Nils Niitra: Don’t Move to the Countryside If You Can’t Talk to Your Neighbours Without a Lawyer

Problems involving a dog killing a chicken and disputes over roads are settled in the countryside by talking to people directly, not through the culture of reporting your neighbours to the authorities that you brought with you from the city.

If you are thinking about moving to the countryside, don’t assume things work the same way here as they do in the city. Start by learning the basic rules: if you don’t introduce yourself to your neighbours, sooner or later you will get to know them anyway. Unfortunately, the circumstances of that introduction may not be particularly pleasant.

Tuuli Jõesaar wrote a tragicomic story about a dispute between neighbours that culminated in a farmer ploughing up the road leading to another person’s property. It turns out that someone who bought a farmstead about ten years ago had, without a care in the world, been using for years a stretch of road belonging to the farmer – a stretch that is not even officially registered as a road.

When the neighbour’s dogs repeatedly appeared in her yard and killed one of her chickens, the woman contacted the local police officer. She then decided that perhaps it was time to demand an easement – a legal right of use – over the section of road she had been using, and had a lawyer draft the relevant letter. The farmer responded with rustic communication in the way he knew best: he ploughed up the road.

I have lived in the countryside for more than 25 years myself, and I too own several hundred metres of road. One neighbour lives at the end of one branch of the road that partly belongs to me, another lives at the end of another branch, and farther away there is another farmstead with no permanent residents. I get along well with my neighbours, which does not mean that we are friends.

We keep an eye on one another’s properties, and whenever something needs to be discussed, we discuss it. I once had a large flock of sheep whose gang leaders occasionally broke through the fences and wreaked havoc in my neighbours’ gardens, but those situations, too, were resolved in a civilised, human way. In the end, I sold the sheep myself.

Ott Stole Things, the Dog Killed Chickens

True, there was once a man named Ott living in one of the houses – quite a character – who used to steal things from my garden. I did indeed threaten to block his access road, but I never actually did it. Somehow, I even managed to deal with Ott! Once, my dog got into Ott’s yard and killed chickens, just as happened in Jõesaar’s story. So I went to a poultry farm and brought Ott some new chickens. Still, it was sometimes entertaining to listen to Ott’s wildly imaginative tall tales. May he rest in peace.

I have never established an easement over my road, nor have my neighbours demanded one, because I do nothing to prevent them from using the road. On one occasion, however, I voluntarily established an easement over a short stretch of road in favour of a neighbour – when I sold one of my properties. The section of road on that property was given an easement because you never know: perhaps some future owner of the land might decide to make life difficult for my neighbour. My neighbours are decent people, and they have also contributed considerably to maintaining the road that belongs to me.

Living in the countryside has taught me a great deal. First and foremost, of course, rural life cannot be compared with life in the city. Second, whoever arrives later should introduce themselves to those who were there before. Even if that simply means taking a bottle in one hand and a smoked fish in the other and going over for a visit. If someone moves from the city to the countryside and imagines they can live here in complete isolation, the idea is absurd.

Sooner or later, they will have to deal with one of their neighbours. The car won’t start, it gets stuck in snow or mud, the power goes out, there is some shared issue to sort out with the municipality, or whatever else. At some point, you are going to need your neighbour. It really is that simple. And if the first time you appear in your neighbour’s yard is when you need something from them, you have made a serious rustic-communication blunder.

In the worst – and unfortunately very common – scenario, sooner or later some problem arises between neighbours, such as dogs wandering into someone’s yard and killing a chicken. If that is the first time you start “communicating” with your neighbour, bad consequences are virtually guaranteed. Had you gone over years ago with a bottle and a smoked fish, the dog problem could almost certainly have been resolved now as well.

By All Means, Go Complain to the Police!

An especially serious mistake is to start reporting your neighbours to the police. You really need a very serious reason to do that. In the countryside, informers and people who report others to the authorities are still instinctively despised, unlike in cities, where complaining is increasingly becoming a national sport.

It is a total blunder to spend years casually using someone else’s land without any legal basis whatsoever and then, once serious problems have arisen in your relationship, start sending lawyer-drafted letters demanding an easement. That is not how things are done in the countryside. In the countryside, you go to your neighbour’s yard and calmly talk things through first.

And so we arrive at a situation where the newcomer – presumably better educated and therefore theoretically in a stronger position – makes every possible mistake in their relationship with a long-time local resident. Even the farmer’s behaviour is, to some extent, predictable: he handles situations like this according to his own particular set of problem-solving skills.

He probably simply considers the newcomer arrogant. In fact, he probably started thinking that years ago, when the newcomer using his land could not even be bothered to walk through the garden gate and introduce themselves.

Now it really is too late to fix anything – hopelessly too late.

Enjoy your day in court!