Moving and Raising Kids in the Country

What happens when you move your children to raise them in the country? If you can’t get daydreams of a quaint farmhouse out of your mind, why wait until retirement? We took the leap when our son was eleven – six years before we would find ourselves empty-nesters – and it was the best decision we ever made. Part of me wishes we would have done it years sooner. Read on to find out why it changed our lives for the better!

Country Life was in my Blood

I am the daughter of an only child who was raised on a small family ranch. My own childhood was filled with my father’s enchanting stories of farm life. He grew up in the sunny, sprawling Texas countryside of the 1950’s.

His family raised cattle and at age six he learned to milk a cow. At seven years old, my father had his own Welsh pony, Ginger, that he rode over the pastures. At eight he received a .410 shotgun that he used for dove hunting and to protect himself from rattlesnakes. A creek ran through the family farm and pooled in a deep area where he fished for catfish, perch and swam every summer. He would place a watermelon from the field in the babbling stream so it was refreshingly cool by lunch time, slicing it open with his pocket knife. When a mother cow died after giving birth to a calf, my dad bottle fed Socie (So-she) twice a day for three months. She spent the rest of her life on the farm waiting for him at the fence, following him around and even camping with him and his friends!

Mother Nature’s School Room

My dad learned to identify wild muscadine grapes, knew the weather would be written across the face of the sky before it changed, and learned wisdom directly from nature herself. I still love to hear the stories he tells. His childhood sounded idyllic; like it could have come from the pages of an old-fashioned classic novel.

Now it was time for me to make a decision

Even though I knew my dad had cherished growing up in the country, I spent months seriously considering how a move might affect my son. At the time he had dozens of friends and life-long playmates all over our cul-de-sac. What if we moved somewhere that doomed him to having almost no one? We found our house in May of 2018, when the Texas summer heat had driven all the kids out of the streets and into the pool. The neighborhood seemed empty and childless, which caused me even more concern. My heart kept telling me that this was the right move. With no knowledge of there being a single child my son’s age, we bought the farmhouse we fell in love with and trusted everything would be okay.

Yes, there are kids in the country!

Five days after moving in, I took my son to the local library for a summer craft activity in the hopes that he could meet some new friends. I walked into a room of nearly fifty country kids and was shocked. There were so many! And they were all so nice! It seemed to me that when friends live a bit further away, they become precious. The children’s actions seemed to show a little more considerateness for their peers. The schoolyard tiffs and frequent bullying that were so common in the suburbs were nearly absent. I heard children saying thank you and yes ma’am regularly. I loved how relaxedly casual everyone’s dress and demeanor were; there was little focus on fashion, which I found refreshing.

Families Are Moving out to the Country Every Day

We had been in our house three weeks when we discovered there were nine children my son’s age in our neighborhood of around 100 acreage homes. Within 11 months, five more kids his age had moved in and every time a house went up for sale, more families came. (There were more toddlers and grade schoolers moving in than I could keep track of!) My fears of there being no children for my son to befriend now seem silly in hindsight.

An Adventurous Childhood Began

We were carrying boxes into the house on the second move-in day when we spotted a pair of twin fawns lying in the grass near the back fence. Our son went to get a closer look and could hardly pause the rest of that week to unpack his room because he was so enthralled by everything around him. He started work on a rope ladder for a tree hideout immediately. He interrupted our unpacking constantly to show us a never-ending parade of discoveries: a tiny brown snake, a lizard with a vibrant blue tail, a female cardinal sitting on a nest. Everything captured his interest.

Outside Time and Reading Increased!

One day we found our son on a branch up in the tree, flipping through the nature books he hauled up in a green bucket, looking up various bird species and attempting to identify the mole cricket he had unearthed. He would pause to watch the deer with their fawns as they approached the feeder, unaware of his presence. His interest in reading and learning seemed to explode. More than once we were startled by the crashing noise of a stack of books toppling off his bunk bed in the middle of the night. I learned to keep a large glass jar handy so he could more closely observe a bug or crayfish he netted. When a hummingbird showed up, he insisted on learning right then how to make sugar water for her. In the country we watched our child begin to thrive.

The move brought good changes

After spending the summer of 2018 almost constantly outside, our boy grew able-bodied and gentle in a way I didn’t know to expect. He was content to sit and quietly observe what nature was doing around him. The impulsive desire to smash and destroy seemed to evaporate. (If you have boys, you know what I’m talking about!)

Children Become Calmer, Gentler & More Aware of Others

We saw our son become observant, being the first to alert us that wasps were building a nest in the chimney after noticing individuals repeatedly entering the chimney cap. He befriended a doe, helped raise a litter of kittens and our first batch of chicks at the same time and sheltered a baby squirrel. Meanwhile he was making wonderful new friends and started showing some entrepreneurial tendencies by offering neighborhood pet sitting. With the cash he earned, he bought a go kart to fix up and tinkered in the garage, learning the mechanics of small engine repair. The growth and time together our family enjoyed was phenomenal.

All this in the first year

We have been in our farmhouse for ten months and the amount of happiness we have gained has convinced us a move to the country was the best gift we could have given ourselves.  It was a big decision. It was uncertain and scary. We had no idea what to expect. Thank goodness for bloggers and YouTubers who told me the same things I’m saying here: the country is a wonderful place to grow up! Their words brought me comfort, as I hope my words bring encouragement to all who are feeling the country life calling to them.

Would I do it again?

Yes! In a heartbeat! Only this time I would move to the country years sooner. We are not the only family dreaming of moving and raising kids in the country. It seems there is a quiet exodus of folks who want more fresh air and wide open spaces for their children.

If you, too, are on this path and want to know more about what to expect, you can read about our moving experiences here:

About the header image:

I’m so glad I randomly snapped a picture of the rope ladder my son created first thing after moving in. It was so perfectly imperfect that it made me smile every morning when I saw it. During our first winter, a buck got his antlers tangled in the ladder late one night and his thrashing tore the weather-weakened rope from the tree. The picture of it still reminds me of how over-the-moon happy our son was to learn the land he loved would now be his home.