And the questions march on . . .
Any utilities?
Water (more on that below), electricity, high-speed Internet. That's it. No garbage pick-up or sewage.
Do you have a well?
Our almost-ghost-village has a well, put in in the 1980s I think. It supplies three houses and the post office. We pay a very low flat fee monthly and have no restrictions on use.
We have good and plentiful groundwater here, which is the reason the town was built here. Before the village well, everyone had their own wells, and/or used windmills to pump water up. The two neighbors who don't use the community well still use their own wells.
Our water association (which is a funny name for something with four members) is run by our neighbors. The husband of the pair is very handy and takes care of the maintenance, and the wife does the paperwork and finance part of it.
Since we've lived here, we've never been without water for more than half a day. (Knock on LOTS OF WOOD.)
But, if we need to, we can always haul water from our neighbor's stock tank*.
It's in the pasture across the road from our house, and there's a gate right there that opens so you can drive a vehicle to the tank. It's supplied by a windmill, so power loss doesn't affect it. We've only had to use it once, but it's nice to know it's there and we can get water if we really need it.
Do the kids like living in the middle of nowhere?
In the interest of accurate reporting, I posed this question to the kids in question. (Cubby wasn't there when I asked this question.)
Poppy: Yes.
Jack: Yeah.
Calvin: Yeah. It's better than the other places we lived. (Editor's note: Neither of which were exactly bustling urban centers.)
Of course, they haven't really known anything different, since they've lived rural their entire lives. But whenever we visit family in more populous areas, they all remark on the traffic and noise and seem relieved to get home.
They don't really understand how unusual it is here.
11 comments:
Such an interesting read.
Linda
Thanks.
Ah, but you have a real phone!!
Oh yeah! We do have a phone. A landline, for while we pay a lot more than the Internet phone option, because landlines always. work.
what do you use for the kitchen stove? is that propane?
Kit: Yup, propane for the stove and furnace.
Re: real phone-- our land line is less reliable. . . if it rains, if there's a squirrel, if somebody randomly switches a wire, if the county mows and the phone company decided to just leave the phone line lying on top of the ground to be chopped to bits. Landlines don't always work, depending on where you live. Of course, I don't have a cell phone.
Love that picture of the dogs and the horse. So relaxing.
Sorry if you've answered this elsewhere but I'm now curious what you do with your garbage if you don't have garbage pick up?? And how do you handle recycling? Love these posts! :)
I remember my mother talking about riding the horse (with her younger brother hanging on seated behind her) out to the mailbox (about 1/2 mile from the house) every day. They grew up on a farm in the Oklahoma panhandle--during the 1920s and 1930s. Even though my mother didn't particularly care for the isolation, she clearly loved that farm and believed she had a great environment. I agreed and always thought it was beautiful in a flat sort of way...
Anonymous: I bet she had some stories about the dirt seeping into the house from the dustbowl days. THe panhandle is pretty close to us, and this was also dustbowl territory. All the old people tell me the stories their parents had about that time. I'm glad she had happy memories.
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