Country Living

Homesteading & Country Living Forum

Help Support Homesteading & Country Living Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Around here 90,000 IS a major city. The COUNTY we are retiring to has a population of 3,000.
coming out of a community of over a million, 90000 is a small city. Now, as I said our community is 2,000 but we are surrounded by millions of acres of near pristine wilderness. The nearest big city is 5 hour drive in one direction, 8 hours in the other. We are in a river valley ( will actually the confluence of two rivers) and surrounded by mountains. Other than some very back country (mostly logging) roads there is one road in and out.

Much shorter winter than surrounding area. Most of the comm7nity ar3 self reliant/outdoor types who have proven to pull together in a crisis (like forest fires, bridges washing out etc.).

It’s a decent place
 
Those critters look like N.Fl. Is that a banana spider? I've had hundreds of those across my face over the years here.:eek: Walking on the trail they always seem to be face high. :dunno: Nothing like trying to peel off a spider web .
Yes N>F>.....That is Known as an ORB spider. A lot of people here call them Banana Spiders but it is my understanding we don't have any Banana Spiders in North America. From what I read they only come here occasionally in boxes from South America but don't survive...
 
Hi guys, I grew up in the mountains but in a small house on a small lot. From there it was a tract home in the city then to 5 acres just outside the city and now I'm on 15 acres in a town of 370 people and wish I was on more land with less neighbors. At times I think of how easy it was in my tract home but I wouldn't trade what I have for anything.
 
barn50.jpg
Country living is great and all but it is work too. Like in the spring I have got to do some maintenance on some of my out buildings!
 
I have mostly lived on working Ranches most of my life, although we did live in a hamlet of about 50 people for a few years, it was ok but I don't think I want to do it again.
 
We have a small property, an acre only but find that is big enough for us. Not going to be raising livestock. We are more into the technology. Plenty of room for what we need. Our taxes are very low for NY and nobody bothers us or what we do.
 
I used to do the long stressful hours of city living. . . working 6 days a week anywhere between 45-75 hours. We still have to work hard on our little place in heaven but this kind of life is more rewarding to me at least. There's just something about raising and growing your own food that brings satisfaction. Its disappointing when crops fail here for whatever reason. I look at all that hard work and hours put into it with no or little reward, but then I know there is always next time. Always a learning experience and I'm too stubborn to ever give up because of one set back. One step back but two steps forward.
That 'one step back',gives you a running start to go farther forward!
 
That's quite a difference. Oz has more dangerous critters, I hear.
 
Last edited:
I was born and raised in the country and love it,well it's actually a little country town but the highest population I recall here was 66,now it's only 19 I believe but there aren't any businesses or anything like that. It's only 1/3 of a mile long and there's crop fields behind both sides :thumbs up:. Our place is 3 acres and there's nothing but fields behind our place all the way to the next road. That's about all you'll find around this part of Indiana is croplands and small woods. We're about 4 miles from town as the crow flies and the population of town is only a little over 6,000. The nearest big city is Muncie and it's about 25 miles away, it's city population is 70,000 but the Muncie metropolitan statistical area population is 117,600. I lived in a few towns about the size or a little smaller than Portland for about 22 years after I got married and moved out and even though I got accustomed to it I never did like it. Too busy,noisy,more unsafe and crowded for me,I'll take country life over that any day. It's nice to be home again on our 3 little acres. :heart:
 
We live in a small rural town...we lost a lot of our town years ago to a fire, and the whole country helped those who lost homes, so many came and helped rebuild as well as the old timers who are just plain tough...the town is strong again...we live in the city but on a country road..LOL....we are too old to do much any more, but we managed to get rain water from our tank plumbed into the house this week...hubby has to have his rain water coffee...we gave up the goats, still have a few chickens, the old steer is still alive, Hombre the LOnghorn, have a couple sheep, and a rescue donkey...lost my llama last year, miss him....we do a lot of container growing in summer. The frost and cold just took out my collards and kale...we still have to be on city water but use a lot of rain water for our use....have about four thousand gallons stored...
 
First and foremost, Warm Welcome from the Arizona Valley folks. happy to have you join our super family on the forum. Looking forward to your posts. You may want to go to the Introduction thread so more can give you a proper welcome.
 
Yes N>F>.....That is Known as an ORB spider. A lot of people here call them Banana Spiders but it is my understanding we don't have any Banana Spiders in North America. From what I read they only come here occasionally in boxes from South America but don't survive...

Whatever it is I have been very up close and personal with them. I can't seem to walk around our ttrail without one on me. Always face high too. And the webs are hard to unwrap. I'm not spider phobic like hubby is but I don't like them on me.
Neighbor been here in NF all her 90 yr.s of life said it is banana but I think your right. She said they will bite and make you sick.
 
I live between two little towns, one is about 575 people, the other is about 1,475 people. That's east and west. The two closest towns north and south, both about 25 miles away from me, the population is 11,500 and 1,950. The largest is also on a major interstate and the typical place for shopping. If we want to drive an hour and a half or so, there are some bigger towns, well, one, Knoxville, would be more of a big city. Seldom go there.
 
Things I miss since moving to the country: Pizza delivery, cable internet, good customer service
things I don't miss: Traffic jams, no privacy, suburbia,
with you on pizza delivery ... well no quite true the local pizza place does deliver but it is both terrible and overpriced. The internet is almost dialup. Customer service for the most part is excellent, although it does sag come hunting season and peak fishing times. I miss going to a store and having things in stock. Lots of things we have to order and wait for next weeks truck or drive three hours round trip to pick it up ourself.

All in all though it’s better in the country
 
The main thing I miss here is the internet. I'm doing quite alright without any of the other conveniences. I love small towns and living in the country!
 
Things I miss since moving to the country: Pizza delivery, cable internet, good customer service
things I don't miss: Traffic jams, no privacy, suburbia,

I agree with you.
Since we moved the main thing I miss is the different types of restaurants.
There are 3 choices here,
Fast food, Mexican food, or Chinese food and none of them are great.
There is no delivery service available for anything here.
Of course there is always eating at home and we do that mostly but every now and then I would like something different.
We have DSL for internet and it runs at a blazing 3 to 4 meg download speed.
My kids live on the wet side of Washington and their internet speeds are usually around 50 meg down.
I do have to go to the Seattle area on occasion and I hate everything about that place.
 
The main thing I miss here is the internet. I'm doing quite alright without any of the other conveniences. I love small towns and living in the country!

I guess we lucked out big time with internet. We're pretty much out in the middle of nowhere and yet this county (Fentress) decided some time back to invest in fiber optic. And it works. It's not cheap but we are on nearly the slowest speed they have available and it's fast enough that we can stream movies or TV shows over an Amazon FireStick without any issue whatsoever.

Over-the-air TV, we can forget about that. ZERO stations available here.
 
When we moved the buying this house depended on internet availability. We are the last house on the phone line and have DSL which works very well. I love living way out here. Had a gray fox and the usual bull elk come for a drink last night.
I like being able to target shoot by just stepping out the door like when I was kid.
Zero Over-the-air TV here too but my wife has her satellite so she is happy.
It takes the sun awhile every morning to get over the top of the mountain to the east of us but that is a small price to pay for living in this very nice spot.
 
It takes the sun awhile every morning to get over the top of the mountain to the east of us but that is a small price to pay for living in this very nice spot.
that took some getting used to. We moved from flat prairie to a narrow river valley with mountains immediately to the north and south of us. We lose an hour of daylight compared to where we were up further north
 
Last edited:
Things I miss since moving to the country: Pizza delivery, cable internet, good customer service
things I don't miss: Traffic jams, no privacy, suburbia,
I live 6 miles from Pizza Hut and 7 miles from Dominos. Neither deliver outside city limits so we make our own.
 
The nearest hospital has no Dr. They will call one in if needed. I had to see a dr during hunting season so after going to the hospital that didn't have one (They said I had some kind of a blockage they thought maybe.) I went to the clinic that is supposed to have a Dr. He was gone deer hunting. SOL. Drove another hour and a half to a real hospital and was immediately admitted and kept for a week. (Acute pancreatitis caused by failing gall bladder.) After a week and surgery my surgeon said I could have died. Hospital with no Dr. has been trying to charge me $4000.00 for trying to kill me for a couple of hours.. I'm fighting with them. Gotta love living out in nowhere land.
 
I will be with my company 35 years on FEB.14, 2018.
I get a little gift, I get to pick one out of a group.
I pick a hunters camera, that you hang in a tree.
Now that I cut all my timber, I can see most of 15 acres before the land drops off out of view.
Not sure how much the lens will pick up.
But I am not telling anyone about the camera, just want to see what is out there when I am not out there.
 
Back
Top