My First Top Ten: Living in the Country

Okay, this is my very first top ten list! I'm super excited to be posting it. It took me all week long to think of a topic. I have a million things I want to do a top ten about, but this is my FIRST. So I am going to start with where I live, because it is such a big part of who I am today and what I do with my life. So here we go: top ten things I love about living in the country. Keep in mind that I have about a million reasons why I love it out here. These are just the top ten. :)

1. Space. I live on a 134 acre property. My driveway is a quarter of a mile long, with my closest neighbors being nearly a mile away. My house sits on a bit of a hill, overlooking a wide pasture and a lake. We are surrounded on three sides by a creek (although dry most of the year). We also have trees surrounding the lake and creek, and all kinds of wildlife can be found and you hardly need to look for it.

2. Peace. Because there is so much space, and the road that my driveway meets is a gravel road, I don't have to put up with the sounds of the city. There are no cars driving down the street at all hours, there are no airplanes flying low overhead, and there are no noisy neighbors shouting or playing loud music. As a matter of fact, I could blare my stereo at full blast and I'm not sure the neighbors would hear a thing.

3. The Stars. Not until I had moved out here did I realize just how many stars there really are up there. I live far enough from the lights of the city that nothing obstructs my view of the sky except on a cloudy night. It's like someone threw a handful of glitter into the air and it stuck. I've even seen shooting stars! They are much more common than I had imagined. A few months back, there was an eclipse, and I got a front row seat from my front porch. It even included a bit of a meteor shower!

4. The Wildlife. We have Whitetailed Deer, feral hogs, coyotes, skunks, armadillos, opossums, Bobcats, Mountain Lions, beavers, and a variety of wild birds, snakes, spiders, and bugs. The lake is also stocked full of many types of fish, including bass, perch, blue channel catfish, and crappie. That is just everything that we have in the WILD. I myself have personally seen everything except the two wild cats. It's an amazing and majestic thing to see. Well, the hogs arent so majestic...

5. The Pets. I can have just about any pet I could ever possibly imagine. My husband and I have the typical pets: a dog, a cat, fish, some finches. But we also have a horse, a llama, and a billy goat. My husband got me into birds, so we have a variety of pheasants, chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, peacocks, quail, and guineas. I used to have Pot-Bellied Pigs, but they got into our bird pens and drove me crazy. I'm currently looking for a much bigger pig, mostly just to raise for food. Not to mention we lease the property to a guy who raises cows, so there are lots of cows roaming the property as well.

6. My Garden. I have a 40 foot by 80 foot section fenced off behind the backyard for raising my veggies. I've been documenting my garden's progress each week, and posting pictures in a Garden Update here on my blog every Saturday night. I'm proud to say that I'm ACTUALLY growing things! I didnt think I could. I already have squash ready to be picked!

7. The Sales. These past three years, I have been introduced to the breeder/seller's dream: animal auctions. There are auction houses for selling livestock, such as cows, goats, llamas, pigs, and even horses. There are auctions for selling birds, too! I was at one just this past Sunday. They sold all sorts of birds, from tiny chicks and quail to full grown turkeys and peacocks, and everything in between! They even sold rabbits! It's all on an auction system, so you bid for what you want. Prices can change from week to week or month to month, so you have to look out for what's selling high and what's being bought cheap. You can sell your own animals too, you arent limited to only buying. It's a very exciting atmosphere (to me at least, lol) and a great way to spend a Sunday morning.

8. The Lake. The lake takes up about three to four acres, and as I said it is stocked full of fish. We have a small boat and a canoe for spending time out on the water, and if I want to, I can just jump right in and swim. It's a great place to get the family together for a barbecue or a picnic and go fishing and swimming. I love watching my son throw sticks in the water, watching my dog swim across the lake, and watching my husband pull in a large fish. I even love watching the turtles slide back into the water after a few hours of sunbathing. It's a beautiful view, looking out over the water, especially at sunrise or sunset.

9. The Towns. The town our mailing address puts us in is very small. As a matter of fact, it doesn't even have a stoplight, only a flashing yellow light and a few stop signs here and there. The closest towns in the area are lucky to have a stoplight. But it's in those small towns that the best part lies.It's the small town diners and the little rows of country shops. The diners have friendly staff, and the food is all home-cooked. The little shops have a lot of handmade crafts that decorate the country home beautifully. Everyone knows each other, and if they dont know you yet, they make it a point to know your name and where you come from, and they make sure that if you need anything at all, they are there to help you. Everyone is SO friendly, and the food is amazing. It's places like these that bring you back day after day and make you appreciate being away from big time fast food restaurants (For the most part anyways. I still love having a Big Mac once in a while!).

10. The Freedom. There is something beautiful about watching a two year old run as far as he wants, and still not be out of sight. Out here in the country, I know that my children can grow up with almost no physical limitations. They can walk, they can run, they can swim... they can climb trees and swing from ropes, they can help my husband build his barns and bird pens (when they're old enough, of course). I don't have to tell them to "stay in the yard!" or "get out of the street!" because our yard is huge and the closest street is a quarter of a mile away, and even then it's a gravel road, so it's still safer than a paved street. And this freedom doesn't just apply to my kids; I have the freedom to wear pajamas to the lake. I can sunbathe topless, if I really felt like it! I can sing at the top of my lungs when my favorite song comes on the radio. I can dance my heart out and not worry about embarrassing myself. It's fantastic.