got a "beef"

[KimChick]

Don't mind me everyone... but I have a "beef" and need to vent.
I'm sure all of the previous owners of our property were nice people BUT...
I really wish that when something is torn down, all of it is cleaned up and disposed of properly.
Not so where our chicken yard is. There was, apparently a chicken coop / hen house / yard there in the past.
As hens will do, they find their own place to dig a hole to dust themselves, no matter where one is put.
I understand, living on a piece of 1890's farmland that I would find old nails (square ones) especially by the barn, and those can be found easily with a strong magnet. But glass??!!??
The more our hens dig, scratch and dust, the more shards of glass I find.
I just don't want our hens to get scratches and an infection in their feet. GRR
All I can do is keep on top of it and inspect their dusting holes often, as I do. Because the yard is not moving.

[WLLady]

i hear ya kimchick. i think our place was a garbage disposal....we find garbage and pieces of glass and metal and nails and just general "stuff" every single year. it really makes me wonder what some people think...just dumping stuff everywhere. it's the number 1 cause of bumblefoot in my birds....scratching around and there's an old beer tin, or something they dig up....sigh.

[Ontario Chick]

This wasn't a very old place, but with no garbage pickup, it seems like the backyard was just as good a place as any to dump stuff.
We spent years hauling garbage out of the bush, thought it would never end.
Not that old habit either, we have neighbors with a bit of a low depression beside the driveway and house and they throw any old piece of stuff in there including coffee cups, food containers flower pots broken glass and pop cans.
Pretty sure it's part of their living room window view, it takes all kinds I guess.

[TomK]

On this property, which is a third of the original farm, we have the distinct pleasure of possessing the farm 'dump' from days past..the farm was physically divided by a creek valley with a vertical ridge to creek bottom drop of about 60 feet..on the east side there is a portion of the ridge populated by thickets...in those thickets is the 'dump'...people in the past, although extremely frugal and repurposing as much as possible, needed to put the waste somewhere..there was no municipal dump or anything of the like...there is everything in this thing...from bottles and broken plates to totally broken farm machinery....I guess we are fortunate that the previous owners were more deliberate about where they disposed of their stuff...but right at the edge of the creek cut...go figure

[KimChick]

Our property is a lot less than 1/3 of the original acreage. I understand that the original farmers had no municipal dump. When either the addition to the house or the new garage foundation was being dug, there were many old things found buried - bottles, little girls' shoes, etc. That is understandable. They were purposely buried. The broken glass that I'm finding by the barn was not buried; it's too shallow. It comes from whoever tore down the hen coop. Just worried about my hens. They've had bumblefoot once already.
Flower pots? Oh my. I have quite a few stacked in the horse barn and found a couple in the field beside the house, behind the garage, and in the pile of dirt in the backyard that was dug out for the garage. The previous owner spent a lot of money on potted plants.
Thanks for the support everyone; it's comforting to know that others are in the same boat. I won't mention what was left in the barn.

[windwalkingwolf]

Yeah. It's not just a thing of the past...when we moved in here a year ago, there was a garbage mountain in from of the milkhouse, facing the road. Everything was in there from old furniture, broken glasses and windows, broken plastic buckets of rusty nails and screws, old electronics, half a dozen dehumidifiers, old carpet, bags of mouldy clothing, EVERYTHING. And more of the same piled around inside the house, barn and coverall. We got most of it out of the barn and cleaned up Garbage Mountain and removed the top layer of dirt where the pile was, but previously undiscovered broken glass and staples and nails surface just about every day. There's also several huge piles of trash in the corners of one of the hay fields, but at least it's out of the way. It'll be years and years before we even begin to get it all. When the old barn was torn down, instead of one pile of rubble it became three...so there are three large sections of fields with chunks of concrete,bricks, boulders and nails and machinery parts and whatever else...when windows were changed in the house, they got stacked some at the side, some in the barn, some behind it, to get smashed by ice and livestock. The coverall still has a pile of broken piano, old suitcase, mouldy art prints and books, the cellar still has a bunch of broken coffeemakers and vacuums and carpet cleaners. the guy literally never threw anything away, and was at the thrift stores and auctions weekly just to get more garbage. I lost count of the trailer loads we've taken to the dump. Boggles the mind.

[KimChick]

QR_BBPOST Yeah. It's not just a thing of the past...when we moved in here a year ago, there was a garbage mountain in from of the milkhouse, facing the road. Everything was in there from old furniture, broken glasses and windows, broken plastic buckets of rusty nails and screws, old electronics, half a dozen dehumidifiers, old carpet, bags of mouldy clothing, EVERYTHING. And more of the same piled around inside the house, barn and coverall. We got most of it out of the barn and cleaned up Garbage Mountain and removed the top layer of dirt where the pile was, but previously undiscovered broken glass and staples and nails surface just about every day. There's also several huge piles of trash in the corners of one of the hay fields, but at least it's out of the way. It'll be years and years before we even begin to get it all. When the old barn was torn down, instead of one pile of rubble it became three...so there are three large sections of fields with chunks of concrete,bricks, boulders and nails and machinery parts and whatever else...when windows were changed in the house, they got stacked some at the side, some in the barn, some behind it, to get smashed by ice and livestock. The coverall still has a pile of broken piano, old suitcase, mouldy art prints and books, the cellar still has a bunch of broken coffeemakers and vacuums and carpet cleaners. the guy literally never threw anything away, and was at the thrift stores and auctions weekly just to get more garbage. I lost count of the trailer loads we've taken to the dump. Boggles the mind.

Holy cow! Hopefully, you didn't you didn't pay too much for that property! I feel like I live in a castle compared to what you described! I will never complain about this property again!!! (still worry about my hens, though)
We looked at a house in Frankville, on Leacock Rd I think, when we were searching for a place to live out this way.

[baronrenfrew]

we've been here 40 years and I'm getting to the last of the garbage dumps. when thepipeline came through (1984?) they went right through the biggest dumpsite and took it away. every year I take away a can (big ketchup can size) of nails,glass, and pottery that surfaces usually after rain storms or earthworks of some kind. we have a bit of junk machinery but I've cleaned most of it. the last dump find was a pile in the sugarbush under the frame of a truck that had a 1930's license plate. anytime I feel to complain I think of the unexploded ordnance that surfaces around Europe each year. Farmers around Alsace in France retreive 2 tons of bombs and ordnance each year while doing spring planting. they leave it by the highway and the road crews take it away. and lets not mention landmines everywhere the USA has been.

beat that story! (let me not be the PITA who has to tell a better story at every gathering of people.)

[WLLady]

hey baron, i'll see your 1930s truck and raise you by a 1940s half a truck and a 1941 other half of a truck (not the same truck either) LOL. we still have piles that were pushed over the riverbank on the west of our land-we hauled the trucks out and boxes and boxes and boxes of JUNK, old jars, tins, brick-seriously over 500 perfectly good useable bricks, fire brick, yellow brick, a brick. metal roofing steel panels, i think we have found at least 3 of everything anyone could think of!....and seriously, we DO have a kitchen sink and an old washer in the one ravine.....when we were looking at the place we couldn't even get to the furnace in the basement (it was full to the ceiling) and the property was up to my waist in uncut grass, and our shins found all the equipment...LOL.
the estate folks had a huge auction and got rid of a lot of it, but then they pulled down at least 5 sheds and just lit them on fire where they were....so we're finding all kinds of stuff. and the one shed they didn't pull down (we did this summer) was full of truck trim in the rafters, and all kinds of JUNK. and the people that used to live here had something with "knives"....i mean we found kitchen knives on pretty much every surface, every window sill, every corner.....very very weird.

[Home Grown Poultry]

I like junk piles, theres usually lots of good stuff in them still. when building the coops n run here I salvaged lots of wood and 25' steel roofing panels that I sunk in the ground for the perimeter. but I dont like friggin glass!!! everyday the birds dig something else up, usually glass but they have found some pretty neat antique tools and countless other crap. the barn has every single window that used to be in this house and most of them are smashed! grrrrr. we just rent this place but absolutely love it here.