The advantages of rural living are so many, I really don’t know where to begin! I guess I’ll start with the one that most people never really even notice, until they have lived in the country for a while. The noise! When you live in the city, you grow accustomed to a certain level of background noise. It’s aways there. Whether it’s the rumble of traffic that never seems to end. Or the wailing of sirens in the background. It’s constant and never-ending! If you live in the city you become accustomed to it. It’s just once you’ve moved into the country that you realize just how awful it really was!

For myself, I had truly forgotten what silence actually is! It’s a little disconcerting at first because you have forgotten how to live without a constant barrage of sounds that pound your mind twenty-four seven, day in day out. Now that I have lived in the country for several years, I can’t imagine ever living in the city again! With the quiet and the security that you feel, it gives you a sense of peace you thought was gone forever!

When you live in the rural parts of your country, you actually get to know every neighbor that you have, and thats not many! Thank God for small miracles! Ha! But seriously folks. You really get to know and care about the people who live around you. After time, you become a very tight knit family. There is a feeling of closeness that developes as the years roll by. If something is going on in your neck of the woods, everybody knows about it! If there is a stranger who shows up in your very large but sparsely populated neighborhood, they are recognized as being out of place extremely quick. So there won’t be much mischief they can get into without the authoriries being notified right away! That is precisely why the crime rate is just a fraction of inner-city living.

No, you don’t have all the shopping and intertainment choices that city life provides, but you learn pretty quickly how to adapte to your new surroundings. I know I did! Whether you go to the local lakes or streams with friends and family for an outdoor picnic, or you go to the Drive-in Theatre on saturday night’s, it’s truly a great way of life! Yes my friends, Drive-in Theatre’s still exist, believe it or not!. It’s a great feeling of closeness and security when you know most of the people that you see or bump-in to, on a daily basis, and you grow accustomed to this sense of belonging somewhere, very quickly.

Whether your standing around shooting the bull with your friends at the Farmers Co-Op or spending a Saturday afternoon on the town square at the Farmers Market, rural living is hard to beat! Yes, it takes you a while to be accepted. All the locals are waiting to see if you stay because if you listen to them, most city-folks can’t deal with country living! Now that I’ve become one of them, I have to agree! We see a lot of city-folk come and go over the years because as we say, they’ve become “Citified!”

In all honesty, I really can’t imagine living in the city, ever again. I know if I have my choice, the city has seen the last of me! Forever! I wouldn’t change the way of life I have now for anything in this world! Since I have become country-folk, I’m country for life! I truly believe that if you give country living a real chance, your days in the city are totally over! For myself and my family. We have forgotten how it would be to live anywhere else. Living in the country is a whole new beginning, in a better life! For the people who live here, we can’t even imagine wanting to live anywhere else, What would be the point? Once you’ve had a taste of heaven, it’s extremely hard to want anything else!

In conclusion. Let me say this. Living in the country has countless advantages! Whether your talking about your children going to school. Drug abuse, crime. The noise. Security and peace of mind. For the many of us who have come to know what it feels like to live here in the rural parts of our nation. We wouldn’t exchange it for anything the city has to offer, and that my friends, is the absolute truth about the advantages of living in the country. Regardless of which country you live in!