I could hear the wind rustling through the dry corn stalks in the fields as I was walking down to the of turkey farm at the end of my road this morning. The sound was so soft and soothing. Only the birds chattering above my head on the electric wires, broke the stillness of my surroundings. I am a country girl at heart, born and raised in rural Indiana. My house is flanked on three sides by corn and soybean fields. Two neighbors live to the east of us in a woods but even they are not close. Our vegetable garden and chicken house separate us from them.
For a very short time in my life, I lived in the city. The first was when I was in college at Purdue in West Lafayette. Then, when my children were young, I lived in a subdivision close to their schools. However, as soon as they left home, I moved back to the country. Everything just seems too close and too noisy in the city. I make a 45 minute drive 4 days a week into Indianapolis to work in an inner city clinic. To me, it’s worth every minute of that drive to get back every night to my farmhouse.
There are definitely downsides to living in the country. We don’t have many of the services city folk enjoy such as close proximity to shopping, public transportation and snow removal. I learned this very well my first winter in my present home. Indiana doesn’t typically have many inches of snow annually. However, sometimes old man winter decides to really dump on us as he did that year. I thought I could get out after the snowstorm in my 4 wheel drive jeep but promptly became stuck in my yard trying to get around a huge drift. There was no getting to work that morning. Tim and I weren’t yet married. So I trekked through the knee-deep snow down to the end of my road with my dog for him to rescue us in his truck.
The road had been cleared when I returned later that day. It wasn’t the county that had moved the snow but our farm neighbors in their tractors. One such neighbor, came to my aid to clear out my drive with his huge snow blower. He also offered to help Tim pull out my jeep. It worried me just a bit when he told me that he had not long before been in the hospital with heart problems. “They had to shock me to get my heart started again,” he exclaimed. He wouldn’t be dissuaded from pulling the jeep out with his tractor. I watched and prayed that I would not have to do CPR on this kind man out in my snowy yard!
Such is the true grit and big hearts of the people of rural America. I love the quiet and the peace of living in the country but the people keep me here.
Thank God for good neighbors!
