What's up with the rural obsession?

[louisa05]

You may be right, but it's also complete bullshit IMHO to pretend that this is either a biblical mandate or something that is part of frugal living.

If you like gardening and like the taste of fresh-grown stuff and the ability to control what goes into your food, knock yourself out.

I know that urban farming has been proposed in Detroit, but in high COL urban areas (like mine), single family detached homes with lots large enough for a garden are not cheap. A family where the husband works in the city wouldn't say, "oh, the wife can garden and crochet and do crafts to be super-frugal". When we were trying to live as cheaply as possible when Girl 2 was a baby, we had an apartment in the city that allowed my husband to walk to work, and allowed us to walk to most of the things that we needed. Land and cars cost money, and cities tend to have more free or low-cost programs.

Maybe I'm off-base, but I'm also wondering if there is a race/ethnic dynamic to this as well.

My dad worked in agribusiness his entire life. We lived in rural farming communities. I knew how to stamp scale tickets at harvest by age 9. Raising tomatoes in a window box does not make you a farmer. The phrase "urban farming" really needs to go away.

[Trynn]

When I showed off my knitted socks at church, the ladies gushed over them, and then one of them said, "Look at her, she's all ready for the end times!"

Right. Because I totally raised my own sheep and spun and dyed my own wool.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I think it'd be really cool to be able to do that, and someday I'd like to. However, knitting my own socks in no way prepares me for the last days, especially when I bought the yarn at Ye Aulde Yarne Shoppe.

[Peas n carrots]

I live on a farm, and actually farm, with my 72 year old Mother, and I can tell you every day is NOT sunshine and roses as a matter of fact most days aren't. To hot, to cold, livestock sick, well pump goes out, raccoon in the hen house that has to be trapped and killed, one acre (yup it is big) garden going great guns then wake up to half of it eaten over night by Asian Beetles, trapping mice out of the strawberry patch before they eat them all, voles eating half the potatoes, or a late spring like now when we don't even have anything in the garden yet, farm living ain't for the faint at heart like Lori!!

This times 1000x. My maternal grandparents grew up on farms, and farming is hard f'ing work. Women ran the household, but they were also expected to help out in the fields, help out with the farm animals...they weren't sitting around the house half the day batting lace. Any crafts they did were usually to produce something useful, such as quilts. Gardens weren't a hobby, they were for feeding your family. Vacations??? Pppssshhhttt...you got livestock to feed, crops to tend to. Your farm is your life.

I grew up a town kid, but many of my good friends lived on farms. Although they had it easier than my grandparent's generation, they still had far more responsibility than I did. If I wanted to do something fun with my farm friend after school, I would often help them with their chores so they could get it over with faster. I remember my one friend in particular as a 15 year old had responsibility over 150 head of cattle - how many people trust their kids with a dog, much less 150 animals dependent on them for survival?

This may be something very specific to my area, but where I live (Toronto area), urban areas are ethnic and rural areas are white. A few ethnic groups are into urban gardens (every self-respecting Italian nona seems to grow tomatoes and can a whole years' worth of sauce), but it's more common here for ethnic groups and immigrants to live in apartments where gardens just don't exist.

Here, ethnic groups also tend to be urban (or at least suburban) because that's where the community and the services are.

When I picture this old-fashioned family, with a mom at home crocheting and gardening, I'm picturing a family that has either lived there for ages, or that's nostalgic for a time when their grandparents did that. Again, where I live, that means picturing a white, non-ethnic family, because most of the non-white immigrants came later, when land was more expensive. I don't know many ethnic families where their are memories of a quiet country life, just puttering in a garden and doing some crafts to pass the time. The only person like that I know is my dad, because his grandfather happened to own a farm where he rented out shacks for the summer (really cool article about the place: http://www.cjnews.com/node/83993). Otherwise, most ethnic women WORKED - as hired farm labor, as garment workers, in factories, running stores, cleaning, or just doing whatever they had to do to survive.

A lot of the families that settled my home state in the 1860's-1880's bought land from the railroads, who advertised throughout Europe to purchase land at a ridiculously cheap price. People who wanted land were also able to get land due to the Homestead Act which required them to stay on their claim for 5 years and cultivate the land (I don't remember the exact details - I'm going off memory on what the Homestead Act entailed). The non-white immigrants came a couple generations too late to get in on the inexpensive land.

The families that came over and homesteaded had to adapt quick or die - they lived in dugouts or sod homes until a farmhouse could be built. They endured insect plagues, prairie fires, extreme weather conditions, and loneliness living on the plains - it was a massively different world for them. Not to mention the families had to till and cultivate the land - it was still virgin prairie and the prairie grass made the soil difficult to till.

I recommend Lori to read "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. I wonder if she would see Homesteading as such a romantic endeavor after reading the book?