anyone move from city to farm?

[steady saver]

We bought a piece of dirt in the country 10 years ago where we spend every other weekend. When we bought it we just wanted to quit and move there (glad we didn't - our retirement funds would be really limited) but instead it became a refuge from our stressful lives in the city.

The farm has been a blessing and a stressor. One more property brings more work, things needing repair, blah, blah, blah. It has brought immense joy but those stressors/expense have been real and they continue as long as we're both working. That said, we've held on because we love being out there and over the years have had so many plans that have evolved for that place...

Right now, I'm not ready to move. It's an hour and 45 min. from our house in the city and I have a small part-time practice and I love what I do. DH may be able to pull the plug in June, that is in the works. When that happens, he'll be able to be out there more (we call it our "year of decompression") and we're both excited about that.

My questions: Have any of you moved from city to farm life (or some part-time variation)? How has that worked for you? What's been the best/worst part of doing so for you personally?

 

[REWahoo]

My questions: Have any of you moved from city to farm life (or some part-time variation)? How has that worked for you? What's been the best/worst part of doing so for you personally?

Do you mean "farm life" literally, as in move to a place where you grow crops and raise farm animals? Or do you mean more generally, as in move from the city to some acreage in the country?

 

[steady saver]

Do you mean "farm life" literally, as in move to a place where you grow crops and raise farm animals? Or do you mean more generally, as in move from the city to some acreage in the country?

Good question. Either. Because there's the issue of simply being in or out of the city that would be interesting to hear about from others. And the added question of "are you doing farm things" like you mentioned.

As for the latter, we're non-committal. Our farm goals have evolved. Our ideas about farm life 10 years ago look different than they do now. Now they are:

1) rotationally grazing someone else's cattle
2) having a big garden and doing lots of canning
3) tending to our pecan and fruit trees
4) raising meat chickens once a year
5) maybe raising other animals for fun , but right now not wanting to be tied down to animals. I am wanting to do some traveling
6) sitting on the porch watching the grass grow and then mowing it
7) for my DH, landscaping
8) for both of us, writing

 

[REWahoo]

We moved from the city 19 years ago, building a house on 5 acres in the TX Hill Country. No farming unless we decide to raise some goats as the land is on a rocky limestone hill with very little topsoil.

DW was already retired when we moved, I worked and commuted 50 miles RT for another seven years before retiring too. We have been very happy living the non-urban life and are very glad we made the move. The relative quiet and privacy (nearest neighbor is about 300 yards away) is great. The distance to shopping took some getting used to, but the city is growing rapidly towards us so we don't have to go as far today to buy groceries as we did - but that is a two edged sword of course. Major traffic now to buy a gallon of milk.

 

[MRG]

We moved to a 20 acre farm while I was working. No large critters, and we had a farmer share crop 10 acres.

We raised chickens for eggs. It was a great 10 years. Very peaceful.

Negatives - We were on a gravel road. During planting and harvest it could be noisily for a week or so. It got old if you forgot something on the way home.

 

[SheitlQueen]

We moved from city to 7.5 acres of land. I absolutely love it and would not trade it in for anything in the world.

Advantages: beautiful scenery, peace and quiet. Less expensive property taxes
due to farm and forest deferral.
Disadvantages: Up in the hills so winter can be nasty (although now that I am no longer w*rking it doesn't matter) and when I was working, a long commute. A bit of a drive into town, so running errands takes planning.

It does take extra time to maintain the property, although I recently got sheep to keep some pastures down and allow my neighbor to graze her horses and donkey on the rest.

 

[ejman]

We moved to our current place in SW Oregon almost 20 years ago after many years of city living. We were both tired of city and job stresses. I telecommuted for about three years and then fully retired. We really didn't have any idea of what we wanted to get into in our 7 acre place so we tried all kinds of things - raising chickens, ducks, geese, goats, turkeys, horses, growing a huge garden, growing a small garden, no garden at at all. Our place had been an orchard in the past so there were still quite a few fruit trees around still producing apples, figs, pears, peaches. So we canned, froze, dried and so forth.

Obviously we didn't do all those things at once and pretty much followed our mood.

Fortunately retirement funds were/are sufficient to where we didn't have to do any of those things for income. What I found is that there is a season for everything and particularly early on we had a lot more energy than we do now (currently almost 70) so we have cut back a lot on what we do. For example, now only a relatively small garden and limited fruit drying and only have 4 mini horses.

One thing, very glad we moved out here in our very early fifties. If we had waited until "normal" retirement age we certainly wouldn't have had the energy to try all of the different fun things we have done.

 

[steady saver]

Thanks for sharing your experiences. In the past 10 years our idea of "fun" has changed with age so many of the ideas we had for moving to the farm aren't that appealing anymore.
We do love the peace, the physical work, the connection to nature and changing of the seasons (sort of...it's mostly hot and humid with two or three months of colder weather.)
I recognize that the purpose it serves now (decompressing) may not be as big of a deal once we both retire b/c we'll be completely decompressed!

For us the PROS are:
1. Being more connected to natural rhythms of nature
2. Calmness and peace with little noise
3. Less expensive lifestyle
4. Lots of farm projects we can still try (heritage breeds, etc.)
5. Improving the land and leaving it better than we found it
6. Growing much of our own organic food
7. A slower paced life
8. Equidistant between two great cities (an hour and a half or so from each)

Cons:
1. long-time friends are in the city
2. Young adult children in city and not big on country living.
3. 25 min. to nearest nice sized town
4. No Trader Joe's or my other favorite fancy supermarket anywhere nearby. (I LOVE to grocery shop but not just anywhere. Ha, sounds shallow but this is big for me. Related to my current work I love.)
5. Not that close to an airport
6. Giving up a house in a great neighborhood in the city that we'd likely not be able to afford to buy back into (or at least "feel" like we couldn't) We bought in low.

Thanks for going through this exercise with me.

 

[redduck]

We moved from the city 19 years ago, building a house on 5 acres in the TX Hill Country. No farming unless we decide to raise some goats as the land is on a rocky limestone hill with very little topsoil.
.... Major traffic now to buy a gallon of milk.

Three suggestions:

1. Raise some goats and then...

2. Acquire a taste for goat milk, or...

3. Next time you go to the market buy two (2) gallons of milk.

(suggestions 1 and 2 may be switched in order)

 

[REWahoo]

1. Raise some goats and then...

2. Acquire a taste for goat milk, or...

... cabrito! Yum!

 

[MRG]

... cabrito! Yum!

Yummy. You wonder as tasty as they are why there's so many pet goats?

 

[Souschef]

Well, it is not quite a farm, but I do have a small garden. I moved from the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County with 2.9 million people and big city politics to a small town in Ventura County.
Instead of being in a "concrete canyon" as DW called it, we live in a beautiful valley with lots of agriculture. Our front porch looks out on a 2,000 foot mountain a couple of miles away

 

[FI_RElater]

[You call 2000 ft a “mountain “?... that’s a hill ; although if I remember, the tallest hills in the UK are only about that high. 10-14 k ===> mountain]


moved from city to rural area, it’s only about 11 miles to town and the airport A few grocery stores in town , the Trader Joe is a number of miles farther in the next town Biggest problem is sometimes lack of variety of certain stores or need to special order from them to get what you want. Also have more problems getting tradesmen to get out to you (extra cost and time lost getting there so some don’t want to bid jobs or seriously increase costs)


as others have noted, to be efficient you have to have knowledge of what you need and where to go when you head out.... lots of list making otherwise you spend too much time and gas (try to make even trips to the dr or Rx pickup serve multiple purposes)

{ ... and we do look out our back porch and windows to quite a few *mountains*}

 

[carnivalday]

I didnt really move from the city, but I did buy 10 acres in the country and built a house on it. Im still working, but will probably retire this year and plan on staying here (and putting in a pool). Have a few horses, chickens, gardens. Ill stay here until they drag me out of here. No plans on leaving. With online shopping now I rarely go to town (maybe once a week) for groceries and critter food. On the other hand, the Fed Ex driver and I are on a first name basis.

 

[Hermit]

You call 2000 ft a “mountain “?... that’s a hill ; although if I remember, the tallest hills in the UK are only about that high. 10-14 k ===> mountain

I was thinking the same thing, but was going to be nice and not say anything.

I moved to my 5 acres when I retired in 2013. I have been building my house ever since. Who knows? I may finish it sometime... I also spend time plowing the roads when it snows and tending to the community ranch board business and helping out neighbors and the local kids camp. The closest I come to farming is cutting up down trees and splitting them for fire wood. Another 30 years or so and I may run out of down trees on my 5 acres.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

DW and I bought a 40-acre hobby farm when we married about 30 years ago. It sits on a hillside overlooking a 100-acre ephemeral wetland. It's a nice spot for birdwatching during the spring migration with tundra swans, white pelicans and, of course, Canada geese passing through. Work was a 45-minute commute away, on a schedule offset from the usual rush-hour periods. Every night I could feel the tension ebb as I drove from downtown into the countryside. It was great escaping to our "weekend getaway" on a daily basis.

On the downside, I have mowed a lot of lawn over the last three decades. You want to keep the grass trimmed over a pretty good space to keep the mosquitoes, ticks and burrowing rodents at bay. We have kept a couple acres mowed around the house and outbuildings, and I did it for most of that time with a walk-behind machine as a gesture toward fitness. I finally broke down and got a rider a few years ago.

One other downside I'll mention -- the profit margin for farming has become razor-thin, and a lot of farmers are looking at industrial-scale techniques to stay profitable. That means, if you have a chicken farm nearby, it may grow to a million or more birds. Dairy farms in my area have grown to a couple thousand head. The picturesque little working farm down the road could turn into a factory, producing heavy traffic, noise and odors. Local zoning boards are often sympathetic to the farmers (after all, it's a rural area) and tend to give them carte blanche to do what they need to do to stay afloat.

It's something to keep in mind when shopping for that country home. Be aware of the surroundings and what they could become.

 

[FUEGO]

Not us. And I wouldn't mind actually going the other way by moving from our .3 acre house in the city to a townhouse/condo. But DW isn't interested (yet) so here we are. 3 kids do complicate things a bit. We just seem to spend more time maintaining our yard as compared to actually using our yard. We do like the relative peace and quiet but it's fleeting given the barking dogs and cars passing by. We do enjoy the views over a 1/4 mile long lake in our backyard and it's somewhat scenic in spite of being in the middle of the city, walkable, on several major transit routes, etc. Attached pic is from our bedroom window.

There's an interesting couple that did move from the city to the country. They left Boston and moved north to Vermont or N Hampshire. Check them out: Frugalwoods. They have something like 66 acres mostly wooded. Personally, their life in the woods looks like a ton of work. Cutting wood, stacking wood, hauling wood. Clearing snow from their 1/4 mile driveway with a tractor. Various farming chores when it's not a frozen wasteland. I just go to Aldi or Lidl a mile from our house and buy whatever I need and do other stuff. To each their own!

 

[REWahoo]

It's something to keep in mind when shopping for that country home. Be aware of the surroundings and what they could become.

+1

Several years after we moved in a quarry opened less than a mile behind us. Thankfully it is on the other side of a ridge, out of sight from our property. But we can hear the equipment running and both hear and feel (!) when they blast.

 

[Car-Guy]

We bought a piece of dirt in the country 10 years ago where we spend every other weekend. When we bought it we just wanted to quit and move there (glad we didn't - our retirement funds would be really limited) but instead it became a refuge from our stressful lives in the city.

We bought a chunk of land in the county too a few years before I retired. It was about a 2 and 1/2 drive from home, at the time. We loved it so much we built it up (house, roads, barns and workshops) and moved here permanently after retiring.

The farm has been a blessing and a stressor. One more property brings more work, things needing repair, blah, blah, blah. It has brought immense joy but those stressors/expense have been real and they continue as long as we're both working.

At first maintaining the county property is fun, later it becomes more like work, but it still beats the hell out of living in the city. If you like the lifestyle, have a good size tractor with a FEL, and are handy with your hands, you should enjoy the tradeoffs.

My questions: Have any of you moved from city to farm life (or some part-time variation)? How has that worked for you? What's been the best/worst part of doing so for you personally?

The best parts for me were just getting out of the big city noise, traffic, crowds, rude people, next door neighbors, etc, etc, etc.

As I said above, the fun of maintaining the property becomes more like work after a while but it's still enjoyable (to me anyway). It does take a while to adjust to driving to get to anything. e.g. Nearest gas station, hamburger joint, and store/Walmart is 20+ miles away. Nearest hospital is about 45 mins away, but "so far" that's not been a problem. As long as we are physical able, we're staying!

Two things to consider, (1) you will probably always want a bigger tractor than you have (I have two now) and (2) it seems impossible to build enough storage space (built three slabbed barns/workshops so far.)

 

[steady saver]

We bought a chunk of land in the county too a few years before I retired. It was about a 2 and 1/2 drive from home, at the time. We loved it so much we built it up (house, roads, barns and workshops) and moved here permanently after retiring.

At first maintaining the county property is fun, later it becomes more like work, but it still beats the hell out of living in the city. If you like the lifestyle, have a good size tractor with a FEL, and are handy with your hands, you should enjoy the tradeoffs.


The best parts for me were just getting out of the big city noise, traffic, crowds, rude people, next door neighbors, etc, etc, etc.

As I said above, the fun of maintaining the property becomes more like work after a while but it's still enjoyable (to me anyway). It does take a while to adjust to driving to get to anything. e.g. Nearest gas station, hamburger joint, and store/Walmart is 20+ miles away. Nearest hospital is about 45 mins away, but "so far" that's not been a problem. As long as we are physical able, we're staying!

Two things to consider, (1) you will probably always want a bigger tractor than you have (I have two now) and (2) it seems impossible to build enough storage space (built three slabbed barns/workshops so far.)

Ha, ha, we actually just sold the big tractor! We'd bought it used shortly after we bought the place but it was too big for me to handle, I couldn't use the clutch and I liked shredding pastures way more than DH. So now we have a smaller John Deere and I love that thing. Our goal is to rotationally graze the cattle so we aren't doing much pasture shredding. We have 30 acres ; I'd be happy with 10 but that's what we have and I'm grateful for it. We've tried to find something smaller but it seems it's not meant to be.

We'd like to give it 5 years of trying all the things we've dreamed about and either get it out of our system or find that we rather like country life.

 

[steady saver]

+1

Several years after we moved in a quarry opened less than a mile behind us. Thankfully it is on the other side of a ridge, out of sight from our property. But we can hear the equipment running and both hear and feel (!) when they blast.

I hear you! We do think of that. One never knows...

 

[steady saver]

We moved from city to 7.5 acres of land. I absolutely love it and would not trade it in for anything in the world.

Advantages: beautiful scenery, peace and quiet. Less expensive property taxes
due to farm and forest deferral.
Disadvantages: Up in the hills so winter can be nasty (although now that I am no longer w*rking it doesn't matter) and when I was working, a long commute. A bit of a drive into town, so running errands takes planning.

It does take extra time to maintain the property, although I recently got sheep to keep some pastures down and allow my neighbor to graze her horses and donkey on the rest.

Luckily our winters are mild comparatively speaking. How is the sheep venture going? DH would like to try sheep at some point.

 

[steady saver]

Well, it is not quite a farm, but I do have a small garden. I moved from the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County with 2.9 million people and big city politics to a small town in Ventura County.
Instead of being in a "concrete canyon" as DW called it, we live in a beautiful valley with lots of agriculture. Our front porch looks out on a 2,000 foot mountain a couple of miles away

Beautiful!!!

 

[steady saver]

[You call 2000 ft a “mountain “?... that’s a hill ; although if I remember, the tallest hills in the UK are only about that high. 10-14 k ===> mountain]


moved from city to rural area, it’s only about 11 miles to town and the airport A few grocery stores in town , the Trader Joe is a number of miles farther in the next town Biggest problem is sometimes lack of variety of certain stores or need to special order from them to get what you want. Also have more problems getting tradesmen to get out to you (extra cost and time lost getting there so some don’t want to bid jobs or seriously increase costs)


as others have noted, to be efficient you have to have knowledge of what you need and where to go when you head out.... lots of list making otherwise you spend too much time and gas (try to make even trips to the dr or Rx pickup serve multiple purposes)

{ ... and we do look out our back porch and windows to quite a few *mountains*}

We've definitely encountered the challenge of getting tradesmen to actually show up at times. And while we're pretty good at planning and list making, it is nice in the city to have so much within a 5 min. drive.

 

[street]

We live in a very small town but have a ranch with a cabin. I would move to the ranch in a heartbeat but I would be going alone. LOL I don't have animals and I don't lease out any of the land for cattle etc.. I do work the land and improve and enjoy the landscape and outdoors very much. When I'm not there I want to be there.

I just never have felt it was my place in life to be where there is so many people.