Our Land

A few months before we made the mistake of buying this house, we bought 4.65 acres of land on Funk Road, outside of Reedsburg (close to the Ashland border, but with a Wooster address). It’s very pretty…and overgrown now. It has a natural spring, that we want a pond dug out around, and a gas well. According to the previous owners, Colombia Gas owns the well, and Gatherco Inc. owns the lines. Both pay $100 a year for leasing. We received a check from Gatherco the first year, and Colombia received our mailing address from the old owner’s, and sent a letter requesting documentation that we had actually purchased the land. We had written down that we sent that information in October of 2004. Well, after buying a house and starting a family, we kind of forgot about the leases. Fast forward to now, we get out the land documents and call up the companies. We haven’t received any check in a few years. Gatherco says oops, has no idea why we haven’t been getting checks, and tells us they will send out a check for $300 for the past years (going straight to the E-Fund). Colombia wants documentation of the deed. Apparently, they never received what we sent in 2004. No big deal, we make copies to resend. They call back and say they don’t have an active lease on our land. They had a lease that was sold back in 1997 to Gatherco. Well then, why were the previous owner’s still receiving checks from Colombia? They even sent the check back to Colombia in 2004 with our mailing address, since we had bought the property. Colombia says they will look into it, in the meantime, talk with Gatherco and see when the lease they have was purchased. Well the guy at Gatherco is only in on Mondays and Fridays. Do you know how much of a pain it is to try to get a hold of someone that is in the office 2 days a week. We left a message last week, and have yet to hear back from him, so I guess we will be harassing his phone this coming Friday. I hope something turns up, because it would be nice to get more money from these companies. It would really boost the Emergency Fund right now.


Speaking of the land, we are hoping to start clearing it off this year. It starts off bearable in the Spring, but by Fall, it’s nothing but prickers and thorns, and it gets really thick. Our hope is to clear off enough space to camp out on, and have little fires, and cut some trees for wood. We want to get the girls used to camping, and this is the cheapest way to do it. Last Fourth of July we set up the tent in Dad’s backyard, but Lilly just wouldn’t stay asleep. She was a bit young, and it was noisy with cars and drunk people, so we ended up leaving at like, 1AM and coming home to sleep. We can’t do that if we go to a campground, but if we camp at the land, we can leave our stuff if something doesn’t work out, and since it’s out in the country, it will be a lot quieter. Once the weather breaks, we will head out there and start working. We will have to get babysitting arrangements figured out, because right now it is no place for little ones, and it will be really wet.