Southeast Ag Expo

I've mentioned before my itty bitty guilt of living within the city limits, feeling like I'm somehow letting down my rural roots.  Like I mentioned there, our kids are experiencing many things we never got to because we were living in the country, but the pull towards rural-ness is still strong in me.

So I find myself gravitating toward events, places and people that will bring the rural life a little closer to home.  I love attending the Youth Fair.  Yes, it is stinky.  Yes, I end up cleaning poop off of 5 pairs of shoes the next day.  Yes, the Clean Freak Fairy within me has a battle with the cleanliness factor there, hoping that the hundreds of chicken, rabbit, steer and hog cages/stalls that my kids touched were NOT the ones harboring some foreign object that would inevitably turn our bathrooms and stomachs into churning nightmares.  I do love seeing their faces light up when they see the animals and having the opportunity to talk about what we're seeing.  I enjoy looking at all the home-ec entries, admiring the handiwork from such young children, and yearning for the day to start teaching my daughter how to sew.  Hopefully, I'm planting seeds of interest in them that will one day sprout.

There's a family less than a mile away from us that I enjoy our kids hanging out with.  They have done an excellent job of living in town but still live rural-like by having a garden, actively participating in 4-H, achieving first place in many of their home-ec entries, canning and cooking galore and bringing the general farm to their 1/4 acre lot in town.  Actually, the two daughters, babysit for us often and they are FAB!

So, when Jim mentioned us taking the kids to the Ag Expo in Moultrie, GA, I jumped at the chance.  I didn't even give myself enough time to process how long 3 kids would be in the car, how it would interfere with naps and how early we'd have to leave to make the timing of all this work.  I just thought, "Can't live in the country, we'll go to it!"

Thank goodness little guy fell asleep.  Just wish it was earlier than 15 minutes before we got there.

 

Sweet boy.

 

Our first visit when we got there, the equipment of course!

 

I could soooo drive one of these.  Can't you see it?

He could soooo drive one of these also.

And one of these.

This is what heaven looks like to this 18-month old boy.

It was a good trip.  We took the grandparents along also.  They helped keep kids in the round-up and keep them entertained.

Looking forward to October 2013. :)

A little Country

My entire life, I lived in the country.  Well, except for a 1-year stint "in town", which technically wasn't within the city limits but certainly in a subdivision.  I would consider my growin' up years to have lived in the rural parts of Marion County.

It was where I became comfortable holding earthworms, created a new home away from our play area for those pesky ants, learned quickly about the circle of life, had many opportunities to run, play and get dirty, imagine I was just a talent-scout away from Broadway and most importantly - felt safe.  We had chickens, a pig, a cow named Molly, more dogs than I can remember, cats, horses, ponies, roosters that liked to chase little toddler boys around the yard, unwelcome snakes, moles and plenty of mosquitoes and ants.

We even had a midnight visit from a raccoon that made one trip around the house and hopped off the trail.  Sam, (not sure if it was Sam #1, Sam #2 or Sam #3) our beagle hound, caught the scent and commenced to howling to let the calvary know he was on a trail.  He was a great howler, like beagles are supposed to be, and he was doing a fabulous job of following that trail.  The one area of the trail he missed was the part where the raccoon left the house's perimeter.  So our house in the country's midnight treat was to listen to and witness Sam #who-knows howl around and around and around until my dad eventually had to physically pull him off the trail.

You just don't run into that kind of fun living in The City, you know?

Fast forward a hundred years or so and now we're raising yungins that are growing up in The City.  Paved streets, curbs and gutters, less than a 10-minute drive to a grocery store and other people's houses close enough to sometimes hear my "mothering" are what I consider, The City.

So, hopefully it comes as no surprise that I'm feeling like I've kind of let down my rural roots by raising our children here.  Don't get me wrong, there are wonderful opportunities they're experiencing by living here that I never had, but I still ache for them to experience living on the other side of the tracks also.  It's a huge grey area.  Like a grey area the size of a beautiful, oak-tree-lined, secluded piece of 10 acres nestled just outside the city limits.

I remember wishing I didn't live so far out.  I liked the idea back then of living in town, having friends down the street that could just walk over and just plain being closer to everyone and everything.  Nobody from the youth group ever wanted to visit our house because it was such a long drive.  But I also enjoyed the space, green and quiet also.  Even as a kid.

A business report I wrote for a college class at UF, Food and Resource Economics 1101, taught me one very important lesson: if you ever want to make a business in agriculture successful, you have to have the land practically given to you.  Every business model myself and my classmates presented, showed that one common thread.  Land is extremely expensive!  Which also goes for just wanting to raise a family on a couple of acres.  It's still extremely expensive!  Not very cost effective.  Not in our budget.  At least not now.

It doesn't help that I've been completely out of work for 4 years.

The good news is, Jim does a great job bringing rural life here as much as he can.  He had some tomato plants left over from an experiment and he taught our kids how to plant them like he has done many times before.  Twelve, healthy tomato plants, six on one side, six on the other, planted by brown-toed, knee-scratched cuties in the previously landscaped area we cleared for just this occasion.  It's our answer to not having the land to do it on a larger scale.



Tomato plant update:

The slacker in charge of watering didn't do a very good job and now all the plants are either brown, shriveled or have been turned into some type of mini weapon.  For the sake of not embarrassing those who were supposed to be in charge, I will not mention any names.  All I'll say is: she's been known to have butchered a meal or two.

I'm just sayin'.  Might take a little more than land to make an agricultural business model successful or even a yummy taco-topper if this slacker's in charge.