Anyone ever donated land for conservation ?
Considering doing that.
That or split the house site onto a single acre and get some farm animals and put the other 16.9 acres as agriculture.
Big tax savings.
Gotta plan ahead and unstick myself from what should just stay in the past...the past.
Check zoning ordinances for livestock required acreage.
Homestead rates shouldn't be bad on all 17+.
Non homestead area kick in the groin.
Leasing to a farmer to grow a crop might be a way to offset taxes.
A friend used to do that.
South of you , I'm about ten minutes from the Muskegon river.
There are mounds in the area I stay clear of but some relics have turned up below them for an old Indian now gone..
Spring flooding dumps so much silt and sediment , combined with forest duff creating loam over time eyeball finds except for eroded areas are not likely for me.
And I have checked creeks and gravel bars.
One year I located a trap still set (but rusted to no use) that was about 3 foot below ground level in a washed out bank.
Approximate 1920-1940 era. That is a lot of soil/sediment deposited!
Chert fragments from poor quality chert along the river are almost a sure bet.
The better chert came from Saginaw Bay area farther East.
Reading old archeological books told of the mounds investigated near me by a college. Not burial mounds.
Of great interest to me was the finding of a variety of worked lithics from varied styles. Together in a hearth below (downstream) the former 30 miles of rapids in one of the near the tailout's mounds.
Interesting because of the variety in the same context. Not layered over time , but together.
And downstate where two rivers split a former palisade (well a log wall anyways) had similar mixed styles of worked material.
Things like turkeytail heads were not local styles.
Hinting to my inexperience in such matters that perhaps there was a ceremonial alliance of sorts going on along the river routes among a few groups.