Remembering Why I Moved to the Country

The llama in the playhouse.

My extended stay in the Big City this year has served as a good reminder to me of why I moved out to the country.  The endless miles of cement and asphalt, cookie cutter houses with postage stamp yards, piles of rules regulating everything from garage sales to whether you can walk down the street with your child on a school day.  The gray skies that sometimes open up to blue by mid-day.  The 24 hour traffic.  The constant noise.  The overwhelming amount of activity.  The brown haze that obscures the mountains from view.  The over-chlorinated pools.  The speed at which life flies by.

Yet, there have been advantages.  Walking to daily Mass.  Spending time with my dad, my older children, my grandson, and my cousins.  Being present for the many special events that took place with my family this summer.  Seeing some old friends and making some new.  Then, there are those things that can only happen in Southern California:  black beans, lettuce and ranch dressing as pizza toppings.  Spending the morning in the mountains and the afternoon at the beach.  Hummer stretch limos.

Caught in the act.

Coming home was not without its problems.  I lost my entire sheep herd while I was gone.  One mama and baby in lambing, the other mama and baby to coyotes.  My rascally goats spent the summer systematically working their fence until they could open up a section.  So we have been systematically closing up each new hole and reinforcing the fence.  Fencing on the homestead is a never ending project.  My dog ran off to parts unknown, though she was last spotted playing with some campers visiting from another area.  I hope they're giving her a good home.

The new dogs are awesome.  The llamas were utterly displeased with sharing the back yard with them, however, so a new pen has been constructed for them.  It does have a nice shed, which, when cleaned out, will make as nice a shelter as the playhouse they were using in the back yard.

Home sweet home.

I've lost the ten pounds I gained just getting back to my normal routine and diet.  We do have a few new neighbors, creating some extra noise in my peaceful haven, but I am sure glad to be home.  Ten acres on a dirt road with clear skies trumps asphalt and constant highway noise any old day.

Half Broke Horses

Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls, (c)2009, SimonandSchuster

This was a book club read, primarily because much of it takes place in our own area of Ash Fork, Seligman and Red Lake, AZ.  We also found out that the husband of one of our members grew up with the author's grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who is the subject of the book - boy, that was an interesting discussion!  After reading Shy Boy, the descriptions of breaking the ranch horses was rather disturbing.  But there is one section where the truck Lily and her daughter are driving breaks down in the middle of the range and the best option is to coax a wild horse into helping them.,  It was nearly Shy Boy all over again.  But only for that brief moment.  The most interesting part of this book was the description of daily ranch life and travel during the Great Depression and the Great War (WWII).

To read about how children were reaised and treated at that time made me glad for improvements in attitudes toward childrearing.  At 15 years of age, after spending 10 years working her father's ranch and breaking horses, Lily Casey Smith rode solo, on horseback, from New Mexico to Northern Arizona to work as a teacher in the district of Red Lake.  Her courage and resolve were inspiring.  There are also stories of Lily and her siblings narrowly surviving flash floods, tornadoes, and living in a sod house. 

I could relate to her feelings about the big cities of Chicago and Phoenix.  Culture and modern comforts are nice, but too many people.  My favorite lines are when Lily tells her husband "In the city people worry about themselves.  In the country we worry about the weather and the livestock." 

No compensation was received for this review.  I checked this book out from my local library;)

It's Christmas Time in the City

I just got back to the homestead from visiting my family in the Big City.  It was a particularly enjoyable visit, and for once I wasn't quite ready to come home.  This trip, I was able to appreciate the little pockets of respite in an otherwise dingy, expensive, lonely city life. 

I sat outside my son's apartment, watching him play basketball with his little brother, and admired the palm trees, stretching up above the rooftop of the complex, swaying and rustling in the chilly breeze, waves of green against the blue of the sky.  I took delight in watching the Christmas decorations going up in mom and dad's neighborhood; twinkling lights, inflated, lit-up snowmen, front yard Nativity scenes.  I soaked up some last autumn rays of sunlight on a strategically placed patio nook with southern exposure at my parents' house.  Over the years the old neighborhood has gone from plain and drab to green and well tended, with colorful flower beds, not restricted to the edges of the houses, but creatively scattered throughout front yards.

As much as I basked in the comfort and love of my family, there were those moments when I knew I must eventually return home to my own life, where the background noises come from the chicken coop and the paddocks and a wild indian of a boy, not from constant traffic and electronic buzz.  The early morning aroma is from the barnyard and the juniper trees, and not that peculiar big city odor of mingling garbage and sewage.  And the blankets of stars in the darkness before dawn, outnumber the streetlights ten billion to one.