Here is a little back story about where I live. It's way out in the middle of the country and surrounded by Amish neighbors. Our closest neighbor is the Amish who own the land we live on. Now to explain why we are living on Amish land. My husbands uncle owned the land and when he died he left in his will that the house and the land it sits on could be used by his younger sister until she died, then the land would revert back to the farm (which was owned by the uncles widow). My husbands aunt (the one who could use the land) decided she didn't want to live at the house as she wanted to be closer to town and signed a contract stating that her other brother (my husbands father) could live in the house if he paid the taxes on the house and the land it sat on. When my husbands father died we asked his aunt if we could live there under the same conditions as his father, she agreed and we went to a lawyer and had a new contract made up and signed. Well the widow wanted to sell the entire farm but because of the contract (that was legally binding according to the courts) she could sell the farm, but my husband and I had power of the house and the land it sits on until my husbands aunt dies. This pissed of my husbands family to no end because it made the land a lot harder to sell. My husband wanted to give in (he is a people pleaser) but I told him it was our legal right to stay here as long as we kept up the terms of the contract and I was going to stay here until we could afford a house of our own (I am unable to work due to several medical problems, but none of them qualify me for disability, and my husband kept losing his job so it was hard for us to keep a steady income).
So his family in an effort to get us out of the house would harass us at every chance they got. They would show up at random times with potential buyers for the farm and demand to be shown the inside of the house, my husband would let them in and I would throw them right back out. If they found out we would be gone they would use keys we didn't know they had and break into the house and trash things (the police did nothing about it because they had keys), we eventually changed the locks and added extra locks to all the doors. They took stuff from the barn that was left to my husband after his father died, and they would sell it (we reported that too, but without proof that we had owned it there was nothing the police could do). They would show up at the house while I was alone and threaten me, that only stopped after I showed up at the door with a knife in my hand and told them where I would stick it if they came around again. They even tried taking us to court and saying we weren't paying the taxes on the land, but they didn't think it through and because we had receipts from all the years we lived there showing we had paid the taxes the lawsuit was dropped.
Eventually they gave up on trying to get us out of the house and just stopped telling potential buyers that they wouldn't be able to use the house. They finally found a buyer (the amish family that now lives in their own house behind the barn) and they family only found out that they couldn't use the house until the day the sale went through and the bank told them, by then it was too late. The amish showed up and asked if we would move out because they wanted to turn it into a guest house for family, they even offered to buy us out of the contract for $500, once again my husband wanted to give in but I insisted that we stay. $500 wasn't even going to pay for a month at a low rent apartment around here, and at that time my husband was between jobs and I was working part time at a minimum wage job (and my medical problems were making it very hard for me to keep the job), we were barely paying the bills at it was, if we had added rent to that we would have been homeless in less than a month.
Eventually the Amish decided to build their own house and wait us out. In the meantime they have taken every opportunity to use my husbands good nature and need to please everyone to take advantage of his kind heart. First off they asked if they could hook up a freezer to our electricity, which they told us they would pay for the electricity it uses, and then they hooked up a second freezer for a family member to use without asking, in the mean time they give a total of $10 every six months and tell us that should cover the electricity they use (it doesn't). Then they asked if we would put a phone outside so they could use it and they would pay it (thankfully they do pay it because they make a lot of long distance calls that add up quickly).
My husband offers to drive them places as long as they pay for gas, which wouldn't be a problem except it puts a lot of wear and tear on the car that we have to pay for. It wouldn't be so bad but the amish call several times a week and want to go somewhere and my husband puts their need to go somewhere over our own. Let me explain that. Say I need to go to the grocery store to get some stuff, well if the amish call my husband tells me I will have to wait until another day to do it because the amish have somewhere they have to go. The only time something we need to do takes priority is if one of us has a doctors appointment. My husband told me that I have to plan things a week in advance so he knows what days he can take the amish somewhere, but even if I do plan a week in advance 9/10 times if the amish call my plans get put off. The worst thing about it is you never know when they are going to call, they will literally not give you any advance warning they want to do something, they will call five minutes before they want to leave, and if my husband tells them he can't they guilt trip him until he gives in. They will call and ask my husband to take a week of vacation so he can drive them to their relatives in another state! They don't understand that if he takes a vacation day (or week) it is so he can spend time with me and my family and not run them all over hell and creation. My husband for some reason feels that he owes the amish for letting us live here, even though I have explained to him if it was up to them we would have been thrown out a long time ago and the only reason they haven't is because the law is on our side.
Other things the amish do that piss me off: they will call us and tell us to mow our grass because they have friends/family coming over (even if it has just rained for weeks on end and the grass is too wet to mow). They use our trash pick up service so they don't have to pay for their own. They had a little dog (that was really stupid) that they let wander all over the place and poo in our yard, you couldn't even walk to the mailbox without stepping in dog poo, eventually the dog go hit on the road and we were blamed for its death because we didn't prevent it from chasing after cars (I did try to keep the dog from going in the road, but it just did what it wanted). They have three cats die on them (one of starvation and two because their bigger dog attacked them). They have two cats now Monster who is their barn cat (who they insist can live off only mice) and princess a little female they want to breed with monster to have more barn cats around. Monster has almost been starved to death, we took him in when we found him passed out on our porch and I nursed him back to health. He now comes to our house to be fed daily. Princess is essentially living with us since it started getting cold outside because the amish refuse take the cats inside when it gets cold and wouldn't let them in the barn at night. I let the cats out during the day and at night let them back in to get out of the freezing. If the amishs cows or horses get out of the field the bang on our front door until we come help (my husband is useless with this because he has never dealt with cows or horses before). My cell phone (which is a prepaid cell phone) is how they contact us (no matter how many times we tell them to call my husbands cell phone, which is also a prepaid) and runs out of minutes because of all the time they waste calling us and leaving messages that say the same thing over and over again.
The only good things that I can thing I can thing I can think of I like about the amish is for the most part they are quiet. When we lived in the apartment in town our neighbors were up at all hours screaming at each other and making so much noise it was hard to sleep, but with the amish unless they have one of their celebrations at their farm you can expect it to be quiet and peaceful.
