Moving from the city to the country is a big decision. Here’s why we did it.
Noise, traffic, people in your person space, busyness…These are all things my husband and I were accustom to in the city. We were born in the city and had raised our kids in the city. Over time though our neighborhood began to change. No more kids played on our street, neighbors stayed inside and at night you could hear gun shots from a few streets over. It was time to get out. At first we started to look in the city again. After a year of looking and not finding what we wanted we decided to take a good look at how we wanted to live out the second half of our lives.
I had gone to the Mother Earth News Fairs in PA a couple of years in a row and had really started to learn about growing your own food, using herbs and raising chickens. I would come home from my weekend getaway and share all that I had learned. The more we talked about this the more we realized city life was not what we wanted.
We wanted to go back to the basics. We wanted to live an “old fashion life”. We wanted to trade and barter for items. We wanted to have control over how our food was grown or being raised. We wanted to get away from society and rely on us.
Our current world was a world of convenience. Everything we needed was open 24 hours and within a few miles. We did not have to plan. We were 100% reliant on others for our needs.
Our house search soon shifted to a farm search. After all, we did already own horses and were paying someone to take care of them. We had also added chickens to our backyard. We spent about a year looking at different farms and putting in offers. None seemed to work out. Most of the places we just jumped at because we were becoming desperate. Nothing though gave us the feeling of “This is it!”
One day in August we had expanded our search to about an hour outside of our city. We went to the first home and began our usual, we can do this to the barn, we can change this on the house or we can add fencing here for the horses. Feeling defeated we drove to our next house. As soon as we drove by, we both just looked at each other. Is this for real? The house was the perfect farmhouse, the barn was brand new and there was a fenced in pasture for our horses. It all was perfect and exactly what we wanted. We both had the “This is it” feeling. We immediately called and scheduled an appointment. Three days later we placed an offer and it was accepted.
It has been four years since we took the plunge in farm life. Our farm has grown from horses and chickens and now includes, sheep, goats, pigs, dogs, cats and ducks. We have learned on our own how to build fences, build shelters, fix equipment, garden and breed livestock. We have a garden with food grown the way we choose. We milk goats for milk and to make soap. We raise chickens, sheep and hogs for meat. We know what our animals are consuming so we know what is in our meat. We have fruit trees planted. We are learning to rely on us and each day get closer to only relying on us.
Is it hard work? Yes. Are there struggles? Yes. Are we tired and do our bodies ache? Yes. Do we feel defeated at times? Yes. The satisfaction we receive from figuring out a solution and completing the hard work is immeasurable. We have no days off but our property is our classroom. Each day is a new adventure as to what we will learn.