Learn me rural/semi-rural living

So, in our continuing saga of trying to figure out whether/where to move, one of the strong things that my wife and I are talking about is possibly going from a suburban existence to a rural or semi-rural existence. Thinking about 1-4 acres of woodland bliss.

What has been the hive mind's experience?
How is it (perhaps unexpectedly) different than suburban life?
Or, alternatively, why should I stay in my comfort zone?

Do you hate people? Are you ok with a 15-30 minute drive to the nearest grocery store? Is fast internet not your highest priority? Would you be ok if you were the last one to get power back after a storm? If you answered yes to most of these questions, go for it.

I love it. But i grew up as a farm kid.

Difference is theres no neighbors. So there's nobody to ask for a hand Or kids to play with. Or barking dogs. Or house party at 2am.

You have to plan accordingly before leaving town. 7 miles each way to the store racks up.

Power supply can be splotchy during inclement weather.

I wouldn't trade it for the world.

We bought close to 4 acres about 2.5 years ago, and I love it. It's a ton of work if you want it to look any good - ours were very neglected acres so I had to get it bush hogged to begin with. It's ~2.5 acres of grass and the rest is wooded. For mowing I got a commercial 6' deck John Deere mower and it's still close to 2 hours a week of mowing. The woods are all overrun with bush honeysuckle and I've been trying to clean that out and plant more native species, but it's years worth of work ahead of me to really clean up the woods.

My older daughter loves being outside and we spend hours and hours every week playing in the yard and throwing rocks in the creek and swinging from the tree swing. I love not having to worry about people being right next to me every time I'm doing something outside.

The message being: everything takes more time, but in the end you're looking at this giant plot of land that's yours to do with. The freedom / privacy comes with a cost, and you have to be realistic as to whether that cost is more than offset by the benefits.

Fortunately my property is super close to the city so there weren't the usual rural vs urban tradeoffs. I'm only a couple miles from the closest grocery store and work is only 15 minutes away. That is possible to find!

There is no finer feeling than to look out over your own little piece of this planet and knowing that it belongs to you. It's pretty hard to be so far out in the sticks these days that shopping for nearly anything is more than 30 minutes away. Perhaps a little planning is required, and a touch of self-sufficiency, but the rewards far outweigh the negatives, IMO.

I grew up in rural Eastern Shore Maryland. Not like Big Sky Country rural, but we were 10-15 minutes' drive from our mailing address, which was a town of maybe 40 people. Most of our neighbors were cows or cornfields.

After college, we moved back there when we first got married. Jobs were 45-60 minutes away, but we could semi-conveniently car pool together, which was nice. We are not huge socialites, so being "away from everything" was not a real problem. Many of our friends couldn't believe we weren't bored to death out there... but:

We also used to run a "sleepaway camp" for all our friends who had graduated with us and immediately moved to Manhattan or DC. A couple weekends each summer, we would have a group of these young urbanite professional friends out to the place to decompress. Guess city life isn't everything, huh?

What ended it for us was having kids. Being 25-30 minutes from the closest real grocery store or pediatrician was a PITA. Having day care convenient to work meant that it was completely inconvenient from home. And when an infant really doesn't feel like riding in a car seat, 45 minutes is a long time. So we moved to the burbs and have been happy here, too, and our kids got better educations in the bargain. If you don't have kids or your kids are grown, this stuff isn't an issue.

But you really have to understand a little of what life will be like. Not to be stereotypical, but rural folk are usually a type. You can either get along with that type (whether or not you agree with them), or not so much. If you need a lot of up-to-the-minute entertainment and social interaction, the sticks is probably not the place for you - you'll spend all your time driving back to the crowds. But if you're comfortable occupying yourselves, it can be blissful.

For what it's worth, DW is starting to talk about looking for a piece of property back down there (in fact next door to where we lived) to build a retirement home on.

We live on 2.5 acres about 6 miles from a small town and 10 miles from a city of 120,000 (Ann Arbor). I love the peace and quiet, the low amount of neighbor crap, room to park a couple trailers, no HOA, space for a shop, etc.

The biggest impact is that you have to get in the car and drive several minutes to get or do anything. That's becoming more of a pain as the kids get older (11, 12) and have more activities to get driven to. Obvious strategies like stringing together errands help a lot.

Speaking of kids, they don't have any friends close by such that they can get there on their own. And the bus ride to school was 45 minutes each way which is a lot of time to spend on a bus each day. But they can ride ATVs, shoot pellet guns, do archery, and play in the creek.

Taking care of the large yard is also a significant chore, though that's very dependent on the details of the yard, and mostly wooded would be easier than my mostly grass yard.

All told, though, I think the trade offs are worth it.

I like it. We moved to the middle of 10 acres about 15 minutes from downtown of a city of about 60K or so.

Upsides:
We don't live in a subdivision. No "home owners ASSociation." The nearest neighbor is >200p yards away. Stick a rifle barrel out the door or window and blast away whenever you feel like it. Walk out to the back yard for the dedicated shooting range. Park as many cars as you want in whatever state they are in, wherever you want. Make as much noise as you want. Tuning an open exhaust? So what. It's really nice.

Build whatever you want without permitting; that is, you don't have to ask the governments' permission to build something. Only exception is a septic system. Rural co-op electricity is cheap. All the firewood you will ever need is free for the cutting and splitting.

Downsides:
Rural water is not cheap. Half mile of dirt road (plus side: Gives a built-in couple minute "cool down" time for turbo cars). Meth labs for neighbors - they don't bother you much but tend to burn down occasionally. No cable TV (not sure if that is a plus or minus.) No cable internet (using 4GLTE at the moment, and gigabit fiber is coming from the electric co-op in about a year.) City folk think that if they can't see a house, it's OK to dump their garbage there, including pets they don't want anymore or people they have recently killed. I'm not making that up. In the event of a wide regional power outage (see Ice Storm of 2008, for example,) you are lower on the priority list of getting restored than people in town. More deer on the highway.

dculberson wrote: We bought close to 4 acres about 2.5 years ago, and I love it. It's a ton of work if you want it to look any good. {} The woods are all overrun with bush honeysuckle and I've been trying to clean that out and plant more native species, but it's years worth of work ahead of me to really clean up the woods.

The answer is goats. Seriously, goats. Get a couple goats and 50 feet of rope each. Tie them to trees so their circles just slightly overlap, and provide water and maybe a doghouse. Move them every couple of days. You'll be astonished at how manicured your woods will look - like the nice part of a fairy tale.

It will depend a bit on what region of "rural" you are looking into. There is a big difference between rural on the East Coast and rural out West. My experience is more with the former and my ex's parents' second house on 60 acres in the Poconos of PA.

One thing to consider is age and medical needs. The Poconos aren't too bad since a large, sprawling medical facility with pretty much every modern technology you can imagine in the Lehigh Valley is maybe an hour away. That said, the more local hospital to them is apparently more primitive. And medical needs are one reason why her parents mainly live at their house in Wayne NJ (suburb of NYC).

Not living there full-time, they don't keep any animals, but they do have a huge garden and have enough land and equipment to plant more corn and potatoes than they can eat. Personally, if I lived there, we would eat venison almost every night since the deer would be an unmitigated nuisance.

Otherwise, much of what has already been posted concurs with my experiences.

My job depends on internet access and power. Fast internet access is going to be a requirement, but I'm told the particular area isn't too bad so long as I'm not too far out from civilization.

I'm curious about the power interruptions. Is it the sort of thing that power would be out for a week at a time or just a day or two? How important is a generator for country living?

My experience on the power says it depends. Kane Pennsylvania? Couple of weeks tops. Gere in rural nc? Longest was 3 days due to tornado tearing up town.

It varies. If having power is important, a diesel generator isn't a big deal. Plus, if you have a farm, you can get farm diesel. The ex's parents never bothered since if they lost power for any length of time, at the farm, they would just go home to NJ.

However, the power and internet/phone lines often run on the same poles, so if you lose one it's likely you'll lose the other.

I have a coworker who lives in an out-of-way part of northern NJ. They are at the end of the medium voltage lateral and the line only serves a handful of houses = low priority for repair. When Sandy hit, they lost power for 2 weeks. He added a propane powered whole-house generator shortly afterwards.

In reply to scardeal:

10 years ago I wanted to move out into the woods somewhere. Last year we moved to the coast instead. After living in a small rural town most of my life I think we finally found the right balance of convienence/traffic/climate/property.

In reply to scardeal:

Power depends on the service, the provider, and the physical infrastructure. If you are one of 4 houses on the end of a few miles of branch line, you're at the bottom of the totem pole for getting you power back... or getting your road plowed. In thunderstorm season, we would lose power for a couple hours a couple of times a month. Once after a particularly bad storm we were out for about 3 days.

My sister, on the other hand, lives in the suburbaniest of suburban Philadelphia, and lost power for 10 consecutive days last year. So that's no guarantee either.

I grew up on a farm, but also lived in downtown L.A. for several years. I took to both quite well, but the L.A. living did come with a large parking lot where I could keep toys.

I really don't mind driving to everything. Depending on the urban setting, sometimes you have to drive or take transport everywhere anyway. (Like L.A. was for me, except I had a liquor store and grocery store next door... and I could also get my nails did or eat Japanese food a block away)

The only time I recall wishing for suburban experiences as a child was during Halloween. We had to drive to friends' houses for trick or treat. Otherwise, I had 9 acres to play in the corn field, fly a kite, ride a 4-wheeler, learn to drive dad's truck, turn over logs and rocks in the creek to see what critters lived there... it was a fine trade off for me.

Upside is privacy and quiet and space to do what you want. Downside is (for me) minimal; more to mow. That wouldn't be an issue except that I spend the summers away, so I have to find someone to mow occasionally.

The property I'm (hopefully) closing on soon is on the rural side of suburban. Its squarely suburbs, but has a more space-y feel. 1/4 acre with an old house and large front yard. It will do for now until I can find a decent acre in a slightly more rural setting.

I grew up living in the country and hated the once a week trips to the grocery store and if you didn't buy what you wanted then you just had to do without. No spur of the moment cravings allowed and no one delivers pizza or anything else. Of course Amazon has eliminated some of that inconvenience. Friends for your kids or girls for girlfriends will have to wait until they can drive.

The longer bus ride to school allowed us to build friendships much stronger than any we had in school. I even made spending money by selling candy to the other kids on the bus. I learned a lot about commerce that way.

Internet? That was far in the future.

So with those thoughts in mind, and the fact that I wanted to have an office at/near my house, when we wanted to move out of the rat race we looked for things that were no more than 15 minutes away from Walmarts.

That's right Walmarts!!!!! You can get anything there, they are open 24 hours and there's usually other things like restaurants around them.

We found a place that has a Walmart within 15 minutes in 4 different directions so what else we need determines what direction we head out.

Also quit thinking miles or distance and think time. I'm closer to a Walmart now than when I lived in the city. It takes me less time to get to restaurants and work too. We go a lot more places than we did when we lived in the city because it's simpler to get there and there's less traffic. Fort Worth has one of the best downtowns in Texas and we sometimes get bored and just go walk around and people watch. It's a short 20 minute drive from my house because there's no traffic.

For rush hour I slow down from 80 to 55-60.

Internet IS a problem tho. Line of sight transmission or DSL are your only options unless you live in a large enough ranchette neighborhood like we do and cable has just been run to our neighborhood. We still aren't able to hook up, but within 30 days we should have real internet.

We were 7 days without electricity after the big ice storm. There were areas "more rural" than us that went longer. I think some (a few) were even like a month. Note that was a really bad ice storm. I built a generator shack, installed a 8KW Honduh Powered generator, whole house switch, etc. We have been without power since then (like 9 years now) for about two hours. So, get a generator and you'll never be off the grid again.

I grew up in a small town along a river surrounded by farm land. Many of my friends grew up as farm kid, or at least had access to their grandparents farms. I have friends who still farm today.

There are however a few things that I think are very important in the enjoyment of such living, and many of them align with what Duke said above:

Proximity to kids schools. I walked to school as a kid. This was awesome. Proximity to jobs. Commutes suck. Proximity to community, whether it be church, friends, soccer, whatever. I grew up in the center of my community, but I've got friends who are raising their kids isolated from everything, and I think it has an effect on them socially.

Me? I'd sooner live on an acre in the city with a 5 minute walk to work, 5 minute walk to the market, 5 minute walk to the local school, than 50 acres in the middle of no-where with my own private lake but have to spend 2 hours every day driving back and forth to stuff.

Obviously, the best combination is to live in the middle of no-where but never need to leave. If you can do this (work from home, have no kids) I'd say DO IT.

But I would say that in the eye of investments, the downside to rural living is that not everybody can work from home, so in the future your property out in the middle of no-where might not be worth much more than what you paid.

Alternatively, if you can find some serious acreage right on the edge of a growing town with a hip downtown, that'll be a money maker in a few years.

Are you planning on remaining in the area, or moving to a new location.

You don't have to be in BFE to have a couple of acres near modern conveniences. It takes me several minutes to got to a lot of things, and I don't live too far out. I would love to be on some land away from people. I'm not a people person.

My father had a long commute, and luckily I was able to carpool with him because I went to a private school not far from his job. So I saw my friends at school, and not a lot more than that until I got my license. If I had somebody over, it was usually for a weekend stay.

In reply to Dusterbd13:

All of this. What's funny for us is the distance to places tripled from our house in town to our current abode. But the drive times went down. Sure, it was only 5 miles to walmart before, but it took 20 minutes because of traffic. Now it's 15 miles and we're there in the same time.

Some suggestions for living out of town: Get a generator. Once you have it you'll never need it again. Keep spare food/water around. When winter hits and you literally get snowed in it's nice having stuff on hand. Have multiple sources of heat/cooling, like electric/gas, or gas/wood etc.

We've got 3 acres. Farm field/flood plane to one side, and about 20 homes with large 1+ acre lots on the others. We're 5 miles outside of a town of 25,000 so we're out enough that it's quiet, but close enough that trips to restaurants, hospitals, schools, stores, etc aren't more than 5 or 10 minutes. We're 25 minutes from work, and 25-30 from the closest major metropolis so museums/fine dining/sporting events etc are within reasonable driving distance.

Our situation is pretty unique for semi-rural living as far as utilities, etc go and we're blessed with the superior utility options in our area vs the more common rural co-ops. Internet access is available, but not on the same level as our fiber optic connection at our last house in town. We're assuming that internet coverage is something that will only improve over time however. 1 year in,, and we couldn't be happier, but it does take a certain kind of person to enjoy the space, quiet, and freedom of living in less populated areas

Our electric improved 2 years ago when they replaced the 30-year old lines. Prior to that high winds would cause the lights to flicker. Now it's good to go. Internet sucks. We're on DSL, at the edge so we don't have a fast connection. That's the only downside to date 13 years in.

We just moved to the sticks, 10 acres, 8 of which are fields and the rest being grass/trees/buildings/house. But we have an atypical setup, I'm guessing. We are in a little town of 6,000 people and have a rural lot sized subdivision next to our land and another one on the other side of the field next to our house. We have our own well but we also are on city sewer and water. We have the power to our house underground already and we have high speed internet. We love it!

The kids will go to school(s) less than a mile from our house. There is a park that's being built across the street and there is a walking trail connecting the two different subdivisions by the park.

We can't really see any neighbors from our yard except maybe a some few roof lines. I'm not shooting guns in our yards but I plan on running small engines, tractors, and horse because we are zoned agricultural.

We have a small grocery store a mile down the road but if you want anything worth while it's 10 minutes or I'll get it 25 minutes away when I'm at work.