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Why Move to the Country

Reader Contribution by Nana
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Hello, I’m Nana, and I live with Grandpa in the country on a little piece of land I call Nana’s Ranch. Because I’ve only lived here full-time for a little more than a year, a lot of my blogs will be about discovery and overcoming things I never envisioned possible.

How did we end up in the country?

My husband and I moved from our beach house in Central California to our country property when we got tired of coastal fog and cold summer days. The transition was easy; it was something we had been looking forward to since we bought 20 acres in rural California ten years ago. Weekend visits throughout the years gave us time to put in electricity, a well, a water storage tank, an orchard of fruit and nut trees, fences, a bunkhouse, a pond, and a good sized chicken coop with a fenced yard.

On one trip back to the coast after a weekend visit to the ranch, Grandpa bought a two-month-old orphaned Boer doeling. She was on my lap, wrapped in a comforter, the entire three hour drive home. I didn’t know what we were going to do with her in our little cul-de-sac yard, and it turns out, neither did Grandpa! We built a fence around an extra large Dogloo, and she happily ate alfalfa and grain and played with our Catahoula. I took her for walks on a leash, and we even took her to the dog park so she could run, play, and cause a stir.

It wasn’t long before little Bordeaux was jumping out of her pen and into our yard. She liked the ferns and Swiss chard very much. She also liked harassing the chickens. You see, even though I lived in town, I had chickens. At the time, I had a flock of Bantam Silkies and a handful of dual purpose hens for egg production. I sold baby chicks at the pet store, pullets to others wanting to start a flock, and eggs to a few regular customers. Roosters were donated to the local zoo when neighbors complained about their noise. Now that we’re at the ranch, Bordeaux has goat friends, we have grown our chicken flock, added more fowl creatures, and we have equines.

One of our rescue donkeys, Guillermo, is a sweet boy who loves hugs, scratches, and treats.

Sometimes I’m brilliant and other times I make colossal errors in judgment. I hope my mistakes will serve as a warning to you but also offer support and comfort when you think you’re the only one things like this could possibly be happening to. Please celebrate my successes with me. If you’ve lived in the country for any length of time, you have learned that things don’t always go as planned, nor as they did for the neighbor, and they surely don’t go as the ‘How To’ books said they would! For these reasons, every good thing that happens in the country deserves a moment to drink in the victory.

Two cage-free Americauna hens scratch for bugs and grass in the yard at Nana’s Ranch.

With so many critters at Nana’s Ranch, it is an exciting place where the drama never seems to stop. Stay tuned!