Country Life ...More Than It Seems

       The other day a dreamer in South Florida spotted my home for sale ad on the Internet. He asked if I would do a rent to own deal.

       I explained at this time I need more walking away money and cannot do a deal like that.

      I suggested he look  into the USDA Rural Development program.  They offer loans on low price properties in rural areas like this.  If you found a home for $20,000 and could buy it through them a mortgage would be around $140 a month.  A librarian came into town and her husband was in school still so they bought their house that way.

       However, I also urged him not to move here if is wife is a major source for income  as this is part of the Empty Quarter, if you are familiar with the Nine Nations of North America.  Population is sparse and widely scattered. I can my correspondent wanting to get away from all the people, which is partly why I came down here. However jobs are very sparse and in this small declining towns the locals are fighting over diminishing resources and outsiders are not always welcome unless they have outside income like retirement or have an over the road trucking job.

       Good jobs are reserved for locals. Outsiders  might have drive 30 miles to get that job, more gas and wear and tear on the car. Even locals have to look far and wide for jobs.

      I like rural life.  I do like the slower pace ....usually...and lower traffic and two lane roads that  often seem empty around here.  But while it looks nice from the outside, once you get inside you can see it is pretty competitive and sometimes desperate.  I am death on drugs...but illegal drug usage is higher in rural areas.  Despite Colorado having spectacular scenery - not down here on the plains - and wonderful cultural activities like opera, dance, drama (Denver's performing arts draws more patrons every year than the professional sports teams) the citizens have to turn to marijuana to dull their minds from the trauma of their  perceived boredom in our post modern world.

       I downshifted like this Florida man wants to do, moving my family to another small Colorado town years ago when I bought a rural weekly newspaper.  Looking back, it was a mistake. I went back to the big city after my wife became paralyzed from m.s. and there I found the resources to keep everything together until the girls got through high school and into college.

      With the nation still in depression economically, it is not so easy to just pick up and move around as it was in my youth, and I moved my family a lot.

      There are some books out there like Small Town Bound and books on how to best prepare yourself for coping with the challenges of life in small towns. Another time, when I moved to Seward, Neb. back in the early '80s the only job I could hustle up was part time news (20 hours) reporter for a weekly at $4.25 an hour.  The only other job I was offered was selling life insurance for $600 a month.  We befriended some people who had left Chicago and were trying to work their way back slowly across the country.  She found a job with a local clothing store - this was before the WalMart invasion - and though she did bookkeeping they classified her as sales so they only had to pay her three bucks an hour.

       I now live on Social Security and can afford to live in the country if I choose because the cost of living is so low.  (Because I went back to the big city after my wife became ill and had a good high wage job for 14 years that got my SS payments up from what they would have been when I was self employed in the rural country.)  

      It is good to feel called to live a rural life...but just be more aware of what its all about.  Not trying to discourage you, but enlighten you a little.  And remember, a positive attitude and strong will and some luck can overcome the challenges I have outlined.

     If I had read Gene Logsdon's books decades ago I might have done it right.  He has a vision of an America in which everyone lives on a small land holding, growing their own food.  And operating a home based cottage business for supplemental cash income. His dream of a nation of cottage farmers is a healthy one. But is more suited to the Midwest and East Coast and South rather than the arid west, except where there are pockets of irrigation. .

     But in a way that is how France envisioned it being.  More agricultural and non-tech, and that fell behind in the mechanized, highly organized modern Western national business model.

     People are now trapped in a subtly brutal post modern world.  It is easy to see how one can drive by bucolic fields of grains and cows and want to be a part of that.  But many would not last long.  Logsdon enjoys the simple pleasures of country life, watching the birds and bees and cows and sheep at play.
   
     Amish farmer David Kline captures this simply life in his journal Great Possessions.

     But whether you are in the city or the country, the truth is someone has to work...hard.