Can confirm, the year I turned thirty I bought a dairy farm in the middle of a national forest, hours from a Walmart and moved my family across the country to experience a quieter and hopefully more holistic life.
You're jesting, but: my parents both grew up in major cities. When they could afford it, they moved out to a semirural town of 5000, with the larger towns 25 miles in each direction. All their kids moved back to cities.
We moved back to nowhere before our kids were out of the toddler stage. All they remember is rural life. Maybe that's the key?
Not that I care if my kids move to a city. I'll have a place to stay while going to the museums.
My parents moved us to an old dairy farm on 30 acres with only one other house on the road. 7 miles from a town of 6000 and 50 miles from the nearest Walmart. I loved it and only moved away after college because there were no jobs here.
Moved back 3.5 years later because I could buy a house for 1/3 the cost while working remote for a "city salary" and because I missed raising animals.
It's something I didn't appreciate as a kid. I had to immerse myself in constant city noise and hostility and filth for almost 2 decades to really start yearning to get back again.
I’ll be honest I don’t really get why rural life appeals to those in the city. I think there’s a very romantic idea people have of rural life, which both does and doesn’t exist depending on location.
I’ve done rural living my entire life and I’d much rather live in a city if it were a viable option. Even very basic things are far easier in the city and the city has things like emergency rooms that are open 24/7. I can’t assume my local hospital will be open if I hurt myself and the next is a ~100km drive away.
Most rural areas are less hostile to your face, but the local rumour mill can be incredibly cruel and harmful behind one’s back should you not conform or if someone takes issue with you. A gay couple moved to my area and at least initially suffered greatly for it.
I guess the grass isn’t necessarily greener in either direction, the challenges and issues are just different.
I feel like there's rural, and then there's extreme rural which is what you described.
There are rural cities. I'm in a rural area, classified as such by the USDA. There is ample space of farming, hunting and undeveloped wilderness. There's a fully navigable river, lakes, many fishable streams. There aren't neighborhoods, there are some stretches of houses not a great distance apart on a single road.
Then there is the city. It's not a huge city, but it's an urban environment. Again, classified by the government as such. The city is loud, active, and dense. There's no suburban area though. That's the difference. There's just rural farmland and wooded areas, no meandering neighborhoods with a random shopping center over and over. You go from rural to urban immediately. The first thing I come to is from a massive orchard to a dense violent apartment complex and a strip of 24hr stores.
> I guess the grass isn’t necessarily greener in either direction, the challenges and issues are just different.
This nails it.
> I’ll be honest I don’t really get why rural life appeals to those in the city.
There may be multiple reasons, to each their own. As a city-dweller since I was kid, the biggest issue, and the one that has me contemplate rural(-er) living, is the constant noise.
The housing market being what it is, it's very hard to find well-insulated apartments.
In France, there have been new construction regulations for noise insulation, but most of the apartments in Paris were built before that. You can more or less easily get an apartment that doesn't face a major road (or any road at all). But you can never get an apartment with no neighbors (unless you're extremely rich, which isn't my, nor most people's case).
Agreed, like with virtually everything it is a tradeoff. I did not like the loud, fast cars five feet from our door, the drugs, the shootings (only twice but it was enough for me to move), and the hectic pace, lots of strangers. I still love the city we lived in and if I had to be in a city that's the one.
I was willing to trade city problems for the rural problems.
Living rurally on over a 100 acres, I am free to do a not that was not even possible on our 1/4 acre not in the city. I fix up old tractors and trucks in my free time with my sons. This summer I plan to get a sawmill and try my hand at building historical structures (log cabins, old style pole barns, etc.).
I live in a city center and don't want to leave - in fact, I want to move to a larger city often.
I'm also single and wish to have a life partner. If and when I find someone with whom I find peace and contentment to share my life with, I imagine being in the middle of the bustle won't be as necessary.
(I'm aware I should not look for a life partner to make me at peace, but it sure would help).
Rural life sucks. You know why they have so many kids? When you friends play it's fun until they die from farm accidents like falling into grain silos or machines.
You can't childproof a farm. It's way easier to die from misadventures.
I grew up on a farm and now I work a tech job & live in the bay area. I'm currently between stages 5 and 6, looking forward to the farm in the middle of nowhere stage.
Hahaha I'm in Palo Alto, grew up in a farm, and constantly look at places online to buy. Moving to Stockholm in August, hopefully the next stop after that will be a farm.
I'm still a software engineer. I just get up early and milk cows first. With Starlink, I can pretty much work from anywhere so the lack of internet out here isn't a problem for me.
Some one comes over to our house nearly daily for a visit. I sell raw milk, eggs, and sometimes other stuff (meat when I have it). I am the only place to buy any food stuffs for 30 miles.
On top of that, we have a very active and young (like 60% under 12) church community we are part of.
Then my neighbors stop in a few times a week usually to say hi or drop off compost for the hogs or something. It is quieter, but I don't think it's too quiet or lonely.
Not much to tell. We got sick of the city life and wanted a place where we could have our horses close at hand. Ended up moving across the country because of land costs. Bought a hundred or so acres surrounded by national forest, figure I'll never need to worry about neighbors that way. I milk cows in the morning and evening, might figure out how to make a living off that some day, and I am a software engineer working remotely thanks to starlink.
