The Why

When I told people where we were moving, the response was typically, “Oh. Where is that?” accompanied by furrowed brow. I would elaborate on our geographical location… past this freeway, south of that one… yes, that one – the one notorious for the gosh-awful commute. There would be more furrowing, followed by, “that sounds far.” To which I would acknowledge, “Yes, it’s about a 45-minute drive. With no traffic.”  At this point, the dialogs diverged. Some would say, “you must be getting a really big house to be all the way out there,” or “I’m gonna have to look that up on the Google map.” Others would just smile politely.  Or their brow would furrow more deeply.

Throughout these conversations, I found myself trying to explain why.  Why would we, two presumably rational, well-educated adults, consciously decide to move out of Orange County, CA (the OC!) to a rural, unheard of community in the middle of nowhere? I would list off the features… the pool, the hot tub, the things most people get excited about… and then I would hit them with what I felt was the biggest selling point of all, the big reveal, the final detail that would make sense of it all, unfurrow the brows, lead to a chorus of “ohh” and “ahh” and enlightenment… I would enthusiastically, yet with casual deliverance, add… (drumroll please), “And, well, it’s all on 2 acres.”  Two acres?! Now most of you are probably on land or farm or ranch, and two acres doesn’t sound like much. And it’s not much. My favorite response came from a student, born and raised in the mid-west, “Wow, that’s a lot! I mean that’s not a lot by Missouri standards, but that’s a lot by California standards.” Yes. Most everyone else offered a much more disappointing response to this climactic punchline, something along the lines of, “That seems like a lot of work.”

So, here’s the why — which, to be clear, is not written out of a need to defend our decision. I write it because I think there are those who are curious and those who are like-minded. I also think it establishes our values.

I debated over how far back to go with this post. Why did we move to bum-fudge-Egypt, Southern California? Do I start with growing up as a child in Brandon, FL, before there was a mall or a movie theater or cable or cordless phones? When I rode horses and imagined I was Laura Ingalls Wilder while roaming the neighboring lots building forts with my cousins? What is now a main road there was named after my great-grandfather back when the road was nothing but dirt and led to his orange grove (it’s now a subdivision). Maybe farming is in my blood. Or maybe I’m just being nostalgic, a sentiment with which we’re all afflicted from time to time.

So maybe I start with the time I was in grad school and a visit to my aunt’s self-sufficient homestead in Wimauma reignited a longing for walks down idyllic country roads, gardening, and livestock. A longing that I wrote off as far too radically conventional (an oxymoron, I know). Given my “oh-so-important-career” and “I-am-sure-to-make-big-impacts- if-i-just-remain-focused” mentality at the time, even enjoying a leisurely walk down a dirt road seemed counter-productive and derailing.

Or maybe I just start with what I know now.  There are the practical reasons we moved here. And there are the other reasons. The other reasons are as follows:

1. We want room to roam. If there is a last child in the woods, please let it be ours. I’m reluctant to ever say we do anything for the betterment of our child, because just as sure as sh*t I do, he’ll wind up delinquent. Nevertheless, I happen to have a fairly thorough understanding of the benefits that outdoor play, open landscape, raw materials, and fresh air have on a child’s development. These are the things we value. Not square footage, not granite counter tops. Our son watches the sunset nearly every night. We talk about the variations in the moon’s cycle, where it rises and where it sets. He interacts with chickens and goats daily, learning to care for them, to control his excitement so that he doesn’t startle them. I’m sure I will write about this lots in the future, but if you want to know more now, I recommend you read this and this*

2. We want land. For the most part, we are probably just your typical, run o’ the mill “back to the landers.” When given the choice between a big new house or a big old lot, we chose the lot. And yes, it is a lot of work. Maybe we chose it because it’s a lot of work — because it’s the kind of work we like. The kind that makes you sweaty and sore and tired and so unbelievably fulfilled. We both have jobs that require us to spend a lot of time in front of the computer. It makes me grumpy. To counter that, I visit the chickens, check on the goats, pull some weeds, and dream and scheme about what the future might hold for us here.  In a future post, I’ll discuss how we came to this specific size of land at this precise time, but suffice it to say, we have plans. There is a 4 acre parcel behind us, and another 4 acres behind that, and another 4 acres tangent to us. The grass is always greener, my friends.

The view out the back of our property. See all those weeds? I want them for my goats.

3. We need to put down roots. While finding a place to live might be one of those, oh I dunno, practical reasons why people start house-hunting, it was a very weighty decision for us. Our families live in Texas and Florida. After renting in California for years, applying for jobs “back home,” and living in limbo, we finally decided it was time. Time for roots. Both the figurative and literal kind. After having our son, I felt an even stronger pull to find our own little corner of the world where we could carve out a little life as a family. Also, more literally, I like to grow my own food. After planting in the margins of our postage-stamp size rental house yard in OC, I finally mustered the courage to ask our landlord if I could put a few (by a few, I mean three) small  raised beds in the back of the back yard. He agreed. Hooray!

Then he changed his mind. “You may plant one 4×4 foot garden,” he decided. So I planted the hell out of that 16 square-feet, and we had corn and heirloom tomatoes, and it was… well it was what it was. But it just wasn’t cutting it. We wanted a place to call home. To grow food where we wanted, to paint a wall if we wanted, to have a backyard chicken without violating city ordinances… to feel a sense of place and “stay-puttedness.” So we began the search for home to settle as our own. While it’s true that there is land, room to roam, and homes available for sale in Orange County, there are practical reasons why this wasn’t the best choice for us.  I’ll save that for part 2.

-Kayla

*We don’t get anything for linking to these sites, we just thought it would be helpful to do so.