Imagine inheriting a couple acres of land and having big plans about what you’re going to do with it to set your family up for success. If you made sure all the neighbors knew your plans before you followed through with them, and if nobody complained, what would you do if a neighbor complained after you had finished the construction project?

In this story, one person is in this exact situation, and they’re not sure how to feel about it. This family really wasn’t trying to annoy the neighbors.

Let’s read all about it.

AITA For telling new neighbors exactly what we were going to do, and then doing it

We inherited a house and land when my fil died.

It is a nice house on two acres in the country. No HOA. No neighborhood, just a neighbor to one side and to the back. Everyone one else was further away.

We decided we would take the opportunity to use the land, put a couple of tiny houses on it for our kids and set them up.

They were very vocal about their plans.

We brought this up multiple times with pretty much everyone who would listen. We discussed legality, viability, all repercussions, everything.

We told everyone our dreams of a homestead of a semi-village where our children lived here on the land with us (albeit in tiny homes) and we had farm animals and gardens and whatever sustainable practices we could muster.

Nobody complained about our plans outright.

The back neighbor said we wouldn’t be able to install a septic but they were wrong. The side neighbor said property values might go down but they weren’t planning on selling so it wouldn’t matter.

Here’s some more context about their neighborhood.

This is a place in rural Arkansas where people have cattle, horses, goats, chickens, ducks, emus, multiple buildings on their property, including one person about a quarter mile away who has a rv set up for living in.

People have dog runs and broke down vehicles and tractors and barns and all sorts of stuff.

The property in front of us has an old industrial scale chicken factory (can’t be seen front the road).

One neighbor actually complained.

Today the guy behind us was using an auger and I walked over and joked “are you digging for gold?”

And he went off on me about how he is installing “a shield” because our dog keeps going over there and going on his land and he doesn’t appreciate the eyesore of our buildings and how we are bringing property values down.

However, He has no fences to keep other dogs out, and the people behind him have two very large very hyper retrievers who regularly walk all over his land leaving huge piles (and on my land too). So it isn’t uncommon for free range dogs in this area.

I make it a point to keep our dogs inside as much as possible, or on leads, or in the fences we have been able to put up.

The neighbor keeps complaining.

I explained that we are trying to help our kids because life is hard nowadays.

And he mentioned something about “did you ask anyone (for permission to put up buildings)”. Then he goes on to say that one of the other guys behind him “has to mow because you wont”, referring to land that isn’t ours to mow which confused the hell out of me.

Our land has weeds which come almost to the knee but we are allowing to grow a bit because there’s flowers and we are trying to allow the beehive to gather more locally and the weeds are pretty spare, just a little tall.

He could’ve complained sooner!

I mentioned that we are working on putting up a fence but trying to figure out what would be best.

I told him I had hoped that if he had a problem with something that he would have said something to us sooner.

He said everyone is mad. Him. The neighbor beside us. His neighbors behind him. People in town. Everyone.

OP did ask everyone about the land and her plans for it before following through with the plans. Is this neighbor new to the neighborhood? It sounds like he just likes to complain.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person thinks the dog is the only issue.

Another person thinks OP knew the neighbors may not be happy about their plans.

Here’s a suggestion for the future.

But this person thinks OP doesn’t have nearly enough land for this project.

A fence would probably be the best solution at this point.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.