 Hello, welcome to J&J Acres. We're starting up these videos to try to show you some of the things that we have learned as we've started to work our homestead. We've owned this property for a few years now and it's been a slow-going process. And just like you, we go around looking at videos and researching things on the internet to try to find the best way to get things done. We simply hope that maybe through some of our experiences we can give you an idea on how better to go about it at your property. Today we're going to try to locate a property line of ours. Recently we've discovered that we have a fox living in our woods that has taken out a few of our ducks that we hope to use not only for our own personal consumption but also to sell. Obviously, since it's going to affect our ability to provide for our family, we need to take care of this fox. Part of the process that we've been going through is putting up fences. And because of the fox coming in, it's now become a little bit more of a priority for us to take care of this. So we're going to look at some of the ways that we can identify a property line. One of our property lines, those are almost 700 feet right through the woods. So it's impossible for us to see one pin to another, which makes it difficult to gauge where fence lines need to be and which trees need to be clear to make the fence line. Obviously you don't want to infringe on your neighbor's property, but you also don't want to crick a fence where you might either just have an ugly fence or you might lose some of your property or infringe on someone else's by making a miscalculation. So let's look at how we're going to find out where this property line is. Okay, so what we're going to do is use a survey that was done when we purchased our property to find out how to mark off where this particular property line is. What you've noticed that I've done here is the map gives me a North Berry. And I've used that to draw a straight line down and then used another straight edge and compass to find a 90 degree angle to get me straight over to this point here. This is the point where I know I can start from. I've already found that point in the woods and I can use that as my starting line. We're actually looking for this long stretch here. And worse off later, we'll show you we're not even looking just to get to this pin down here. We're looking to find a point around in the middle so we can draw another straight line due west inward to the backyard. So to do this, now that I have a straight line to base off of and I know this where this pin is, I'm going to use a protractor. Now this is very crude but it's effective. This protractor when I line it up on the line that I've drawn and put the center point at the center of my protractor. I can look at where my property line comes across. And I don't expect you to be able to read that but with the way that the protractor is it showing me right at 54 degrees. Now that 54 degrees is based off of the zero down here on the protractor. But in reality, my compass is going to show me that zero is straight due north. So what we have to do is a little bit of math and work at this backwards and say to ourselves, well if my protractor actually started on zero over here, what would my measurement come out to be? And so we can just go straight to the 90 and do our 100, 110, 125 and 126. And then we just add in the 90 degrees that we lose from being straight north and that comes out to 216 degrees. So knowing that we need to go 216 degrees for our bearing, we can set our compass. This is a very simple compass. Just purchased at a local department store. There's nothing special about it but there doesn't need to be anything special about it. All I need is to be able to set the bearing, which I can do. This one I've already set. The best thing that you can do is make sure that you have a flat edge to use as a basis. Your compass is going to have an arrow pointing right down the middle of the compass. Now I'm going to line that up on my straight edge. Let me use the white of the paper for a little more contrast. And then around the ring of my compass are all the different degrees, my bearings. And I'm going to line that arrow so that 216 degrees, the bearing that we came up with looking at the map, is pointed down that arrow. Now what will happen is when I move my compass so that the north stays pointing at north. If I walk the direction of my arrow, I know I'll be walking 216 degrees. So now let's take this to the woods, find our pen and see if 216 degrees on our compass gets us to the other pen. Okay so we've walked off into the woods here to the first pen that we found. This is pretty typical if you're looking for a pen on your property. It's just a piece of rebar, it's been hammered into the ground, that they throw a little bit of surveyors tape around. Sometimes it might be kind enough to put another stake of wood next to it or to take that surveyors tape and tie it not only to the rebar pen but also a little higher up on a tree, something so that you can see it a little more easily and get to the pen. In this case it happens to be next to a very large pine tree so it's fairly easy to locate. So what we're going to do is take a piece of mason's twine and string it from this tree and go our 216 degree bearing down off into these woods and hope to come across on the other side. Okay so we started off by tying this piece of mason line to the tree and putting the knot a little closer to the side where the pen is on. I know it's not 100% accurate but we know that we're going to get close enough doing it this way. Remember the whole point of this isn't that we know exactly where the fence line is going to be or precisely where the property line is but to make sure that when we start cutting down trees we're only cutting down our trees and not the neighbors. We can get a whole lot more close doing this, clearing some trees going back and double checking later than just blind clearing trees as it is. We're also using the mason's twine because surveyor's tape tends to stretch and give out. If any of these trees or twigs or even wildlife come across it or fall down on top of it it's going to ruin the line. The mason twine is going to hold up a little bit better so that's why we've chosen to go with this. So we have that tied. We've got our twine fashion around a little spool to make it easier through the woods. I have my compass set to the bearing of 216 degrees and all I have to do is put my north part of my compass onto the north bearing and now I know if I walk in the direction of this arrow I'll find my pin. Okay so now that we're down in the woods a little bit I want to give you a little bit better idea of what this looks like. I know there was a lot of glare on the camera before. What we're have is the compass set to a bearing of 216 degrees and you can see the red part of my compass is pointing toward the north. So my bearing is always going to stay because that's what I've turned the dial to. All I have to do is to keep that red arrow pointed toward north and walk forward toward that arrow and I know I'm going in the direction of set for myself. Well we've done it. We went over 600 feet through the thick of the woods and came right across our rebar pin for the other corner of the property. Notice I don't have the string with me anymore. To be honest we're right now we're just trying to fence off the back of the property right near the house where the kids play and some of our domesticated animals are. So the string's still way up there about no the 300 or so feet just to the point where we needed it. Found a tree that was right in the middle of the fence line or the property line and tied it off to that for reference and just continued walking out here to show you that in fact a simple protractor, the map that you got for the survey from when you box a property and an old couple dollar compass from the department store can get you several hundred feet through the woods to the pin that you need to find. If you follow us up to the shed where we're going to have another corner post for this fence, we'll just show you one little clip of how we're going to do this and rinse and repeat the process throughout the rest of the property to finish off this fence. Okay so we're back up in the backyard now. We've laid out a mason line on the long stretch of a property line that's back into the woods. Now we're trying to actually make a fence line, a line that we're going to use to put up a fence through the property to the backyard. So we're no longer trying to go from a set pin to another set pin but from just 1.2 the property line. By laying out the line that we already did through the woods, we now know where we have to stop so we don't infringe on our neighbor's property. So what we have here is the back corner of our shed. Just put up a nail and tie it on some surveyors tape to it and we're now going to change our compass setting. So just like we did before, I'm going to use the edge of this to help me line up 180 degrees or excuse me, 90 degrees straight to east. Now if you notice I turn my compass around and have it point straight north, I know exactly which way I need to walk for where we're going to put this property line. Okay well something about the property surveyor tape and me just don't get along. So you probably notice we've gone back to a cotton twine. We've run this straight east, 90 degrees compass bearing from the corner of the shed going straight through the woods. And if you look down at my compass here, I'll show you how this works. If I turn this now and put my bearing at 180 degrees, I'm going to keep giving your bad bearings here at 270 degrees straight to west and line up my line right under it, bring it up to the line that we looked at before. You can see that that white cotton line goes straight to west to the property line or to the shed corner. So now all we're going to do is take this metal pole. Now we know where this corner is. We're going to sink it right in this corner. And now we know where the corner of this fence is going to be. Now something that you should take note of, I wouldn't recommend putting a fence line right at your property line. What we're actually planning on doing is coming five feet off the property line. Now that might seem a bit excessive, but it's going to give us room to put up a holly bush. We're going to plant some American holly as a bit of a visual barrier, a bit of aesthetics and also a way just for us to have a higher hedge without having to buy higher fencing. The holly will grow quick and it will grow thick and give us the kind of results that we desire. But the thing that you should remember is if you're going to try to put a fence right on a property line, even if your neighbor agrees, that neighbor might not be your neighbor for all time. If that person sells their property in five years from now, you could have a dispute with the person that owns it next on whether or not that fence pole is exactly on property line or one foot onto their property. So most good rules and measure are going to tell you not only to account for where the pole is, but also the footing that's in the ground. Remember when we concrete in this corner post, it's going to have about six inches to a foot in diameter around the base of it underground. And even if that intrudes into your neighbor's property, it could be a point of contention. So even if you're not looking to put a big border like we are by putting bushes up on the outside line of your fence, probably best to come in about a foot, that way you can make sure there's not going to be a contention in the future.