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

[tomplum]

Where we live, we have a ravine along one side that a creek flows way down in. Also an off chute kind of that runs partially across the center. It's a nice setting and a good place to be. Junk we saw over the side in the big ravine was pointed out from the second owner we got the house from. Basically saying, just don't blame us- it was from the original owner. But, we took it upon our selves to clean up what we could see and dispose of. They also told us, there is this strange area here below the shop. Dries out there every summer. I bet there's a sheet of plywood buried there. Nope, that was an above ground pool that there was no need to take away. Strange thing it was never set up there, but 300 feet away. When we first started putting trees in the lower part of the lawn, ran across a pile in digging a tree hole. Well, the neighbor said they had a coop there. Figured they burned it in place with that weeks trash.

Nothing else for years did we find. Then yesterday at the top of the short ravine where I was working. Found something metal. Clutch and pressure plate. On top of a tire and wheel. On top of who knows what. But a tractor bucket full. Egads! Probably more of a rant. Dunno what's wrong with people. But do you guys run across this?

 

[paulsharvey]

Honestly, that stuff doesnt bother me as much as the broken beer bottles. Probably half a dozen areas, couple that likely served as target practice, others as camp fires, but you pick everything you see up, and next rain, more.

Fence wire is probably worse though.

 

[KennyG]

I had a house with an area of lawn where the grass would die as soon as it got hot and dry. I finally decided to really dig up the area and improve the soil. When I got down about 6 inches I found a sheet of plywood.

I've got a spot on my property now that has a tire buried vertically. I can see a few inches of tread. It's not an area I worry about so I haven't bothered to dig it out.

The last stump I dug out had fence wire all through the roots.

 

[Dan Hunter]

The previous owner of my property had little respect for the land. For the first few years, we'd do a walk-a-bout with contractor grade trash bags just picking up random litter - a lot of beer cans - before we went home. There were a lot of wine jugs and food cans in dump piles. At one point, it appeared he was using large wire rat nests to manage erosion. I cleaned a couple up of these up but there's one large one remaining that is difficult to access being in a gulley on a steep slope. It includes more wind jugs, cans, wire and car parts as well. It's overwhelming but I'm going to start cleaning it up this year.

Unfathomable.

 

[WM75Guy]

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.

 

[jk96]

4 or 5 different ravines look like former dumping grounds on our property. Trash to appliances. Cleaned up a couple. Others are too difficult to get down into. Look to be from about 40 years ago.

 

[RayIN]

Mine's all cleaned up now. About 50 years ago I loaded 3 old stock-car bodies(no frames) onto my trailer and hauled them to the scrap yard. They were amazed at the 46 Ford Coupe body.
Found an old rear tractor tire in a ditch about 30 years ago. That cost me $12 disposal fee.

 

[camshawn]

Neighbour is the 4th owner. The last guy built a big fancy house on the other side of the property. The current owner had to redo a lot of the house and complete the landscaping. He filled 2 residential sized trash compactors ( his business) with garbage and junk out of the ground. Some old out buildings that was just pushed into a hole as well as all the construction debris from the new house and 3 yrs of residential garbage.

 

[rumwrks]

An unfathomable amount of random blocks of concrete were strewn randomly around the upper fields when I moved here. I'm still not sure why. In the "above ground" pool pit there was a mass of plastic sheeting with not one, not two, but three functional hammers under it. On the other side of the fence there I found a solid dozen throwing horseshoes plus the pins, most of a golf club, and a bunch of small bits of this and that. On the corner what appears to have been a box of metal trash from maybe the 40's (it included some identifiable horse harness parts and a few tractor pieces plus a bunch of random scrap).

In the "burn pile" so far I've found a large bevel gear on a shaft, part of a knife, a sledge hammer head, a couple dozen t posts in good shape buried at the bottom of it (not even burnt at all.. I can't explain that)... plus a whole bunch of rebar cuttoffs.. Speaking of rebar they apparently used rebar to pin down the hog wire in the old hog pen so when we pulled that all out there were dozens of 12-18" long L shaped pieces of rebar there.

I know there are several hundred feet of old galvanized pipe between the creek and the house.. I found what I think was the intake in the creek bottom although I'm very not sure how that would all have worked. (basically the galvanized is buried under the creek then pops up in the middle of an old pool encased in a concrete block.. presumably there was a pump of some sort by the house.. the rise isn't very far.. but with no obvious way to attach a foot valve it seems like it'd have leaked down pretty fast).

This isn't counting the piles (and mostly or partially down strips) of old fence wire, the random tires, and other sundry. Nor the 3 and counting pickup truck loads of trash from the shops and barn (there's still a frdge-that-shall-not-be-opened in one I need to haul off).