The Lady with the White Pants

August 20th, 2009
The Lady with the White Pants

I'm assisting a client with developing 2 lakefront acreage lots in Carver
County. The Carver County planners are wonderful to work with.

Once you get outside the incorporated cities in Carver County the permitted
density for residential is only 1 house in 40 acres. If you have 80 acres
you can, say, split off two 1.5 acre lots and keep 77 acres for agriculture
with no building rights. Because of this policy rural lots are really rural
lots, unlike other counties or cities that may permit whole subdivisions of
one acre lots with well and septic.

The planner asked had thought about covenants? When we said we hadn't gotten
that far he told us the story of the Lady with the White Pants.

A couple moves out from the City to build their dream home on 3 acres in
Carver County out amongst the cows and corn. The lady comes home from work
dressed in brand new white pants and lets out her two golden retrievers. The
farmer had just spread manure on the adjacent fields.

Well, dogs do what dogs do and rolled in the doo. Then came home and jumped
all over the lady and her brand new white pants. She was FURIOUS, and
complained to the county! So the county planner suggested this covenant
should be recorded with the lot split:

"The area is rural and that commercial agriculture and other rural land use
activities will likely be occurring in the area. There may be "odors, dirt,
dust, noises, long hours of operation and other factors associated with
agriculture and feedlot activities". Com­plaints relating to these
activities shall be considered unwarranted so long as such activities are
being conducted in accordance with existing standards."

The covenant did not include wardrobe advise.