Deeds

I'm not talking good deeds--or even bad deeds. But the deeds that are involved in a property transfer. Gads, this is a nightmare. If you have never been fortunate (or unfortunate, as the case may be) to read an old deed, you are really missing out.
Recently, we have been doing some updating of Mom's farm records, and it's the biggest mess that ever was. Gives me a headache just thinking about it. Starting at a beech tree on the old mill road and running thence N58 W48 Poles to a stone and thense S54 1/2 E to a stone in the center of the road.......
Well, you get the idea. And come to find out some of the directions were left out of Mom's deed when she and Daddy bought their farm lo those many years ago (typo that no one caught before) Is there any wonder that it gives me a headache?
The lawyer took one look at it and said just re-survey the whole farm. It may come to that, but we're trying to avoid that. With 216 acres of "goat country" lots of hills and hollars, straight up and down, gullys and cliffs, the expense alone would probably put one of my children through college.
The beech tree is gone, the mill road is gone, the stone in the middle of the road is gone, and one tract is unable to be plotted--until we do some more research on earlier deeds to find where this little hunk of ground is.
Oh well, such is life in the country.