It's been a long time since I've written about living in the country. The past few days I have seen life in the country through new eyes and wanted to share with you why I have re-fallen in love with the county life.
At the top of my list is definitely the scenery! Not all country scenery is the same of course...some is just flat crop fields, but others, like mine, is rolling hills with lots of timber. It's quite breath-taking! I never get tired of the view from my window or the scenery as I make my way towards my house from the highway. Almost daily the landscape reminds me how blessed I am to live in the middle of such beauty! In addition, we see the stars in the sky almost nightly, which is something I never noticed when I lived in the city due to city pollution, street lights, buildings, etc. Speaking of pollution, the air we breathe out here seems so "fresh" without lots of cars driving and buildings releasing who-knows-what. If you want a glimpse of this natural beauty, take I-35 to exit 52 and head west from St. Charles to Winterset...b-e-a-u-tiful!!! You can also catch some of the Madison County bridges on this drive!
Next on my list is the peacefulness that comes with living in the country. Besides the sounds of nature, we don't hear much out here. About once every 90 minutes a car or tractor will drive by, but the rest of the sounds are birds, rustling leaves, cicadas right now and that's about it. We have a creek and marsh very close too, so we also hear geese and frogs...sounds I happen to love falling asleep and waking up to with my windows open. We also have cows close to us at certain times of the year and will occasionally hear them "moo". And a couple times we have heard a coyote attacking another animal...but lets keep this post happy :)
Speaking of wild animals....we have deer in our yard daily. My husband planted several food plots to feed and attract the deer and turkey and we also have a salt block outside our window, which the deer LOVE! We have turkeys in our yard at least once a week. We have also seen 6 bobcats, one just this past Friday! Last year we had a mama and her two babies in our yard...they were so fun to watch playing!! It's funny when I tell people about the bobcats and they get scared....none of these animals come out when we are outside. We happen to have very large windows in almost every room of the house and we are constantly looking out them, so we see all of the wildlife that way.
Another thing I love about the country is the freedom we have to do anything we want to. When James and I moved into our first house in the city we had the cops at our door on day 2 because we had a boat parked in the yard and the neighbors complained. We also had a neighbor yell at us for having a truck parked in our yard. We knew we needed to get out of the city, where there are no rules...we couldn't have a bonfire in town??? Last week I was reading some covenants for a subdivision....they made me cringe...I cannot imagine living with so many rules. If a person doesn't care about anything outside of their house, I guess it's not a big deal. But, rules regarding my own property...I just don't know if I could get on board with that. My favorite was "no clothes lines"...hahahahah! I get that they were trying to keep the place from looking "trashy", but still...if I want to save some energy, I want to be able to use a clothes line (I don't currently, but still....). We can do whatever we want to out here...zero rules! Bonfire, shoot guns (okay, I don't know if that's actually legal, but everyone does it, so no one is going to call the police), light fireworks, park in your yard, camp in your yard, blast music, raise crazy animals, you name it...we can do it!
Along the freedom and peaceful lines, I also love that we don't have neighbors watching us. I am a social person and do enjoy the occasional visits from neighbors, but most of the time I am thankful that I don't have neighbors watching everything I do. I can run through the sprinkler with Rylee without being embarrassed, wash my van without worrying if I'm getting water in the neighbors' yard, exercise outside with feeling watched, etc. We do get together with our neighbors on occasion to catch up and we all watch over each others' places, but beyond that it is pretty private.
As I did not grow up in the country, I am a little worried that my kids are going to miss out on a lot of "typical" childhood things (riding bikes to friends' houses, playing with the neighbor kids, etc)...but I have been assured by several who grew up country, that my kids will have different types of experiences than city kids, and possibly their country experiences will be beneficial long term (ie, farm kids can probably outwork city kids). I guess we'll see...and hopefully my "city-ness" won't hinder their experiences living in the country :) I'm just now starting to be okay with them getting filfthy every time we go outside!
There are plenty more smaller reasons I love living in the country, but these I listed are definitely the biggest and most important. Of course, it has it's downsides too, but ultimately, I feel a sense of peace and calmness being surrounded by nothing but nature. In this sometimes crazy world, this is a feeling I am so blessed to encounter regularly.
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