Former City Girl Living on A Farm

When I was 25, I was working for a bank in NYC. Almost a year later, I was living on a farm in Western Pennsylvania. Very few things would cause someone to make such a drastic life change. I met my husband over the 4th of July weekend on the farm where I now reside about 14 years ago. Some friends invited me to a party and I had nothing better to do. Little did I know that someday that farm would be where I would be raising our 3 kids, 2 dogs, 1 cat, and 5 chickens. Scratch that, we are down to 2 chickens after a fox invaded our chicken coop last night.

Country life is so much different than city life. It took me a very long time to adjust. When I first moved here I kept wanting to order food, or go out to dinner, or go shopping. Nobody delivers food to our farm. There are very few restaurants. I do not consider Denny's a restaurant. Wal Mart is the only place to shop. People even buy their groceries there. Luckily my family still lives in Pittsburgh so I get to overdose on shopping when I visit. We now have an Aldi about 20 minutes away, so that is also pretty exciting. So, if you can do without the access you have in a big city, here is the tradeoff: fresh air, no traffic, and a sense of community.

In order to keep ourselves busy, we spend a lot of time outside. We got rid of TV nearly 12 years ago (before NETFLIX... GASP!) When my kids get restless, we go outside. We take long walks almost every day. We go to the creek and build dams. We pick strawberries at the local farm and can jam. In the winter, we go outside. We still take walks. We sled ride and build snow men.

I can't imagine raising my kids any other way. Here are some pics of our farm:

This photo was taken at sunrise on top of our hill

This photo was taken at sunset in front of the barn

This is a photo of our barn, built in 1885

Firework in front of the barn