Kissing the Suburbs Goodbye

We are embarking on a new adventure. It’s the same adventure many of our friends long for and many of our peers across the country have also joined. We are returning to the soil, to the farm, and saying goodbye to the suburbs. It seems to be a phenomena with my generation (those misplaced children of the 80s). Raising kids in a place and time where the safety and quality of our food is in question, and the excesses of rampant consumerism have left many of us feeling sick to our stomachs, and our bank accounts, certainly must be part of it. All I can speak to is why my family is longing for this change. First is the problem with the suburbs.

As I type this I am sitting in the suburbs. My parents refer to this house as being “in the city,” but it really isn’t. It is in the desert that is life between the country and the city. As a youth I longed for this life, but I didn’t really understand it. I’m a true farm kid from an independent family dairy farm my grandparents began back in the 1950s. As a rural kid, I had no idea how unique this type of upbringing was becoming, and I certainly didn’t fully appreciate it. The city seemed like a great escape from the monotony of the farm. I daydreamed about being able to walk somewhere other than my grandma’s house, or to be within a few minutes drive of everything culture had to offer.

The suburbs seemed promising. A compromise between the “dangers” of urban life but still with the convenience of the city. As I sit here I can now say this did not prove true to me. I could complain about our house itself, a poorly designed copy of every other house in the suburbs, but I believe I could make any house work. It's not the house, it's the location. The suburbs are not neighborhoods with conveniently located grocery stores and shopping. I can’t walk anywhere. There are no bike paths or neighborhood cafes. There is no sense of culture or neighborhood identity. The suburbs are miles of residential pockets that still require a decent drive to get anywhere. I thought living outside the city would provide some privacy, but it doesn’t. You’re still stuck between houses full of people, just as you are in a row of houses in the heart of the city. I also thought the suburbs would at least give me a yard to landscape and room for my children to play, but my yard is too small to fully utilize as a garden and the lack of privacy in our yard makes it hard to fully enjoy being outside. I’ve had 7 years to realize this. 

Over the past few years this reality of the "suburban desert" has closed in on us, in no small part to our growing desire to cut expenses, cut our carbon footprint, and get away from my neighbor's crazy dogs! This was what drove home to my husband and I that we had to choose between the rich culture of actually living in the city and having a real neighborhood with shops in walkable distance that makes the lack of privacy worth it, or to do the opposite and move away from our metropolitan altogether and commit to a long commute in exchange for privacy and a chance at attempting a more sustainable lifestyle. Choosing between these two options was easy once we began to explore rural homesteads. Standing out in a field in the open spaces of the Midwest watching my daughter pick up fossils in a dried up pond bed made it clear to me. I need to go home.