Country living ain’t easy, but it sure is fun

Long story short, my husband and I bought 82 acres near my hometown a little more than two years ago. We have 30 acres of trees with a creek running through it, and 52 tillable acres that we lease to an old farmer named “Cleets” (aka Cletus). We moved a farmhouse 11 miles and paid through the nose to have electric lines brought in (if you ever want to know how much it is for a mile’s worth of power lines, I’m your woman). We plopped the house down in the middle of the field and called it home.

We’ve endured eyelid-peeling winds from every direction, with no mature trees nearby to buffer the constant beating. It wasn’t uncommon to have snow blow in through our patio door, and my Swiffer cowers in the corner underneath the sink, knowing his soft, fluffy appendages are no match for the fine grit that settles on every surface in the house when the field to the south is being tilled.

It’s been rough. Very rough. But when I sit down to dinner, and see the house my mother was born in a mile to the south, or hear an owl softly hooting in the pre-dawn hours as I’m loading up to leave for work, or smell the earthy aroma of our land before a rainstorm, it’s all worth it.