Learn me rural/semi-rural living

I am moving to San Antonio this August. Next year I might buy a house. I've noticed you can get rural living with 1-4 acres just 30 mins east of the city. Hopefully, I score something with at least an acre in that area.

In reply to mad_machine:

As mentioned, I think it depends on the well. I've had well water from southern NJ that was like drinking rotten eggs due to the sulfur content.

In reply to Bobzilla:

Of course you don't see some rural folks as paranoid or aggressive. They "know" you. I rarely encounter aggressiveness either - partly because no matter where I am in the country, if I am in an unfamiliar situation, I seem to unconsciously turn on my Georgia accent (I am 37 years removed from living in GA). This somehow has an uncanny ability to defuse a situation, regardless of where I am - inner city or deep in the woods.

NYC has some of the best water I've ever tasted anywhere.

Lastly, if you have snakes in your house, it's usually because you have something they like to eat as well - like mice. I'll put them outside, but I won't kill them. Fortunately, poisonous snakes don't really populate the suburban Philly areas. We do have some Timber Rattlers up in the Poconos, tho.

This particular case, I'm assuming the snake came in because the grass was cut after not being cut for 3 weeks. Serious jungle yard because it was too wet to mow.

We get 3 or 4 per year IN the house, that we know of, plus many many more outside. They like living above the ceiling in the laundry room, which is why I shy away from a lot of electrical and plumbing work.

Filling all the gaps with foam is a yearly job, but they always find their way in.

Even when we kept a cat, some of which were amazing hunters(seriously, bringing home birds and snakes regularly), we still had them.

What amazes me about it is the types.black, garter, racer, python colored things, the copperheads are only ever found outside by the creek though(but I smell them in the garage sometimes I've never seen one there). Never had them here, but 45 minutes east at my old hunting cabin, crazy bastards used to go hunting rattle snakes.

Oddly, the only place I lived with worse snake problems was Novato, CA. High class super rich suburb, must have been dozens of snakes at that property. Scared the ever living E36 M3 out of me when I moved the miata one day and a 4 foot California king snake was laying in the driveway under where the motor was. There are also swarms of lizards living there, so plentiful food.

I really miss my island. The 20 minute boat ride to shore meant I had 5 snake free, albeit flood ridden, acres to never have to worry about.although it had its own problems. Nothing like being in an 8 ft dingy and watching a sea lion submerge off the side to reappear on the other side to wake you up and bring back memories of what to do when your boat capsized.

Bobzilla wrote: Wait.... rural people are aggressive and scary? Really? I've live 38 of my almost 42 years rural and I've never encountered that. I ran into plenty of scary and aggressive people living in Terre Haute and Fishers. And those "arsenals" are just another hobby (like cars, biking, whatever). I'm sure the news papers would have a field day looking in my safe. (OMG there were almost 20 fully loaded automatic high capacity assault clips and a machine gun!)

I am not talking 20 guns. One of my co-workers has over 120. he has guns to keep his guns safe. Like said above, they are not paranoid or aggressive to me because they know me. I work with them and I have been invited out to shoot with them. I have also heard the stories (from they themselves) of what they do to strangers who come wandering around their part of the world.

When my parents first had their camp we got our water from a small mountain stream up the hill. Good tasting. Later it was decide to dig a shallow well so that we could have running water. It was near that stream and assumed the water would be good. I was OK, but definitely not the same.

iceracer wrote: When my parents first had their camp we got our water from a small mountain stream up the hill. Good tasting. Later it was decide to dig a shallow well so that we could have running water. It was near that stream and assumed the water would be good. I was OK, but definitely not the same.

that is the truth. I know of two "wild" artesian wells in the area. Both gush water uncontrolled (and have signs saying it is not certified to drink) and both are next to a body of flowing water. In both cases the well is not as sweet or soft as the stream it is next to

In reply to mad_machine:

I'm jealous. Wife put a cap on my arsenal. I've still got about 30 different firearms I'd love to own.

Bobzilla wrote: In reply to mad_machine: I'm jealous. Wife put a cap on my arsenal. I've still got about 30 different firearms I'd love to own.

If I had the money and room to safely store/display them, I'd have a museum of firearms. Simply because I'm an old military brat and have had an interest in military hardware for as long as I can remember. But I have no interest at all in owning civilian guns nor would I think of them as "defensive". It would just be a collection, organized by age from the earliest I can get to the latest. Preferably in a sort of hidden vault/display room that would not be easy to access.

Do you want to be intimately involved in knowing where your water comes from, and your poop goes to? Pumps can be a cruel taskmaster.

Ian F wrote:

Bobzilla wrote: In reply to mad_machine: I'm jealous. Wife put a cap on my arsenal. I've still got about 30 different firearms I'd love to own.

If I had the money and room to safely store/display them, I'd have a museum of firearms. Simply because I'm an old military brat and have had an interest in military hardware for as long as I can remember. But I have no interest at all in owning civilian guns nor would I think of them as "defensive". It would just be a collection, organized by age from the earliest I can get to the latest. Preferably in a sort of hidden vault/display room that would not be easy to access.

don't get me wrong. I used to own a handgun, but I have no urge to get another. I would have liked to have owned my late grandfather's WW2 rifle he brought back from Germany though. It had history both during the war and after. I think one of my cousins grabbed it and sold it after my grandparents died. I like things with history

In reply to Wall-e:

Maybe they were all afraid of making eye contact WITH YOU!

By the way, the only thing I hate about my house is the gravel road. The sunrises and sunsets offset the hassle.

Streetwiseguy wrote: Do you want to be intimately involved in knowing where your water comes from, and your poop goes to?

Yes.

If everybody did they would probably respect the value of water, and conservation, a lot more than they do now.

Bobzilla wrote: Wait.... rural people are aggressive and scary? Really? I've live 38 of my almost 42 years rural and I've never encountered that. I ran into plenty of scary and aggressive people living in Terre Haute and Fishers.

I've met a lot of gun owners in the city of Chicago. Not legal, but not dangerous either. I also know many in rural areas.

I've been legitimately scared by an aggressive person two times. Once in the city of Chicago--that person pulled a knife, and was at least drunk if not on other drugs. The other was on a hike in southern Illinois, a very rural area. I think I was close to walking into that persons meth shed. That one pulled a gun.

Seeing as I've spent a lot of time in a lot sketchier neighborhoods than Terrible Haute and Fishers, I think you're paranoid.

We lived in suburbia when I was young. Then semi-rural when I was in my teens/20s before moving back to suburbia or even city.

My parents bought this nice dream home on 3.5 acres, a little bit out in the country. Grocery stores were now 10-20 minutes away. Other stores were further away. There was a LOT of lawn care that had to happen regularly. This meant they needed more garage space, and eventually built a shed. They were further from work so spent more time each day commuting. Then on the weekend they spent a lot more of their time taking care of their own property.

The time spent enjoying such a property was awesome. The time working on it, money to pay for it, and stress involved with it was soul-crushing. One of them greatly outweighed the other, in my opinion.

It's part of the reason now that I want to be as close as I can to all the things I need/do/etc. regularly.

The people warning Adrian Thompson posted earlier wasn't applicable in the area I grew up (Northern Virginia), but it most certainly is applicable here in the south (sadly in the suburbs as well ), and its one of the many reasons we want to move closer to downtown.

mtn wrote:

Bobzilla wrote: Wait.... rural people are aggressive and scary? Really? I've live 38 of my almost 42 years rural and I've never encountered that. I ran into plenty of scary and aggressive people living in Terre Haute and Fishers.

I've met a lot of gun owners in the city of Chicago. Not legal, but not dangerous either. I also know many in rural areas. I've been legitimately scared by an aggressive person two times. Once in the city of Chicago--that person pulled a knife, and was at least drunk if not on other drugs. The other was on a hike in southern Illinois, a very rural area. I think I was close to walking into that persons meth shed. That one pulled a gun. Seeing as I've spent a lot of time in a lot sketchier neighborhoods than Terrible Haute and Fishers, I think you're paranoid.

In the mid 90's I lived in drug central in Terre Haute. Literally, the corner one house down was the meeting point for most of the coke and pot dealers. More money passed hands there than any store in town. 16-1/2 street, about 3 blocks north of Wabash. Houses across the street were boarded up and a lot of druggies slept in there when the weather was bad. Things change in 20+ years.

Fishers were the white trash "moving up" but still doing white trash things because that's what you do. You know, get drunk and get in fights because [insert random reason here].

When we moved to our current area, we were strangers. We were met with nothing but openness and warmth. Hard to explain it if you've never experienced it. We know that police response time is 15+ minutes away. We know that fire dept is volunteer and not as quick at times. But we also have neighbors willing to help one another as needed. Just not seeing the agression here that is supposed to be so rampant in rural America. Maybe this "aggression" is just people being friendly?

In reply to Bobzilla:

Or is it people taking privacy and protection of their families and property seriously?

I know that here in my area we will do anything for anyone, and are friendly enough to talk to a stump if it looks lonely.

But don't berkeley with a mans land or family. That will not end well.

You go to the door and knock and ask for permission to leave your broken truck out front until you can come back with a trailer. Failure to do so will result in hostility.

In reply to Dusterbd13:

TRUE. We do take our stuff seriously. Hell, our neighbor will call us if there is a different vehicle in the driveway that he doesn't recognize to make sure it's OK. If not, the sherriff's dept is his next call. We do the same for them. I just thought that was what people did. Tried to do that when I lived in Fishers and people looked at you like you had 3 heads and told you to stay out of their damned business (there's that aggression again).

I did have to leave my car at a neighbors house one winter. They weren't home yet so I put it off to the side out of their way and left a note on the car and on their door. They were fine, and appreciated the note. I couldn't get down our road (4' tall drifts that were 30-40 yards deep). The county brought the V-plow the next day.

Dusterbd13 said: But don't berkeley with a mans land or family. That will not end well.

You may have inadvertently reinforced the point, lol! Now imagine you are inspecting someone's illegally constructed fence annexing some of your property, that they probably think of as theirs anyway, when they decide to come out of their house and go postal to protect their family. One of many examples. Part of my family's problem is owning a large and distributed portfolio of property so there have been many encounters with some bad neighbors, trespassers, poachers, thieves and other assorted riffraff. Our couple of immediate neighbors at the main house have always been fine, but we have had way to much exposure to the larger cross-section of rural SW MI to consider it all that great. Other than my lack of nearly unlimited storage space and the ability to shoot stuff at will, my quality of life is notably better in the burbs.

Moral of the story: Don't leave the road, somebody owns the land or thinks they do and will not take kindly to visitors! Get out of the road, people need to drunk drive their meth lab to a random dumping spot and don't need your sissy ass running/cycling in their way!

Yes, I am blowing it out of proportion, but there are enough of these attitudes that you will notice eventually.

And I got enough rude-ass people in the cities and burbs to never go back. City-folk don't seem to understand that every piece of property is their right to do whatever they want on. As a kid, we used to get 49 license plate (Indiana people will know) cars park between our two houses, open the trunk and pull out their shotguns and start walking across the field to "go hunting". Or at the other property put in tree stands, and whatever else they felt they were owed. I can't remember the dozens of cars we had towed out of there.

Now that I think about it... I'm sure they were met with some aggression. I know that not a single neighbor in a 3 mile radius would give them a ride to get their truck. So they had to walk the 5 miles. And I know the guy that towed them charged them $150 (in the 1980's) to release it to them. So if that is what you consider "aggression" well, yeah. You deserved it.

EDIT: I do remember one that brough his LTD (fairmont sized) out to the other farm. The pathway back was rough and if it rained, you got stuck. WEll, he got stuck. He started asking people to help him pull it out. When they found out where, they pointed down the road to our place. When he showed up, Dad went down, pulled him out to the road, where the wrecker hooked up and pulled it to town. WE went home and he started walking. Apparently he didn't have a license either (hunting) and the local DNR guy wrote him a ticket at the garage when he got there to pick up his truck.

In reply to Bobzilla:

We dealt with this same stuff all the time. There were actually two groups of hunters that supposedly almost got into a shooting match at the back of our farm (nobody had permission to be there). The police were ultimately involved in that one... I never associated it with city folk though. It's possible they were all coming out from Chicago I suppose.

EDIT: It's also quite possible that people are just altogether E36 M3ty, and having more land just gave us more opportunity to witness the ways they can be E36 M3ty.

In reply to WilD:

I think your last part is quite possibly true. For us, it was easy to see where they came from as the first 2 digits of the license plate denoted the county. Since Marion County is all city.... makes putting the two together pretty easy.

In reply to WilD:

Per your edit: i think its different kinds of asshattery. The city version pisses me off, but i grew up and have spent most my life rural, so for me thats just the way people are. Its definitely hard for me to explain the "country " point of view to somebody with the city point of view. Ill equate it to mac vs pc: they both work for the people they work for. But converting over is bewildering, frustrating, and chock full of things that the other gut just takes for granted as normal.

What I've always found funny about rural exploration was how people really do judge you by what they perceive as odd behavior. Odd behavior by country folk is anything not associated with being country. For example: you can ride horses through pretty much everybodies backyard in the country, and nobody will bat an eye.

Ride a bicycle? You better sure as hell be prepared to get shot.

Around my neighborhood, people don't walk a whole lot. If they do, they walk their dogs. People also don't admire neighbor's gardening or notice their cute cats in the window.

You'd be surprised how many dirt looks I get by my neighbors when I stop to say hello to their cat while riding my bicycle.

You can ride through their yard once you've asked. You don't just do it. That's the difference. "City folk" see this happening and think that anyone can do it. That's not the case(most of the time, there is still asshattery).

It's like walking into a restraunt in a different country, where you know no one, then try to act like the locals and slap the barkeep on the butt because you watched them for 5 minutes. It just doesn't work well.