Living Large In Our Little House

Moving in the coun­try, depend­ing on where you’re mov­ing, can be a huge under­tak­ing. It’s a dif­fer­ent way of life and our Living Large com­mu­nity also brought up some good points to think about such as rural crime (we hear about this hap­pen­ing to week­enders who aren’t here mainly dur­ing hunt­ing sea­son, although there’s plenty of crime to go with the meth trade), need­ing 4WD vehi­cles, the high prices and ter­ri­ble ser­vice at rural util­ity and tele­phone com­pa­nies, the avail­abil­ity of jobs, libraries and doc­tors (they even allow nurse prac­ti­tion­ers to run med­ical clin­ics here due to the short­age of doc­tors will­ing to move to rural com­mu­ni­ties) and power out­ages. We also don’t have trash pick up and if we don’t make it the 6 miles to our vol­un­teer fire depart­ment (VFD) on the sched­uled pick up night, we hold our trash for another week.

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Our rural road

A friend of mine recently sent me an email ask­ing me about liv­ing in the coun­try. She is tired of deal­ing with bad neigh­bors in her urban neighborhood.

“I was won­der­ing if you might be able to tell me about the less than ideal side about liv­ing in the coun­try, like just any­thing I might not be think­ing of.”

And finally, she asked “Would you do it again?”

These are some of the things I told her she should think about:

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Where, oh, where are you S.A.B.L.E? I need your address to send your Sanyo bat­ter­ies! Please email me today! fivecoat@​ozarkmountains.​com

Yesterday morn­ing I had dreamed we had moved back to the city, so when I got up in my real-world oasis and made my way over to The Belle Writer’s Studio in the dark and not yet hav­ing my cof­fee, I guess I was still a bit confused.

Sitting in the silence of the morn­ing with Emma and Sade at my side, read­ing the lat­est news on my com­puter, I heard a thud that sounded like a car door slam­ming. This wouldn’t have been unusual to hear early in the morn­ing in the city as neigh­bors got in their cars and began their com­mute to work. Because my mind was still some­where between here and there, I didn’t give it another thought.

The dogs perked up.

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The first time we saw one, The Little House was barely framed in.
“What is that on the side of the foun­da­tion?” Dale said as we drove into the dri­ve­way to have a look at our new home.
“It looks like some­one threw a big mud clot,” I answered, but as we got out of the truck and walked closer, we real­ized it was the biggest spi­der either of us had ever seen.
I wasn’t ter­ri­fied, even then, but amazed at really, how beau­ti­ful taran­tu­las are. We had no idea this area had taran­tu­las, but have since mar­veled at see­ing them in the road and some­times stum­bling upon the holes they dig in the ground for their nests.
Yes, it’s big spi­der sea­son here again, they’re out and about gath­er­ing food for the win­ter. It just isn’t the taran­tu­las on the move, but other insects of the 8-legged vari­ety are more promi­nent out­side too, build­ing webs closer to the house and lights where they can catch as many unsus­pect­ing moths and other food as possible.

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