Backstory: we live 9 months a year in an urban centre, 3 months each year we move to the country to bring in a harvest at our small farm.
We have a great relationship with our all our farm neighbours, and try hard to be good community members even though we are crazy busy when we are at the farm (as we are now). Our next-door neighbours have become quite close with us in recent years, due to us having DDs the same age (7) who adore each other.
Last summer, unbeknownst to us, they decided to heavily ‘prune’ the row of 25yo bushy cypress trees which form the ‘fence’ between our properties, about 15 trees. Basically they stripped all the lower branches, to over 2 metres from the ground, think lollipops. It effectively makes it look like one property, rather than two, and took away a lot of our privacy as well as wind-protection and gave us line of sight to a busy road.
The trees were originally planted on our side of the boundary (trunks), with large branches on either side. The neighbours needed to be on our property to complete half the job, and a big 3-4 day job it would’ve been, too. They didn’t get in touch before, during or after.
When I saw it, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I actually stood there, rubbing my eyes and shaking my head in case I was seeing things. Their chickens, dogs and kids had evidently been using our garden as an extension to theirs all year. I invited her over for tea and asked her through fairly clenched teeth what had happened. She was shocked we didn’t like the new look, and seemed to expect thanks for all their hard work😧. I was quite proud at how calmly I told her that no, we were going to need them to reinstate the boundary with something equally natural (ie not some cheap metal panelling) asap. At this point she gets teary and tells me they are putting their house on the market, and are short of funds due to property improvements they’ve made. (Yeah, like the chainsaw fuel they needed to double their garden space, I thought loudly).
I stood my ground and made sure DH did the same seperately with neighbour DH. He (but not she) apologised profusely, said ‘it made sense to do it at the time, but now that you explain it, I can see we did the wrong thing’. He is a builder by trade so we agreed he would consider the fencing options, and get back to us. We tried to look at it as a ‘spilt milk’ situation, and got on with our harvest.
Fast forward 2 months. We’re nearing the end of our farm work, kids have been playing together a lot, families sharing food, help, excursions, etc. A few times we’ve raised the fence topic, looking to get it resolved before they formally put their house up for sale, so we don’t have randoms walking through our property when we’re not here. Vague nodding from them. Today I go over to get firm confirmation of the plan, and timings. She squares off at me and states that they will not be doing or paying anything towards the fence, that they were completely justified in what they did, that we should stop pestering them about it when they’ve got so much on their plates (designing their new house) and anyway, we’re hardly ever here to use our garden so why are we making such an unreasonable fuss?
I’m stood there like 
then burst into tears and run off home. I’m usually so capable and practical and calm, but she’s ruined my lovely private garden, devalued my property, patently waited until I’m trying to finalise our business and pack up the house to drop this bombshell. Admittedly I’m exhausted and stressed, and fairly ‘peopled out’.
The girls have a long-awaited sleepover at theirs on Saturday, before we leave Monday. AIBU to fake an excuse to cancel it (with all the drama it’ll cause with the girls) and add further bad feeling? I just want a quiet few days to figure out what to do with these CFs, and finish my work. I thought they were sane, and friends. Unless of course we’ve been unreasonable too?