4 Simple Reasons We Chose the Simple Life

Growing up, you start to formulate these daydreams in your mind about what your future will look like. If those thoughts drift to marriage and children, you tend to imagine what life will look like through that lens. I always imagined three children, living in a big city, and becoming a newscaster. What does life look like for me now?

I got the three kids part right. That’s about it.

What I did not bargain for was moving to a farm in the same hometown of LaFollette that both myself and my husband have lived in our entire lives, chasing goats and chickens and dealing with sketchy internet service. You are certainly not going to see me on the nightly news.

But I would not trade it for the world.

Why did we abandon living in the comfort and predictability of a residential area to 40 plus acres of land in the middle of nowhere? Sometimes I’m still not sure which north facing tree or cow pasture I am supposed to make a left turn by in order to make it home. But allow me to share with you four simple reasons we made the change for a life of less:

1). We Long to Roam

Remember when you were a kid and you would wake up, eat a bowl of cereal as quickly as possible, stack those neon socks as high as you could and bolt out the door to play, your side ponytail flowing in the breeze? Yeah, me too. I would come in for lunch then come back in as the sun set. We longed for our children to have those same freedoms we did during our childhood. Where we lived before, our yard was very small, we were right next to a busy road, and we had neighbors literally on all four sides of our home. Letting our children run and play without boundaries was impossible. Now, they have land: fields, a barn, a pond, and seemingly endless shares of wooded area to explore. Life for them, and for us, is now truly an adventure in our own backyard. Now I finally know what my mom meant when she would turn up her nose at us as kids and say, “Shew. You guys smell like the outdoors.”

2). Sustainable Living

We live in a culture of almost instant gratification. Internet, cell phones, stores on every corner all provide us with the opportunity to “have” what we think we “need” at a moment’s notice. We loved the idea of trying something new (for us)–living off the land. This is foreign to me, the girl who used to make emergency trips for ice cream at 11pm, but so far we have fresh eggs every morning, we have a freezer full of deer meat, and we are going to try our hand at gardening this summer. And let’s be honest–the pizza delivery guy won’t drive out this far. Moving on…

3). To Simplify

Stuff. It is everywhere, and we were feeling overwhelmed, to be honest. The home we live in currently is the same size as the home we moved from plus an extra bathroom. We were not looking to buy a huge, expensive home with empty rooms to fill with more and more earthly things. Instead, we bought a home that was in major need of repairs (I went a good while without a kitchen sink!), made it our “project” and got rid of a lot of items cluttering our home. Less to store, less to trip over. We dropped our cable and have an antenna that picks up about 20 Canadian cooking shows and the nightly news. Am I thankful for text messaging and Netflix? You betcha.

4). The Land Will Leave a Legacy

My husband and I are small town folk with big dreams. He is in law enforcement, I am stay at home mother and a writer. When our lives on earth are through, we will not have mass amounts of money to leave our children. But what we will have is land—land that they can divide between the three of them to do with as they please–to build their own homes and raise another generation of God fearing families who still find perfectly good reasons to make emergency ice cream runs at 11pm. Even in the country.

And when we get bored of the farm life? Market Square and the Sunsphere are just a short drive away.

Have you made a recent life change in your family? Have you ever googled things like “how to worm a goat” and “are black snakes poisonous”? Let me know in the comments below!