July 22, 2026–
If only I could get out of this rat race and buy a small acreage
If only I raised a garden so I could eat fresh chemical-free vegetables
If only we kept chickens so I could have fresh eggs year round
If only we had a large lawn
If only I had a horse over the back fence
My dad sold real estate. He loved to hear “if only.”
He would grin knowingly when he got a call from someone wanting to buy a small acreage 10 miles from the city. “Everyone,” he told us, “wants to own a small acreage 10 miles from town.”
And he loved selling them. Because he knew that within three years, the place would be on the market again and he would collect another commission.
Here’s what he discovered. Many of those yearning to get back to the country were city folks in a professional career. In our case, we lived near a university town.
Those families had read Walden and watched Little House on the Prairie. It convinced them that returning to their roots would be an idyllic retreat from the woes of modern civilization. Languid days would be spent sitting on the back porch, puffing on a pipe, filling journals with profound thoughts while gardening, feeding chickens, and watching whitetails graze in the meadow.
Right about now, readers who live in the country are getting ahead of me.
Moving to the country does not remove you from the problems of the world; it creates a whole new set of problems.
What country land owners quickly learn is that they are suddenly responsible for maintaining a well and septic system.
Fences must be built or repaired, constantly. That tidy lawn turns into an acre of brush that requires shredding. Trash is not picked up at the curb and must be hauled to the dump.
That garden of Eden quickly becomes the garden of weedin’. Your little plot requires constant attention, yields bushels of woody zucchini for one week in June, then provides food for the bugs and birds until it burns up in August and turns into a brushy eyesore, only to repeat the cycle when the new seed catalogs come out.
It takes most of a year before those cute chicks you bought at the friendly feed store–along with new metal waterers, fancy feeders, brooder lamps, 100 pounds of chick starter, and probably the coop itself–yield a single egg, and that is if they and their eggs haven’t been eaten by raccoons, possums, rat snakes, or the neighbor’s dog.
It seems not so long ago in American history that it was the farmers giving up on their homesteads and moving to town to take up factory and city jobs, opting for the security of income and benefits over the daily struggle to survive as an independent nation-state.
I have lived under both conditions–city lights and country nights. Neither is better by default than the other.
Living in town puts you close to services and entertainment, keeps you engaged with the social scene, and provides a sense of civic security.
Living in the country keeps you in touch with the earth, whether you want to be touching it or not, and mostly under your fingernails.
Your choice depends on what you value, but probably mostly by how you were raised. I was born on a farm and when we moved to the city, I had to adjust to street lights shining in the bedroom, neighbor kids walking into your house uninvited, and not being able to pee in the front yard.
When we returned to the farm, there were no more bike trips to the bakery, pickup baseball games down by the tracks, or scavenging firecrackers from the teenage neighbor’s yard.
Which is better? It just depends if you prefer your greener grass to come from a bag or a free-range chicken.