Rural Bashing?

[BrokeFarmerJohn]

I have a friend, she's a single mom of two young kids, she lives in a income based housing community, she has a small yard but won't let her kids play in the yard unsupervised because on a few different occasions while mowing found empty and loaded needles in her yard.

She lives in a small city (39,000) and I guess on the bad side of town.

I grew up in the suburbs further out in the country on a dead end road, I never had to worry about any of that kinda stuff.

 

[mbohuntr]

I have work friends that pick on my being a RED NECK , while mentioning that they are scared of shootings, bad neighborhoods, and cannot understand why I hunt...

I just roll with it and say they have never watched a sunrise streaming thru a foggy woods while a deer picks its way through a patch of briars munching on some leaves... I have never met a person who moved from the country saying they were happy...

 

[TractorGuy]

I have never experienced that. When people find out where I live they are usually envious.

 

[4get gto]

We had relatives "sleep" over and couldn't go to sleep cause it was too quiet. They needed the sound of the highway outside their window to doze off.

And the names for us country folk is endless. Some of them don't even let me type em.

 

[Deere Dude]

Some people just need to be bullies even over something so inane.

I can give a 100 reasons why living in the country is great but I am scratching my head trying to think of 1 good reason why living in town is such a good idea.

 

[Dftodd]

I've lived in both settings. Big city with ordinances saying what you can and can't do with your property. Neighbors house was 20ft from mine. Can't say as I'll go back to living in town. Relish the quiet, and being able to do what I want on my property

I haven't been bashed for living in the country. May get a question occasionally, but that's it.

I have had discussions with people who absolutely love Home owners associations. Now that's a way of life I have had a hard time understanding :confused2: Daughter lives in a neighborhood where a neighbor is trying to start up an hoa.

I had to have a talk with him for her because his tactics were bordering on the extreme and turning into bullying. I got tired of her calling up upset. Pointed out the fact to him, that an hoa is optional since it's not in the deed for the houses in there neighborhood. And that the only thing he could do is call the county if someone was violating an ordinance, or a restriction on the deed. He was trying to use it as a power trip and do as I say, not as I do. Pointed out to my daughter, that was the reason we live in the county :thumbsup:

 

[vvanders]

I have never experienced that. When people find out where I live they are usually envious.

Yeah, I rarely get bashed. Lots of people I talk to wish they could move out to somewhere more rural but can't because most of the employment in my field is in the city.

Sadly as the economic rise of a city goes up so does cost of living. Last I heard average price for a house in Seattle was ~$800k.

 

[Wagtail]

We had relatives "sleep" over and couldn't go to sleep cause it was too quiet. They needed the sound of the highway outside their window to doze off.

Same here. I've got a great Mate who visits a couple of time a year from Brisbane (he also depletes my wine collection... but I digress...) and it takes him a couple of nights before he can fall asleep to the dead silence & darkness.

It also takes him a while to adjust to my un-locked doors!

Both of us are retired Navy. Aside from communal living (Mess deck, barracks, etc...) going to sea on a cramped warship means constant noise, even during the 'quiet times', there's always the hum/whoosh of the ship's ventilation. I pined for my retirement property and the quiet existence; where the only loud noise would be rain on the roof. Heck, even now as I type this, there is no radio or TV on to provide 'background noise'. Quiet bliss.

I think that my Mates visits are becoming more frequent.

 

[mapper]

I grew up a couple of miles outside of Bellingham Wa. on the side of a mountain overlooking Bellingham bay, surrounded by forest. We had one neighbor whose lights you could see at night through the trees. You could see the stars at night and the birds were an orchestra in the forest. I had a small creek next to the house and woods that I could disappear into for as long as I liked. My parents never worried about us being on our own there.
Is it any surprise that I can't imagine living in town? I have three sisters, one lives in town, one lives on acreage on the Kitsap peninsula, and the other is a happy farmer in the Skagit Valley. Three out of four of us live in rural areas, our upbringing must have had some influence on us.:thumbsup:

 

[kcflhrc]

Most everyone I talk to is quite jealous of country living. There will always be the hater's but really, who cares what they think.

 

[Mace Canute]

.......Preference is preference. There is no need to justify or validate it.

This is the best reply in the whole thread. :thumbsup:

 

[check]

I've never heard of anything quite so crazy. To the man - all my friends wish they could live in the country as I do.

For us it is different. We live in the big city, but we go to the cottage in the country very, very frequently. My city friends and acquaintances all consider us to be very very lucky do you have a place in the country!

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Jerry Jeff Walker - Night Riders Lament.wmv - YouTube

 

[Redneck in training]

My wife is a (former) city girl. When we moved to our property in 2004 she was quite apprehensive. The night is dark, the coyotes come to check on you, there are all kinds of noises and critters in the woods. When we bought the land it was overgrazed and kind of baren. We walked on the top of the ridge and I told her look in the valley. This place has great potential. Thirteen years later we made it into a beautiful place. We planted several thousand trees. Many of those are big enough that our house is not visible from the road anymore. She put a lot of hard work and soul in the place. If I would tell her to sell it and move to the town she would say: Over my dead body.
Like one of my good friends used to say: If you can walk from your house naked and pee from your front steps then you can claim that you don't live on just acreage but you live in the country. And my wife add and have no tan lines.:laughing:
And another thing is if you live in the country you can always go to the city but if you live in the city you can't go to the country unless you own land.

 

[Birdhunter1]

I had a relative that did that for a while until I convinced her that I live like a king and in fact I am King on the farm whereas she lives under the king and has to get permission, permits, tags or whatever before doing or owning anything. However at my place I had chickens roaming the yard and eggs in abundance, a large garden full of fresh vegetables and a freezer full of organic meat that never once saw a commercial feed yard, butcher shop or whatever feed supplements people complain about these days.

I convinced that relative I lived like a king then I was labeled a racist, bigot, sexist and likely to beat my wife because I was a gun owner....... happy to say I disassociated with that cousin 5 years ago and publicly no longer claim relation.

 

[MountainWoods]

Rural Living

My wife is a (former) city girl. When we moved to our property in 2004 she was quite apprehensive. The night is dark, the coyotes come to check on you, there are all kinds of noises and critters in the woods. When we bought the land it was overgrazed and kind of baren. We walked on the top of the ridge and I told her look in the valley. This place has great potential. Thirteen years later we made it into a beautiful place. We planted several thousand trees. Many of those are big enough that our house is not visible from the road anymore. She put a lot of hard work and soul in the place. If I would tell her to sell it and move to the town she would say: Over my dead body.
Like one of my good friends used to say: If you can walk from your house naked and pee from your front steps then you can claim that you don't live on just acreage but you live in the country. And my wife add and have no tan lines.:laughing:
And another thing is if you live in the country you can always go to the city but if you live in the city you can't go to the country unless you own land.

I like this. Only when the leaves are down can you see an outbuilding at our next neighbor to the north, and from our pond (about .2 miles southwest of our house) you can see a neighbor house about .5 miles to the south. No other neighbors are visible at all in any direction. We can walk out of our house in any direction for quite a ways before anyone would see us with the leaves down. Even further (about 1/4 mile east) during other times.

We have 187 acres with the house positioned nicely for privacy. We didn't build it that way -- we are the 3rd owners. But I'm glad it was built where it is. Elbow room!

 

[Soldier415]

A lot of my friends could not understand for the life of them why I would move from built up CA to rural VT.

My reply is usually "Out here I can ride my lawnmower around naked while firing a rifle into the air and yelling MERICA! and there is no one to care"

 

[Industrial Toys]

Like was said, preference is preference. What some people brag about, others couldn't care less about. I know people that need theaters, restaurants and night life. Not talking raccoons! I'm hungry at the moment and going into town. Not a decent (and cheap) place to eat breakfast!

I must admit, I'm a bit jealous of seeing pickups in the city with their perfectly clean frames and under bodies. Unlike mine, living miles off the beaten path on a gravel road.

 

[PJSprog]

My Wife and I both grew up in the same small city (40K-ish), but also both had relatives on farms. The property we live on now was her grandparents small farm. My Mother's side of the family were all farmers, so I spent most weekends outside of the city. I always envied that life style, and spent most of my adult life wishing I lived in the country. I finally moved to a small town (800-ish) at age 39, and to her farm when we married 4 years ago. It took me 47 years, but I finally made it.

Most people, when they find out where I live, seem to impart that same kind of envy. I work in deepest, darkest, North St. Louis City, and even the people here usually respond with some manner of, "Oh, wow, that must be really nice living out there." We had a band BBQ last summer with my acoustic trio bandmates, and it was the first time they had been out to our place. One guitar player looked around after a couple of hours and said, "OK, now I get why you live way the f*** out here. This is awesome."

Beyond some good-natured ribbing from my best friend - who likes to make Green Acres references whenever something farm related comes up - I don't know that I've ever heard anyone actually bashing our choice of rural living.

 

[k0ua]

Another good reason not to live in the city:

The Professional Panhandling Plague | City Journal