What (if anything) is good about rural America?

In My Humble Opinion
221

I never said such a thing. I’m merely pointing out that it takes more to be considered rural than having a house outside of a city. I think it’s safe to say most rural people don’t consider themselves white collar workers. And I still don’t know what’s rural about plowing snow or taking your dog for a walk and running into someone you know. That’s pretty much normal for a lot of people that aren’t rural.

Your response to this is a perfect example of what I was getting at. If it doesn’t describe you, why do you jump in to tell us how much it doesn’t describe you?

222

I get the idea he thinks that the only rural residents who aren’t sunk in poverty are well-to-do professionals/ex-professionals and gentlemen farmers.

There is a middle ground.

223

A log home, especially one where there’s thick chink between the logs, is very high maintenance. I spend my summers working on it. I go through gallons of chink, caulk, stain, and clearcoat each year. And it’s not a big home… two bedrooms and two baths.

224

We are retired and have a hobby farm. But I know a whole lot of rural people – most of the people I know. Most people who farm have to have one member of the family who has a non-farm job, because that’s how the economy is these days. But that doesn’t make them non-rural.

Three rural people I know personally:

  1. Husband and wife. Own a couple square miles of prairie. Husband works as a machinist in town, wife manages between 500 and 1000 sheep with the help of dogs.

  2. Husband and wife. Own a couple hundred acres of mixed hilly pasture and forest. Husband and wife hay most of it, this is their main source of income. Husband also fixes up and sells trucks as a sideline.

  3. A clan who have for the past 150 years owned a large section of good farmland near me. Their income comes from maple sugar bush and a good sized dairy.

Then there are friends who live on small farms but their income derives from other employment. One is a teacher. Another is a saddle fitter (this is a real job) and drives all over the state to various stables. Another works for a large-animal vet (another job involving a lot of driving). People have chickens, they might butcher a calf or a pig, they put up a lot of summer produce.

All of these people are basically middle class. They all have wifi. They go out to eat sometimes although it’s a drive – in the country, you get used to driving at least 30 minutes to do almost anything. Our village has a bar which is open on Friday and Saturday, a library, a post office, a tiny grocery store. People wave when they pass each other in cars even if they don’t recognize you.

When my barn was struck by lightning last summer, five volunteer fire departments turned out to put out the fire (took all night). The next morning people showed up with horse tack, hay, water tanks, tools, first aid – including people I’d never met. We didn’t ask them to, they just did. They shoveled the remains of our wonderful barn into a 40 yard dumpster. They showed up with tractors. That is how the country is.

You remain utterly misinformed.

225

Of course there is, I just don’t consider having a house outside a city limit as living a rural life.

This I can understand as part of a rural life. Upkeep on your home and outbuildings needs to be kept up. If you fall behind you’ll never catch up.

None of this is different from what I said. These people, and you, live a rural life. You work the land or work on the periphery, like mechanics etc. If all it took to live rural was a house outside of town, I would be considered rural three months a year because I live in a lake “cabin” that’s four times bigger than my apartment. I don’t consider that rural because, other than taxes, I contribute nothing to the community.

226

Rural living, it’s cheap, it’s quiet, there is fresh air, there aren’t many people but there is nature, there isn’t a big line at the post office or voting booth. If you like living around a lot of people and activity, live in the city. If you like things quiet and simple and not crowded, live in the country.

227

Not necessarily. Our gravel driveway is 700 feet long, and is in badly need of repairs. Getting it graded, and stone put down, is going to be expensive. Our septic system is also on its last leg. $$. And we heat with propane, not natural gas.

But you certainly can live cheap in a rural area.

228

I exit here. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them change their mind based on new data.

229

It’s fine if you don’t want to have a discussion about it, I’m not that interested in it myself, but please don’t imply that you presented an ironclad argument that I just ignored.

We just replaced 4 sections of gravel parking with concrete. Probably about 20’x40’. Not only was the materials/labor expensive, but the closest we could find someone able to do it was 75 miles away. The gravel road that circles the lake we’ve only had to do once since it gets little traffic. Even split between five land owners that was expensive. I don’t envy you paying for 700’ of driveway.

I don’t even want to talk septic tanks. Never was so happy when we could finally hook into the sewer system.

Has propane jumped price like natural gas this winter?

Yep, it’s especially good for starter homes around here. You can get a pretty good sized place with a bit of land for a fraction of what you would pay for an apartment in the city. The down side is the houses are often older and have not been kept up well. Heating bills are monstrous here in the winter in a home that’s not properly sealed and insulated.

230

Another thing to consider is taxes. Most of my coworkers pay city taxes, in addition to (high) property taxes. I only pay property taxes ($3800/year).

Suffice to say, rural living can be cheap or expensive; there are many variables.

231

I like living rural. My house was purchased by my parents, now long gone, in 1961 for $2000. They paid $50 per month and no, I am not forgetting a couple of zeros. Two acres of land that is now assessed at $350,000.

I have one neighbor to the west and another to the east 100 yards away and due to zoning restrictions and the lay of the land no other houses can be built nearby, at least in the foreseeable future. We talk a couple time per year and if I want to step outside and target practice with my guns no one will say a word, the police will not be called, just the normal noises around here.

My daily commute to work is 11.5 miles, one stop sign and no traffic lights and rarely any traffic at all. Another 10 miles and there are all the usual amenities and stores like Costco, Walmart, fast food outlets.

Millions and millions of trees, my yard is often infested with Roosevelt elk, which do a number on my yard and garden but that is an acceptable cost.

Go ahead and live in the concrete and metal if that makes you happy. Then take a vacation to see land like this, but I live here all the time. NW Oregon. Nearest town is Astoria which is a little gem of a town in a beautiful location at the mouth of the Columbia River.

232

Around here, some of the rural folk have moved into town. One for example, farms several sections (one section = 1 square mile) of farmland and has a ranch that is about 16 sections. If I was him, I’d live out at the ranch – I love that place.

There are also those who live out on the farm but have a second house in town or in a big city a hundred miles away. They spend little time in the big city, but when they need to go, they will generally stay for a couple of days or more. It would be nice when having a doctor’s appointment in the morning (especially for a colonoscopy) to have a short drive to the doctor’s office instead of a two hour drive.

If I could afford it, I’d almost surely buy a second house in the city a hundred miles away. Even more money, I’d consider a third house in the nearby town.

233

I have a half mile caliche road. After a big snowfall, the county snowplows it for me.

Around here, if you have school age kids, the county will even caliche the road for you if it isn’t already caliched. I know of only one family who refused the caliche – whenever it was muddy enough, the father would have to drive a tractor out to the highway to meet the bus.

234

City property taxes seem to get larger as the city gets larger, probably because a lot of places use property tax to fund schools.

This is pretty much like my lake cabin. Five families on the lake. No public access. Unless we arrange a get together, I never see them other than to wave at out on the lake. Really not a whole lot of mixing with the small local population either. A “everyone keeps themselves to themselves” kind of deal.

This seems to be more common now. People move into town and lease out their land for people to grow crops. I know one guy that leases out his farmland, and has a rural mail route that he bid on and won. While he does the mail route, he also will pick up grain samples that he delivers for testing, non post office approved. Sometimes he hires someone to drive the routes for him too and just sits back and relaxes.

235

I’m kinda like this. I grew up in Ottawa, which I’ve always described as “either a small town that likes to pretend it’s got big city stuff, or a city that puts on a show about small-town values.” Whichever it was, I was bored off my ass growing up. I’ve lived in Montreal, L.A. and Toronto since then, and I’ve always just felt more comfortable knowing there’s something to do, that bands I like aren’t going to skip the city on tour, that the movies I want to see aren’t going to play for one day at one theatre, that nightlife isn’t limited to a few square blocks, that public transit (if i need it) doesn’t virtually shut down at 6PM and on weekends…

But, diff’rent strokes. I know people who left Ottawa then came back to it. It’s a good city for young families (relatively safe for kids) and old folks (BIG seniors population). It’s that teen-to-thirtysomething sweet spot for which it’s realy not geared. I also know a lot of folk who moved out of Toronto…though that often corresponds with either a sudden hard bank right in their politics, or the desire to stop hiding their hard right politics fromt heir urban friends. But that’s an issue for another thread.

236

Most of the ones around here still farm their own land.

One guy I went to high school with has one of the larger farming operations in the area and he hardly owns any land at all. He leases nearly all of his land.

His sister told me that he wants to be farming 100 sections (100 square miles) before he retires. That was about five years ago and he was farming, I think, 68 sections then.

237

“Outside a city limit” is more or less the definition of “rural”.

The NJ town where we have our second home is definitely rural, even though it is only about 90 minutes from Manhattan. It’s not Montana or Alaska where you can live a five hour drive from the nearest population center, but it’s definitely “country”. Lots of farms, small local shops, John Deere tractor store, etc. Maybe it’s “semi-rural” or “fancy rural” or an “exurb” by your standards, but it’s definitely not “city” like New York nor is it a proper “suburb” like Montclair or Morristown or some of the other towns in New Jersey.

Which, aside from her family living there, is the reason we picked it. Well technically she picked it and I said “that’s stupid”, but whatever. She didn’t want to live in a dense NJ suburb with overpriced McMansions on top of each other with postage stamp yards and constant traffic.

There are a lot of farms and a lot of people in the area are either farmers or work as local tradesman. But I don’t think you can necessarily characterize everyone in the area as “rural”.

238

Every once in a while, I’ll watch two or three crazy driver videos on youtube. When I do, it makes me really happy that I don’t live in the city.

Life is a bit more laid back here. Traffic is much lighter and road rage is nearly non-existent.

When I do go to the city, that laid back attitude stays with me. About the biggest difference in my driving then is that I’m more likely to drive the speed limit once I get on the interstate for the final 20 to 30 miles into the city. The rest of the time, I usually drive between about 50 and 60 in a 70, but sometimes as low as 40.

We do have accidents around here, but a great many of the accidents in the crazy driver videos are in situations that hardly exist in my county.

Four lane roads? There is one in my county and I don’t drive down it very often.

Problems passing? There is plenty of room to go around just about anywhere. Also, not that much traffic. I’ve driven 100 miles in the afternoon at 50 to 55 mph and only had one car come up behind me and in that one case, they didn’t pass because they had to turn off about half a mile later and so it wasn’t worth passing.

Running red lights? There are only two intersections controlled by traffic signals in the county. The one in my town has a blinking red on two sides and blinking yellow on two sides. The one in the next town over actually has a normal traffic signal. There have been accidents when someone ran a red light, but they are relatively rare.

Speeding? Yeah, people do speed. There aren’t many obstacles, though. The roads are generally straight for miles at a time and there aren’t many cars on them. If someone is speeding and pulls out to pass a car, there probably isn’t another car coming toward them.

On the other hand, we do have cattle or horses in the road on occasion. It’s best to slow down as soon as you see them in case they step in your way. And then either stop and put them in their pasture if you know where they go or call the sheriff’s office and let a deputy come out and deal with them.

239

Some people distinguish between rural and remote. Rural might imply being close to a small town and within reasonable driving distance of a bigger city.

240

I live near a township of 65k. Not inside any city limit, but certainly not what I would call rural.

Anyway, what I see people talking past eachother in this thread is largely predicated on classism. Point out that poverty is an issue in rural areas, and those living in those rural areas indignantly point out that they aren’t poor, and neither are any of their friends or peers.

Nice thing about having a whole lot of space means that you don’t have to see the things that you don’t want to see.

In an urban area, no matter how wealthy you are, you will see the people who live in poverty, at least occasionally.