HOA Put 60 Solar Panels on My Land — Then the Utility Asked, “Who Authorized This?”
Chapter 3
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
At first, the neighbors were mostly pleasant. A few children waved when I moved cattle near the fence, and older couples would stop during evening walks to ask about calving season. I answered their questions because there was no reason not to. I had bought parts from people I disagreed with, helped pull strangers out of muddy ditches, and shared a county road with families whose politics and habits were nothing like mine; getting along did not require us to understand everything about each other.The problem began when the homeowners association started talking about the ranch as though it were part of the development's landscaping. I heard phrases like open-space buffer and visual corridor at neighborhood meetings I had never attended. Someone once emailed to ask if I could move my hay bales because they distracted from the view enjoyed by Ridgeview Court. I replied that the bales were on my property and would be moved when they were needed for feed. I never received an answer, and I assumed that was the end of it.Vanessa Hart became association president after a contentious annual election about clubhouse renovations. She was organized, confident, and very good at making other people's objections sound like delays to an obvious public benefit. Whenever I saw her at the property boundary, she carried a folder or a phone and spoke in the language of approvals, committees, and established authority. She rarely asked a question that might lead to an answer she did not already want.I did not dislike Vanessa when all this began. She lived on Ridgeview Court and owned a handsome house overlooking the land between the subdivision and my ranch. We had exchanged brief greetings once or twice, and she had sent me a generic invitation to a community landscaping meeting. I declined politely, explaining that my property was not subject to the association and that I was busy with livestock. Her response, "Of course, we all live with the same landscape," seemed harmless enough at the time.The first orange flags appeared on a Tuesday morning after a stretch of mild weather. I was moving a group of cows from the north pasture toward the lower ground, walking beside the ATV because the animals knew the route well enough to make a noisy engine unnecessary. A strip of bright plastic caught my eye near the north fence. There were half a dozen markers, each fixed to a thin stake, lined up with a precision that did not belong to any repair I had scheduled.My first thought was buried utilities. The county occasionally marked lines before maintenance, and the subdivision had water and electrical services along the ridge. I stopped, checked the fence for damage, and looked for a work notice attached to one of the stakes. Nothing had been posted. The flags stood quietly in the grass, as though their meaning should be self-evident.I photographed them and finished moving cattle. There was a sick calf in the lower pasture that needed attention, and the feed supplier had promised to call about a delivery. By the time I came back, the quiet had gone. An auger mounted on a compact drilling rig was turning into the ground several yards inside my fence, throwing red-brown soil around a hole that had not existed that morning.