Great post. yes, there are always trade offs. No more sleeping in when you move to the countryside and have animals to care for, no more delivery, no more quick trips to town......it's hard, but a different kind of hard, the kind that feeds the soul instead of zaps it....the kind that establishes genuine connection with something greater rather than "appearing" to with labels....the days where the only song is the music played by the rain or sung by the birds....oh how the world needs more porch sitting and less virtual sifting.
We raise or hunt about 50% of our food. Chickens, rabbits, ducks, turkeys, deer, a stocked pond, huge garden, close to 50 fruit trees, grape vines, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries. Burn firewood for heat, built solar water heaters. I've never paid anyone to do or fix anything in my life. I built my mom a tiny house on our property largely from scrap I collected. We homeschooled all 11 of our children and now have close to 30 grandchildren, with new ones on the way all the time. Just had another son get married last week.
It's hard, dirty, back breaking work, and now that I'm in my 60s it's exponentially harder. I wouldn't romanticize it, but I also wouldn't trade it for the world.
People think that we are an amazing family. Well, we pale in comparison. ELEVEN children? That has us beat by 7 and 30 grandchildren? That has us beat by 28! Homeschooled all of ours too. Must be nice to be that talented.
living in a house on a wooded acre,with almost 60 acres of unused wild land behind me, absolutely agree, even though I am covered in stings and bites !
All day long, and not just mosquitoes, I don't even know what all it is! Some bites take 3, 4 weeks to heal, and some leave a small mark. This is the second year I barely dare go outside in shorts. Even the dog seems to be get bites on her legs.
Take garlic capsules. Mosquitoes hate me. All the standing water is what seems to be the issue. My yard has turned into a swamp since the SUPERVOLCANOE went off in the Pacific back in January of 2022. Oh you didn't hear about that? SURPRISE. 146 billion tons of water added to the existing stock in the atmosphere with an expected 5-10 years to get back down to "normal". https://www.courageouslion.us/p/dear-greta-tintin-eleonora-ernman
oh but I did. Jeff Childers wrote about it many times.
As to garlic - I use quite a bit, but cannot take the capsules because my stomach can not have them. Tried them for other reasons.
The only thing for mosquitoes that works is the little burner from Thermacell, but of course, that is only for mosquitoes. All other insects and spiders are still there. The hot season started, so sitting outside is not possible anymore now - woke up with the cooling running at 6.
We also do not have standing water, unless you count the cat's bowl. I pour that if I see any larvae in it!
I got an old one, it has little bottles with fuel and felt strips that go on a metal plate. It slowly turns from blue to white, and then it is gone - about 2 hours.
Nowadays they also have lantern models and the newest I saw was with bottles with liquid instead of felt strips (the felt gives off a slight smell, the box says the liquid does not). Quite pricey but at least I can sit outside sometimes !
Been an insect magnet all of my life. No one gets bitten but I am covered.
I already chucked it nearly a quarter century ago and don't regret it. Although I chose a remote location that is not the grassy thickly wooded Edens depicted in some rural fantasies. It is a beautiful but harsher place, but I like the open spaces and the sunshine and mild winters. People tend to look out for each other here and tend to the self sufficient lifestyle. Attended a local community potluck dinner last night with friends at the Terlingua Ranch Lodge with my best friend Amy.
I grew up in Southeastern Kentucky in the fifties and early sixties. We lived in one of the houses in our community that had electricity. My first schools did not have electricity. We lived much the same as rural folk lived prior to the twentieth century. No TV, hardly any radio. We had a few neighbors who had mules by which to plow. Only one neighbor had a tractor. We all grew most of our own food. Preservation was underground storage, some canning, smoking and salting meat. All of our milk products were fresh, unpasteurized, home churned butter, homemade cheeses, etc.
Medicine was folk remedies mostly. The nearest doctors and hospitals were miles away, over unpaved, single-lane roads, a least an hours drive away. No telephones. Most of our neighbors wouldn't go to a doctor or hospital anyway. The men of the community worked, if at all, in mining, logging. or at heavy construction--road work, gravel pits. and the like, usually away from home and family for a least weeks at a time. The rest farmed personal farms, hunted or fished, or moonshining. One neighbor had large work-horses that he used for logging. Another had a small lumber mill run by a diesel engine powered saw. Most of the lumber was hauled away by trucks to towns some distance away. I don't recall any new houses being constructed in our community.
It was not a pleasant or idyllic life. Most of the farming was done by children and wives. There was one water powered grist-mill, half a day's walk away that ground corn on demand. We had a local general store that sold ground flour, coal oil for lamps, and a limited amount of dry goods, salt, sugar, and coffee. It also housed a post office. There was no home delivery of mail. The only school was a one-room, one teacher, serving eight grades. Once a year we had a visiting nurse who vaccinated school children with mandatory shots for measles, mumps, and polio. They were available to adults but very few takers. I went to a dentist once during grade school, the year my father taught there my seventh grade, when the county was unable to provide a teacher.
We children had great fun whenever free from work and school. We had no library nor traveling bookmobile, so I read very little bur school books before high school. There, I had access to a library, and read a book a day through four years. It was a boarding school, so I was hardly ever home, having had to work summers and at the school facilities throughout the year to help with room and board. But that was all I knew, so it was normal. Even if I could, I would not have changed a thing, and would have been content to go on living that way the rest of my life. However, my parents did not give me that option. They insisted I go to college.
I was just twelve-years-old when I left home for high school, and except for a few weekends a year, I was never home again. My first post-high school education was at a small Bible School in West Virginia, not that different from my small community and my boarding school life. After three years, I went to a Bible college in Grand Rapids, Michigan, went on to working full time at a factory in Grand Rapids, got married, and five years later moved to Toledo, Ohio. Four years later, I moved to a small town about seventy miles south of Toledo, where I lived the rest of my working life, after which I moved to an even smaller town in Indiana where I still live.
So, except for nine years, I have basically lives in rural America, never feeling at home in an urban setting. I have visited in large cities, including Philadelphia, NYC, St. Louis, and Dallas, but would not consider living in places like that. I very much dislike feeling crowded. I like rural people better and find them more relaxed, friendly, and all around nicer than city folk. In general, I find civilization uncivil, and am not impressed with progress. I don't need to always be busy or connected, and would be content to never be around people. More physical demanding provision of life's necessities is a small price to pay for solitude.
Country living is addictive, even with all its inherent hardships and inconveniences. We've gone from living as guests on a small Oklahoma homestead with chickens, to moving to the Ozarks and starting our own small homestead with chickens, to now searching for enough land to build a large-scale hen house and start a proper working farm. As much as I sometimes grow weary of the ceaseless daily grind of caring for animals and tending to land, very rarely do I miss the comforts and conveniences (or the crime and the noise and the pollution) of city life.
It has been almost fifteen years since I closed on my property; ten acres of old farmland that hasn't been worked in probably a century. My house, an architect-designed, brick, center hall colonial sits at pretty much the center of the property and a creek bisects the lot, flowing southeast to northwest just behind the house. There are two outbuildings, a Dutch-barn style shed and a pole barn. Most of the land around me is woods, hundreds of acres of woods...
I have one neighbor whose house is kitty-corner northwest of me. I can see their house in the winter when the leaves are down but not now. They are good neighbors and the husband and I are friends. I can see a light on in the house of the folks to the south of me in the winter. From what I know of them they are more liberal progressive but they are quiet and haven't caused me any trouble...
I'm not far from you (northern Saratoga County) so winters are similar to yours; maybe a little milder than yours since I don't get lake effect snow. I went to college at Geneseo and lived in Livingston County for about ten years. I grew up in southern Dutchess County in the Hudson Valley...
I would imagine there are some good buys on the Southern Tier, if the house isn't too far gone. I hear the standard window treatment down there is plywood... That said, a former associate of mine bought a property in Cuba, NY and she seemed quite happy with it the last time I talked to her but she, like myself, is retired with a pension. I don't imagine there are a lot of work opportunities down there...
I don't know, but would wonder about internet connectivity down there. It's not all that great here but could probably be improved if I were willing to spend more money...
Bought about 40 acres from the original homesteader in '65. Added more surrounding acreage to it over the years.
Looking out my windows and can't see another house from any of them. Looking back at some sixty years living on the edge of the grid, two grown kids, lot's of grand memories and I've no complaints.
I have wanted to get out of the city and get a nice little secluded acreage with trees and room for a nice garden for decades. I have friends and family who have this lifestyle and it seems like it would be great. Unfortunately I do not have the kind of money or employment situation that allows for such a move right now. The older I get, the less attracted I am to living in the city. Something to work towards.
Something about bluegrass hits me on a visceral level, speaks to my soul AND that sense of yearning you mentioned. That yearning has been tugging at my heartstrings for years now, and I cannot shake it. The fact this family are native Missourians doesn't hurt their creds in my mind, either, but that should surprise no one who knows me LOL
<3 the Petersons. Have a couple of their albums sitting on the shelf (or, actually, packed in a box at the moment...)
I thought the song was twee when it came out way back when, but in retrospect it's sweet.
And, absolutely loved living rurally. Hope to be doing that again soon. Your photos take me back to the place I felt most at peace and content with life. Presently in the suburbs of a shithole city for <reasons>, finally planning to move.
“I thought the song was twee when it came out way back when, but in retrospect it's sweet.“
—Agreed. With age comes wisdom. Youth is wasted on the young. What other platitudes can I think of? Either way, they’re all true! 😁
So will you be moving in the US, or are you in the UK? (I rarely hear Americans use the word “twee,” so I thought maybe you’re on the other side of the Atlantic…)
All US here. Grew up in extremely rural Idaho actually. Like, 40 minute drive into town once every two weeks for groceries rural. But my first adult return to the country was very much as pictured above. This time, aiming for somewhere coastal, but of course options are limited.
When I moved from MT to Los Angeles, I headed out at night. October 25th. I started getting sleepy in Idaho and pullled over to sleep in the Targhee forest. After an hour or so I woke up and the car was covered in snow and I thought, “If I sleep through the night, I am going to wake up with 75 feet of snow on the car and they’ll find my corpse in the spring.” So I bailed!
I was just looking at a map of home affordability by county. Basically (not counting the upper interior west), the colder it is, the cheaper!
A bit of bluegrass gospel I recorded back in the 1990's in Northport Washington. Wedding Banquet. I'm the vocalist. I love the Petersons. They have a fantastic family band. I have a friend that had one with his children when they were growing up in Branson Missouri. Typically they sadly break up as the children grow up and get married and have their own families to deal with. I remember for years being a singer at "Songs for His People" in Branson once a year thanks to Norm Farnum and his wonderful wife Trish. Enjoy Wedding Banquet! https://soundcloud.com/user-96621491/wedding-banquet
Great post. yes, there are always trade offs. No more sleeping in when you move to the countryside and have animals to care for, no more delivery, no more quick trips to town......it's hard, but a different kind of hard, the kind that feeds the soul instead of zaps it....the kind that establishes genuine connection with something greater rather than "appearing" to with labels....the days where the only song is the music played by the rain or sung by the birds....oh how the world needs more porch sitting and less virtual sifting.
A good description!
I love being outside. Sadly, the weather here is pretty rough for half the year, so it’s not a full-time proposition.
We raise or hunt about 50% of our food. Chickens, rabbits, ducks, turkeys, deer, a stocked pond, huge garden, close to 50 fruit trees, grape vines, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries. Burn firewood for heat, built solar water heaters. I've never paid anyone to do or fix anything in my life. I built my mom a tiny house on our property largely from scrap I collected. We homeschooled all 11 of our children and now have close to 30 grandchildren, with new ones on the way all the time. Just had another son get married last week.
It's hard, dirty, back breaking work, and now that I'm in my 60s it's exponentially harder. I wouldn't romanticize it, but I also wouldn't trade it for the world.
People think that we are an amazing family. Well, we pale in comparison. ELEVEN children? That has us beat by 7 and 30 grandchildren? That has us beat by 28! Homeschooled all of ours too. Must be nice to be that talented.
That is fantastic—you are setting an example. Especially by making all those new humans!
living in a house on a wooded acre,with almost 60 acres of unused wild land behind me, absolutely agree, even though I am covered in stings and bites !
Is this an especially bad year for mosquitoes where you are too? We’re getting not just at twilight, but all day…
All day long, and not just mosquitoes, I don't even know what all it is! Some bites take 3, 4 weeks to heal, and some leave a small mark. This is the second year I barely dare go outside in shorts. Even the dog seems to be get bites on her legs.
Take garlic capsules. Mosquitoes hate me. All the standing water is what seems to be the issue. My yard has turned into a swamp since the SUPERVOLCANOE went off in the Pacific back in January of 2022. Oh you didn't hear about that? SURPRISE. 146 billion tons of water added to the existing stock in the atmosphere with an expected 5-10 years to get back down to "normal". https://www.courageouslion.us/p/dear-greta-tintin-eleonora-ernman
oh but I did. Jeff Childers wrote about it many times.
As to garlic - I use quite a bit, but cannot take the capsules because my stomach can not have them. Tried them for other reasons.
The only thing for mosquitoes that works is the little burner from Thermacell, but of course, that is only for mosquitoes. All other insects and spiders are still there. The hot season started, so sitting outside is not possible anymore now - woke up with the cooling running at 6.
We also do not have standing water, unless you count the cat's bowl. I pour that if I see any larvae in it!
How does the little burner from Thermacell work?
I got an old one, it has little bottles with fuel and felt strips that go on a metal plate. It slowly turns from blue to white, and then it is gone - about 2 hours.
Nowadays they also have lantern models and the newest I saw was with bottles with liquid instead of felt strips (the felt gives off a slight smell, the box says the liquid does not). Quite pricey but at least I can sit outside sometimes !
Been an insect magnet all of my life. No one gets bitten but I am covered.
Weird. What part of the country?
middle Georgia. Had always lots of bites in the 20 years I am here, but this year is extreme. I am outside for 2 minutes and come in with 4, 5 bites.
Yikes!
Great cover. I actually like it better than the original. I'm moving to the country or going to die trying.
I wish you good fortune in your quest!
And yeah, I think I might like it better too…
I already chucked it nearly a quarter century ago and don't regret it. Although I chose a remote location that is not the grassy thickly wooded Edens depicted in some rural fantasies. It is a beautiful but harsher place, but I like the open spaces and the sunshine and mild winters. People tend to look out for each other here and tend to the self sufficient lifestyle. Attended a local community potluck dinner last night with friends at the Terlingua Ranch Lodge with my best friend Amy.
Love it!
I grew up in Southeastern Kentucky in the fifties and early sixties. We lived in one of the houses in our community that had electricity. My first schools did not have electricity. We lived much the same as rural folk lived prior to the twentieth century. No TV, hardly any radio. We had a few neighbors who had mules by which to plow. Only one neighbor had a tractor. We all grew most of our own food. Preservation was underground storage, some canning, smoking and salting meat. All of our milk products were fresh, unpasteurized, home churned butter, homemade cheeses, etc.
Medicine was folk remedies mostly. The nearest doctors and hospitals were miles away, over unpaved, single-lane roads, a least an hours drive away. No telephones. Most of our neighbors wouldn't go to a doctor or hospital anyway. The men of the community worked, if at all, in mining, logging. or at heavy construction--road work, gravel pits. and the like, usually away from home and family for a least weeks at a time. The rest farmed personal farms, hunted or fished, or moonshining. One neighbor had large work-horses that he used for logging. Another had a small lumber mill run by a diesel engine powered saw. Most of the lumber was hauled away by trucks to towns some distance away. I don't recall any new houses being constructed in our community.
It was not a pleasant or idyllic life. Most of the farming was done by children and wives. There was one water powered grist-mill, half a day's walk away that ground corn on demand. We had a local general store that sold ground flour, coal oil for lamps, and a limited amount of dry goods, salt, sugar, and coffee. It also housed a post office. There was no home delivery of mail. The only school was a one-room, one teacher, serving eight grades. Once a year we had a visiting nurse who vaccinated school children with mandatory shots for measles, mumps, and polio. They were available to adults but very few takers. I went to a dentist once during grade school, the year my father taught there my seventh grade, when the county was unable to provide a teacher.
We children had great fun whenever free from work and school. We had no library nor traveling bookmobile, so I read very little bur school books before high school. There, I had access to a library, and read a book a day through four years. It was a boarding school, so I was hardly ever home, having had to work summers and at the school facilities throughout the year to help with room and board. But that was all I knew, so it was normal. Even if I could, I would not have changed a thing, and would have been content to go on living that way the rest of my life. However, my parents did not give me that option. They insisted I go to college.
I was just twelve-years-old when I left home for high school, and except for a few weekends a year, I was never home again. My first post-high school education was at a small Bible School in West Virginia, not that different from my small community and my boarding school life. After three years, I went to a Bible college in Grand Rapids, Michigan, went on to working full time at a factory in Grand Rapids, got married, and five years later moved to Toledo, Ohio. Four years later, I moved to a small town about seventy miles south of Toledo, where I lived the rest of my working life, after which I moved to an even smaller town in Indiana where I still live.
So, except for nine years, I have basically lives in rural America, never feeling at home in an urban setting. I have visited in large cities, including Philadelphia, NYC, St. Louis, and Dallas, but would not consider living in places like that. I very much dislike feeling crowded. I like rural people better and find them more relaxed, friendly, and all around nicer than city folk. In general, I find civilization uncivil, and am not impressed with progress. I don't need to always be busy or connected, and would be content to never be around people. More physical demanding provision of life's necessities is a small price to pay for solitude.
That is a fascinating story.
So, as hard as it was, you would still do it. That says a lot.
Country living is addictive, even with all its inherent hardships and inconveniences. We've gone from living as guests on a small Oklahoma homestead with chickens, to moving to the Ozarks and starting our own small homestead with chickens, to now searching for enough land to build a large-scale hen house and start a proper working farm. As much as I sometimes grow weary of the ceaseless daily grind of caring for animals and tending to land, very rarely do I miss the comforts and conveniences (or the crime and the noise and the pollution) of city life.
This is what I am hearing from everyone. “Hard work, but I wouldn’t ever trade it.”
It has been almost fifteen years since I closed on my property; ten acres of old farmland that hasn't been worked in probably a century. My house, an architect-designed, brick, center hall colonial sits at pretty much the center of the property and a creek bisects the lot, flowing southeast to northwest just behind the house. There are two outbuildings, a Dutch-barn style shed and a pole barn. Most of the land around me is woods, hundreds of acres of woods...
I have one neighbor whose house is kitty-corner northwest of me. I can see their house in the winter when the leaves are down but not now. They are good neighbors and the husband and I are friends. I can see a light on in the house of the folks to the south of me in the winter. From what I know of them they are more liberal progressive but they are quiet and haven't caused me any trouble...
That is amazing!
How are the winters where you are?
I'm not far from you (northern Saratoga County) so winters are similar to yours; maybe a little milder than yours since I don't get lake effect snow. I went to college at Geneseo and lived in Livingston County for about ten years. I grew up in southern Dutchess County in the Hudson Valley...
Indeed!
Several of my in-laws went to Geneseo. And I think my stepfather’s mother did too.
And I am starting to look at land in the counties south of Livingston…
I would imagine there are some good buys on the Southern Tier, if the house isn't too far gone. I hear the standard window treatment down there is plywood... That said, a former associate of mine bought a property in Cuba, NY and she seemed quite happy with it the last time I talked to her but she, like myself, is retired with a pension. I don't imagine there are a lot of work opportunities down there...
Ot much work down there, but as long as there’s internet, my wife and I are set. And we’re not THAT far away from semi-retirement ourselves.
And yes, some of the cheapest property (comparatively) is down there. Plus, Amish contractors are cheap and honest.
I don't know, but would wonder about internet connectivity down there. It's not all that great here but could probably be improved if I were willing to spend more money...
NYC to Alaska in '64.
Bought about 40 acres from the original homesteader in '65. Added more surrounding acreage to it over the years.
Looking out my windows and can't see another house from any of them. Looking back at some sixty years living on the edge of the grid, two grown kids, lot's of grand memories and I've no complaints.
Magnificent!
Can't beat all those strings humming along.
It’s a soothing sound.
I have wanted to get out of the city and get a nice little secluded acreage with trees and room for a nice garden for decades. I have friends and family who have this lifestyle and it seems like it would be great. Unfortunately I do not have the kind of money or employment situation that allows for such a move right now. The older I get, the less attracted I am to living in the city. Something to work towards.
I hope you get there! (No way for you to work remote?)
It's not a remote working issue, it's a 'can't afford it' issue. Unless I buy a tiny lot and live in a garden shed, ha ha.
Well if the population continues to fall, land and house prices are going to crater…
Something about bluegrass hits me on a visceral level, speaks to my soul AND that sense of yearning you mentioned. That yearning has been tugging at my heartstrings for years now, and I cannot shake it. The fact this family are native Missourians doesn't hurt their creds in my mind, either, but that should surprise no one who knows me LOL
Seriously man, this is a great drop...
Thank you, Stoner, my man. Right there with you on Bluegrass. I was born in the Northeast but I love the stuff.
Any chance you’ll be able to fulfill the yearning at some point?
I am working hard to get there, brother, and keeping the dream alive... :-)
I am pulling for you!
I cannot push you, though, because you are made of stone.
LOL Yeah, the nickname-turned-penname kind of fits sometimes :-)
You are a megalith.
<3 the Petersons. Have a couple of their albums sitting on the shelf (or, actually, packed in a box at the moment...)
I thought the song was twee when it came out way back when, but in retrospect it's sweet.
And, absolutely loved living rurally. Hope to be doing that again soon. Your photos take me back to the place I felt most at peace and content with life. Presently in the suburbs of a shithole city for <reasons>, finally planning to move.
“I thought the song was twee when it came out way back when, but in retrospect it's sweet.“
—Agreed. With age comes wisdom. Youth is wasted on the young. What other platitudes can I think of? Either way, they’re all true! 😁
So will you be moving in the US, or are you in the UK? (I rarely hear Americans use the word “twee,” so I thought maybe you’re on the other side of the Atlantic…)
All US here. Grew up in extremely rural Idaho actually. Like, 40 minute drive into town once every two weeks for groceries rural. But my first adult return to the country was very much as pictured above. This time, aiming for somewhere coastal, but of course options are limited.
When I moved from MT to Los Angeles, I headed out at night. October 25th. I started getting sleepy in Idaho and pullled over to sleep in the Targhee forest. After an hour or so I woke up and the car was covered in snow and I thought, “If I sleep through the night, I am going to wake up with 75 feet of snow on the car and they’ll find my corpse in the spring.” So I bailed!
I was just looking at a map of home affordability by county. Basically (not counting the upper interior west), the colder it is, the cheaper!
Yeah I sometimes jokingly propose we move back to my home state. Wife says, "yeah, no. Too cold."
It's an issue where we are too. Cold, snow, clouds, and wind. Half the year is meh or worse.
Beautiful piece Christopher.
🙏
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBRfkxUAyOk&list=RDjBRfkxUAyOk&start_radio=1
Listening now. Nice :-)
A bit of bluegrass gospel I recorded back in the 1990's in Northport Washington. Wedding Banquet. I'm the vocalist. I love the Petersons. They have a fantastic family band. I have a friend that had one with his children when they were growing up in Branson Missouri. Typically they sadly break up as the children grow up and get married and have their own families to deal with. I remember for years being a singer at "Songs for His People" in Branson once a year thanks to Norm Farnum and his wonderful wife Trish. Enjoy Wedding Banquet! https://soundcloud.com/user-96621491/wedding-banquet
I think I recognized your voice from previous tracks :-)
And yeah, kids gotta go live their own lives, I suppose.