My husband and I moved from Denver to a small farm town in Indiana two years ago. Why? (That is what everyone always asks when they hear our story.) All our immediate family was gone from Colorado and we have a lot of Indiana relatives. Living in the country with all our pets, and trying out a more relaxing life style was very inviting, so the decision was made. Let’s go for it!
Being recently retired, we needed something to keep us busy besides mowing the lawn and shoveling snow, so we started a Web site. It is still under construction, but seems to be moving in the right direction. We have all sorts of basic, down-home recipes and a few fun stories about country life thrown in. This excerpt is from our Country Fun column.
April 24, 2008
My mind was just kinda jumping around today to a lot of different thoughts about food as it relates to living in the country. I believe if you are thinking of moving out of the big city, you need to consider the following:
First, don’t forget if you move to the country, Pizza Hut and Dominos DO NOT deliver. If you want take out pizza, you have to go get it yourself. And with the cost of gas these days, that about doubles the cost of your pizza! (Some towns are so small they don’t even have pizza, imagine that!)
Second, if you are addicted to Burger King, McDonalds, Arbys, Wendys, or whatever, forget it. When you live away from town, you can’t just drive by and grab lunch. You’re usually driving by a field of cows, or a hog house, or a corn field, but not any quick lunch stop. By the time you drive to the closest town to search out that Big Mac or Whopper, you could have gone home and made a three course lunch in your own kitchen. No convenience food out on the farm.
Third, if you have big ideas about growing your own organic food as soon as you get that home in the country (to make up for not getting your Whoppers and pizza), be prepared. It takes a mountain of information to do organic gardening the right way and you may be forced by armies of small creepy, crawly creatures to give up your well-meaning projects almost before you get them started. Your first purchase for organic gardening should be The Big Book of Bugs. Of course, even after you identify them (and sometimes they all look alike) you need to learn the best, non-chemical way to keep bugs from devouring your beautiful garden. From my experience last year, the easiest and most efficient way to organically rid your plants of these pests might be to take a large broom and shoo them away, and if they don’t leave, just beat them to death with the broom. Hopefully, they will not be sitting on, let’s say, your tomatoes when you strike them with the broom and you will still end up with some produce and it will still be organic. No chemicals involved when you beat bugs with a broom. And you need to remember, there are a few “good” bugs, the kind that eat the “bad” bugs, so be sure you don’t confuse the two, if you can even tell them apart.
So those are a few of my advisory thoughts for today regarding food in the country. I’m sure I will have more later. There is a lot to learn out here!
