Squatter opportunity

A vacant house very close to mine has a back yard that looks like attractive farm land. I decided to track down the owner to see if they mind me planting food there.

On the county website I can look up the name and mailing address of the owner for any property in the county. I wrote a little letter to the listed owner asking permission to plant. A few days later I got this voice mail, which proceeded roughly as follows:

Well I was just calling to let you know, it was very nice of you to think that I own the property ... but I now longer own that property honey ... if it were my property it would be OK with me if you plant there but I left 6 or 7 years ago and I no longer own that property ... but anyway, you have a blessed day and take care hon.

So I emailed the county records office to report their error and they replied:

There is no deed recorded from [Listed Owner] to a new owner. She may have sold the property, but that owner never recorded a deed. We cannot change our records until a deed is recorded. [Listed Owner] should look into getting her buyer to record the deed or we will not be able to change our records.

Hmmf, I thought, that's odd. In further conversation with the county office I learned that property taxes (unpaid for the last few years on this house) go with properties, not property owners, so [Listed Owner] won't likely get into trouble as far as taxes go. But they also seemed to think that [Listed Owner] may have actually sold the land, possibly informally, and the deed just never got recorded.

So I called her back. Her message was, in so many words, 'I never sold that property and it's not mine anymore.' So I don't see much reason not to start farming.