#246 - Homestead Security - How Much Is Too Much? (Front Gates, Cameras)

statistically speaking Idaho ranks number 27 in the safest States to live in you get away from the big cities and the small towns where people have a tendency to see each other on a regular basis and even have relationships with these people the crime rates always go down but we have a funny thing happened every year at about the same time and that's opening weekend hunting season we have a lot of out-of-state license plates pull into town matter of fact last year I pulled into the gas station to get some gas we're over-the-counter permits were sold out of the 20-something cars in the parking lot there are only three local license plates [Music] now the ranch happens to be on a road that leads to public land I've talked about this a number of times every once in a while I catch a guy hunting sheds or I catch people wandering around on my property but for the most part we haven't really had any issues there have been a couple of times where I've found tracks in the snow that I couldn't identify who they belong to [Music] now I put this chain-link fence up a couple of years ago really to keep my then three-year-old son away from the creek the creek I've seen as wide as about 20 feet wide and roaring from the spring runoff but for the most part that Creek is just trickling like right now I [Music] got the chain-link fence at the scrapyard for 15 cents a pound it's not the prettiest but it was cost-effective seems like everything I do around this place hinges on being cost-effective [Music] of course I'd love to have no climb horse fence or something like that but I couldn't afford to spend that kind of money at that time the chain-link will someday be covered with a vine or with raspberry something along those lines but I haven't finished the front gate because I hadn't finished the driveway up to the house now since I got the driveway finished for a while now I've been wanting to get the gates done I bought these gates off the local Facebook for about two hundred dollars for four gates and they've just been sitting and waiting for me to get them installed there's two spots on the property that I want to have locked gates the first one is our driveway up to the house now the idea is that I wanted to have a little bit of a drive going up to the house where at some point in the near future we'll have a camera and a motion sensor light so from the house we can see who happens to be in our driveway I have a few obviously placed cameras as well as signs around the property that says I have cameras but I also have some not so obvious camera as a matter of fact you'd have to know what you are looking at to know that we had some other cameras more than anything I'm not afraid that something is gonna walk away but I just want to know who's walking around I want to know who's up here so getting these gates finished will help me sleep a little better at night and as soon as we're living up here you better believe it's gonna help us sleep a little better at night [Music] now 99.9 percent of the time the people that run up and down this road have the same license plate on their vehicles that I do for the most part so I don't worry about it but like I said there are times when people wander around because they see the road on a public map and I'm okay with that as well [Music] there have been a couple of times where somebody got stuck and they needed help getting out and again I'm not opposed to that person needing help and being willing to help that person what I worry about is when I happen to be gone and my wife and kids are gonna be here or maybe even just my kids are gonna be here and if somebody walked up to the front door and knocked on the door without giving us a moment to figure out who was there that would bother me [Music] if I know that in the best case scenario it's gonna take 20 minutes for most first responders to get to my property I need to take the steps to protect myself and then be in time now I'm not gonna talk about the obvious things but of course we're gonna have every means that we feel we need to protect ourselves [Music] things like having a camera that's gonna pick up the license plate on the backs of people's cars as well as their face and allow us to see that from the house he's gonna make me feel better about things [Music] I went up on the hill and got these maple posts that I've used around the front here and I've decided that rather using the three to four inch post that I use two years ago that I was gonna find some big beefy posts so I went up and walked around on the hill looking for these posts and I've got a couple hundred trees up there that are just waiting for me to clean them up so it didn't take me long to find the posts but the one thing that I did find real quickly up there was how tall the grass had grown [Music] now I don't walk around up there very often I walk around the edges where we're putting in the t-post and barbed wire but I haven't walked into the middle of the property in quite some time it's thick with brush and trees in some places and I just haven't gone up there the other day when I went up there looking for these posts I was shocked and how thick the grass was and frankly how tall the grass was I knew that by removing the small maple trees and leaving the big healthy maple trees that the Sun was gonna get to the right places and in the back of my head I knew there was gonna be grass walking around on the hill there was grass that was up to the top of my head [Music] once we get the excavator up here I will clean up all the brush up there remove the stumps and this will be a great pasture for whatever animals we choose to put up there [Music] back to the front fins in the front gate I just finished stretching this chain-link and connecting it where I needed to connect it to the post I put a couple strings of barbed wire on top of it I put a lock on the gates and that's about it now there's a maple tree that's right close to where the front gates are that will be a perfect spot for the camera and for the motion sensor light but I needed to get the gates installed in the meantime this is one of the many things that I've been putting off because there's just been other things to do while I've been waiting for the excavator to get here I thought it was time to get the front gate secured so I could stop worrying about who might be wandering around my property now like I said I've got some obvious cameras and some not so obvious cameras I'm not too worried about catching people up here but just to have the front gates finished and get the barbed wire finished on the side it's going to confirm that if I do catch somebody after wandering around they're up to no good [Music] the maple post that I put in our about a year and a half old and they've dried out quite a bit but they're not quite completely dry once they get completely dry the skin peels right off of them and and they show that white meat underneath now after that Sun hits that white meat for a couple years it turns gray actually a real pretty grey I'll probably treat it with some kind of a linseed oil or something along those lines and try and make those posts last as long as they can but but I think I'm gonna just continue to use the maple posts instead of spending the money on railroad ties or something along those lines I have so much of this wood I might as well use it where I can once the skin comes off these posts it's gonna look beautiful I love the way it turned out I'll throw a couple more signs up here stating the obvious no trespassing cameras and use things like that and then the house will be the last line of defense as well as our neighbors if you don't think I've had the conversation with our neighbors about what to do in a situation where we're not comfortable believe us we've had that conversation

Channel: Red Poppy Ranch

Views: 462,263

Rating: 4.8499999 out of 5

Keywords: off grid living, off grid, homesteading, homestead, barnhouse, off grid cabin, barn house, off grid homestead, Farm house, DIY, DIY Home Build, Idaho homestead, idahome, off grid idaho, red poppy ranch, living off the grid, Security cameras, DIY gates, front gates

Id: U1XLLijgBlk

Length: 10min 33sec (633 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 29 2018