Welcome back after a week of break while we moved! It’s official, we live in the country now. It feels so strange to say, but we’re out of the hotel and living in our little house in the woods. If you had asked me even 5 years ago what I thought I’d (Holly) be doing today, it definitely wouldn’t be sitting at a window and staring at row on row of trees without a job. I digress, it’s happened and here we are! I haven’t lived in the city my entire life, in fact for my teenage years I lived in a small town with 1600 people in it. It was still a town though, so I often heard the hustle and bustle of the cars driving down the main road and the school bus dropping kids off or picking them up. It was a slower life, but it wasn’t a country life.
When we pulled up to the new house, the first thing I noticed was how unprepared we were to deal with the mud situation at our house. Our driveway is dirt and the contractors had made a huge mess of it with their trucks. Sylas walked in the mud and almost lost a shoe and we had to drive to town to buy work-boots to get unloaded into our storage pod. That’s when I knew things were going to be different here and that this city-slicker had some learning to do. When it came time to unload the storage pod, things had dried up a bit but we put boxes down so we didn’t track mud onto the freshly renovated floors.
This is just one example. Today I want to share the Top 5 differences I’ve noticed living in the country for the last week. I will preface this by saying we only live 20 minutes away from 3 towns, so we aren’t in the middle of nowhere nowhere but for us, this is quite a different lifestyle.
Wildlife is Everywhere
There’s this idea in Canada that the great north includes Moose and Deer and maybe geese, but let me tell you, it’s much more than that. In the week that I’ve been here I’ve seen more wildlife than I saw in the last 8 years in London. There’s a chipmunk that I see run across our driveway every morning, there’s wild turkeys strutting around town (I literally saw 15 of them hanging out in someone’s front yard), there’s geese, birds, bugs, wolves, coyotes… The list goes on. In fact, on our first night here, one of our cats killed a mouse and placed it as an offering to us with their toys for the morning. It’s like everywhere you look, there’s something living and thriving, especially in this early spring.
Amenities
I expected moving into the country to come with a set of challenges, like how far we are from a grocery store and things like that. I expected this to be a DISTANCE issue, that we would have to drive 30 minutes to get the basics like a doctor, dentist, vet, hospital, coffee.
What I wasn’t prepared for was a complete lack of services and available supports in the community. This community is beautiful and vibrant and full of diverse people. It’s sad that there are no doctors for people here, with some OHIP patients waiting on a list for upwards of 5 years! How’s that for “accessible” and “free” healthcare. Without getting political, of course there’s a doctor shortage, but more needs to be done by way of preventative care in rural communities. This is unacceptable, considering the tax paid is the same.
I digress, there’s also a complete lack of veterinary care for up to 1.5 hours around us. Every single vet clinic was full. I don’t even know if there was emergency vet services. In short, we will end up having to drive to Ottawa for these services, which I recognize is a privilege that a lot of people can’t afford.
It’s so Quiet!
The evening after we moved in, I sat in our bedroom and I think that was the single QUIETEST moment I’ve ever had in my life. I struggle with some sensory issues with noise, because I have hearing loss, so some of my hearing range is particularly sensitive, but it was just … nothing. No hum of electronics (nothing was plugged in yet), no neighbourhood children outside playing, nothing for the dogs to bark at. You know that saying “the silence in deafening”? It’s true. It was so quiet it actually started to hurt my ears after a while and I had to go outside to listen to the wind in the trees. I didn’t expect that!
Waste
People make a lot of waste. I don’t mean toilet waste (though that too), I mean GARBAGE. Everything you buy comes in a box, that comes with styrofoam and plastic. Every food item you buy that you don’t make yourself comes in plastic packaging. We have a garbage PROBLEM in the world, that much is true, but I never really realized how much waste two people generate just living day to day. We don’t have trash collection here, though we do live down the road from the dump, so it’s very obvious what we waste. That’s not to say that we aren’t recycling (we are), or composting (we are soon!), but the actual amount of things that we can’t is… staggering. I won’t get into too much of the detail here, but it definitely makes me much more cognizant of the need for eco-friendly solutions for things. I pledge to make less waste this year.
The People
The people here are second to none. Everyone smiles at you. Everyone give you the nod. Everyone asks how you’re doing. It’s different. It’s quintessential … community. Not to say that London doesn’t have nice people, but it’s different. It’s a faster pace and people don’t take the time to say “hello, how are ya bud”. There’s a general want to help. I’ve had some of the best service in my life, and some of the kindest welcoming… Which is just what I needed to feel like I can get my footings in a new community.
I hope you’ve enjoyed! Stay tuned for next week when I talk about planning our farm business.
Rainbow River Alpacas 