never showed up for work. When the company became worried about the mess and liability, they decided to sell. It was pure luck that I had contacted them before they put it up for sale. The guy in charge of selling it flew in to look at the land and accepted my offer that day.

It took a few years to clean it all up, but to me, that wasn't a big deal since I only worked on it when I had nothing else to do.

I personally love burying garbage on my land. I have a big burn pile that builds up over time. I fill my ditches and erosion areas with bigger junk that doesn't burn like brick, concrete, and metal. I haul the burn pile there and almost fill it up. Then I finish it off with a foot or two of clean top soil and plant grass. Over the years I couldn't tell you where all those ditches used to be!!!!