Moving From The City To The Country Saved Her Life

00:00:14
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app, go to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And now, another story from Jake Kaiser. Jake is the author of Daffodil Hill, Uprooting My Life, Buying a Farm and Learning to Bloom, which tells the story of the traumas she’s faced and how moving to a farm helped her heal. And today he tells a more lighthearted story about the culture shock she experienced while meeting her neighbors after moving from the big city to the small town and how that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Here’s Jake.

00:01:13
Speaker 2: After I moved here, right away, the most surprising thing was how welcoming my neighbors were. Of course, they, you know, had some nosiness to him. They wanted to see what was going on, who had moved in. But one shows up on a tractor, and I hear it coming, and I’m like, “There is a tractor, a freaking tractor, coming up with my driveway!” I’m not even sure of the last time I’ve seen a tractor, especially when up close. There was a man on it who was dressed nicely: jeans and boots. But he has his shirt, plaid shirt, tucked in and just pulls right on up. Wanted me to know about my property lines. That’s very important here. So the next neighbor that shows up, I hear another loud noise. Didn’t sound like a tractor, but it sounded like a loud motor. I look out the window, and there’s a woman with long blonde hair and big sunglasses, and she’s on a four-wheeler holding a pie in one hand, and the other is controlling the four-wheeler, and there’s a big dog on the back, a Lab. And she gets off, comes over the door as I open it, and she just kind of comes in and introduces herself and hands the pie to me, and I’m floored that someone made me a pie, although it turns out it was actually from the Piggly Wiggly. And she goes, “I didn’t have time to bake, but this from the Piggly Wiggly, it’s really good. It’s like an egg custard.” And I just couldn’t believe that I was being welcomed with a pie. How many times have I? I think I’ve probably moved at least thirty times, being a military brat and, you know, just being very transient growing up, and I don’t recall anyone ever welcoming me to a neighborhood, much less giving me a pie. Well, then another neighbor shows up. After she leaves, another neighbor shows up, and he he says, “My wife’s out of town.” And she said it wouldn’t be neighborly of me if I didn’t take you to dinner on your first night here. And I was like, “Okay.” So he ends up picking me up early, four or five, and we went to the Cracker Barrel. And that was the first real conversation that I had with a neighbor where he informs me he wanted to know what my—basically—state my business here? What am I want to do? And I mean, I was a silly city girl, and I’m like, “I just want to—I just want to make sure everything is productive and pretty.” And he just thought—the look on his face was like, “What?” I’m like, “Yeah, I like form and function.” It’s got to have both. It’s got to be beautiful; it’s got to produce. And I was sitting there spouting off all these things I wanted to have, like I wanted to grow truffles. They don’t grow here.

00:04:45
Speaker 1: I didn’t know.

00:04:45
Speaker 2: I literally—I didn’t know that some of the breeds of chickens I wanted did not exist in the U.S. But he ended up calling me unusual. It’s like, “You are an unusual girl,” and I said, “That is not a compliment.” He goes, “I’m just telling you you’re unusual.” I’m like, “Okay, this is not going very well.” This is… I felt a little silly, but I felt like they thought I was silly, and I had no farm cred whatsoever. And he said, “I want you to know that we’re your family. It doesn’t matter what race you are, what, really—because he’d asked me if I was going what church I went to, and I told him I didn’t to have a church. And he said, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter what your religion is, what’s your race is, what’s your age, or socioeconomic situation is. In hard times, we are your family.’” And there may be times, like, let’s say, if there’s a tornado or something, when you won’t have acts, you won’t be able to leave, or people can’t make it in to us, and we are all a community, we are family, and it touched me deeply. I thought, “This is exactly what I’ve been looking for.” And, turns out, one of the reasons he was asked me what I wanted to do? You know, what kind of animals I wanted is because everyone kind of keeps track that, you know, if we need something, we know who’s doing what, and, you know, to an extent, and how we can all help. Or maybe he’s got extra hay that is going to go bad, but I need bedding, and so, that things—everybody just kind of helps. Like, if I’ve got too many eggs, I know there’s plenty of people around me that are willing to take them, because I was only one at the time. With chickens around here, most people had, you know, major livestock. But it was that sentiment of, “We are family,” that hit me hard and in a fantastic way.

00:07:01
Speaker 1: And a special thanks to Alex Cortes and to Robbie Davis for working on this piece and putting it together. And a special thanks to Jake Kaiser. What a thing to have happened to her, from going to the big city, moving around all of her life, to suddenly being greeted by men in tractors and women in four-wheelers with pies. The story of moving from city life to country life. Jake Kaiser’s story here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we’re bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can’t do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and get…