country livin'

We are now living in rural Amerika.

That is not bad, but this area is a lot more rural than our home in Idaho. The surrounding hills are huge wheat farms. They need a lot of land to make that kind of life work, and they do. Farms are in the 5 to 10 section size (640 acres to a section).

But here in the flat lands, there are lots an lots of little places. Some are active farms, some are “going to be” farms. Some have goats or cows or sheep running on them, though often the critter is a mostly neglected horse.

Lots of people think they need five or ten acres to be happy, but that is a lot of hobby land, and not nearly enough commercial dirt. The are is mostly small holdings a few acre in size.

Some of these little farms are badly neglected, with old car bodies and ancient RV’s scattered among the run down mobile homes. Others are well kept and orderly. While I am sure there are people who worry about such things, they seem to cohabit with a degree of calm.

We live a mile from the state line between Oregon and Washington. A mile to the East of us is the “old” highway that connected the larger town in Washington to the smaller one in Oregon.

A new straighter 4 lane road was built some years ago that connect the two. The “old” road was abandoned as the main road. Now it is just another country road. When I go to the farm store in Oregon, I usually drive the old road. It is not faster, but it is wonderfully more diverse.

There once was a lot of market gardens along the road (there are still a few) and the owners often built their stands right out on the edge of the road. As I drive the 7 or 8 miles into Oregon I drive by and marvel at these old buildings.

As a photographer and amateur architecture student, I find all of this infinitely more interesting than a row of MacMansions that dot the top of the hills in the area. I guess higher class mortgages need to be closer to God!

As it warms up and the beauty of the place emerges from it’s long winter nap, I’ll start taking pictures that I’ll post on this blog.

Meanwhile I marvel at the ruralness of it all.