Country living has its ups and downs. The downs are primarily transportation-related: during this past season of the recurring check engine light (currently off, but we shall see), I have not been crazy about being car dependent. Furthermore, the lane – which is unpaved and used by heavy delivery trucks – is not friendly to may car’s shocks (these were replaced during one of my frequent visits to the garage recently). From an environmental standpoint, I disapprove of this driving for lifestyle tradeoff I’ve made.
Economically, it makes sense only if I accept that current fuel prices are real (that is, that they cover both the cost of obtaining the fuel and the environmental impacts associated with my using it), which I do not. I think if we paid a more realistic price for gasoline, we’d be bitching a lot more and driving a lot less. Plus it’s kind of silly to compare a one room apartment in the country with the sort of apartment that I would deem acceptable in town – I would need a lot more space if I were not surrounded by it just beyond my door.
It’s not that easy to have a social life living where I do – people rarely just drop in, and I am not all that open to going out for a drink unless it’s right after work. It can’t ever be more than *a* drink because I will be driving home (there are few people I enjoy enough to want to commit to crashing. I like to end my evening when I choose, and in my own space, generally). But, yeah, casually hanging out and all that, it’s a lot harder when you’re over 20 km away from a decent pub (ironically, I am close to that magnet of neon in the sky, the racetrack/slots hell that is the Mohawk. People drive a lot more than 20km to stick coins into slot machines, I observe. I have never been inside. The closest I came was watching a few races with Ruth on close-captioned tv while sitting at the Mohawk restaurant, and that only because Ruth stood to earn some cash if any of the horses she is involved with were to win.) However, the social life drawbacks of life in the country have not been that big a deal for me because a) I tend to focus on work during the week and life on the weekends, and then I’m usually not here anyway; and b) I like people fine, and I love going for the above-referred-to drink and talking about something interesting, but I also like my own company. I get tired from being around too many people (“too many” = any number greater than one).
But, despite the environmental guilt, marginal economic rationality and going one step further toward crazy cat lady without a cat realities of living here, I chose this and I like it. I have no intention of giving it up anytime soon. Consider the upsides: at night, it is dark. If I get up at 3 a.m. and crank the radio, nobody notices and nobody cares. I can wander outside on a summer’s morning and encounter an assortment of dog, cats, chickens, horses, donkey and farm personnel. Also, rabbits, but I wish I had friends who liked to shoot cute fluffy rabbits, because they keep eating my plants. I have space for plants and kayak and gear and ample parking. I can hear crickets while lying in bed, I have access to the world’s best in-ground pool, I can wander up to the fields and steal some parsley if I want it. This is only a partial list of why I like life as a barn troll.
Until recently, one of the first things I would have listed as an upside to the farm life is the water: I’m on well water. The farm has three wells: one for the main house, one for the barns and labour lodge, and one for irrigation. We are in the headwaters of Bronte Creek, and the water tastes *great*. Not like chlorine, because it’s not chlorinated, and in Ontario, ever since the whole Walkerton debacle, you can’t help but smell the chlorine if you are not used to drinking it.
Except I’ve been half-assedly boiling it (or, more frequently, running it through my water filter) of late. The last test for my well came back not so happy. Actually, it came back with the big red box that says “DO NOT DRINK” marked with a fat checkmark. Before that came in the mail, the health unit phoned to say the same thing. I was pretty cavalier about this. I grew up drinking well water which tested with various levels of coliform bacteria, all of them harmless to us well-water-drinking types. Whatever. I casually started filtering my water, thinking, alarmist landlord, why bother. But then he called again and said he got the lab results, and it’s e coli. My response was, which strain? And the lab results don’t tell him that (I know, I demanded them, they just say >80ppm e. coli. Those are not lab results. That’s water testing for dummies: if the green box lights up, you’re good, if the red box is marked, it’s bad. Sheesh.) So, for now, I’m being a little bit more vigilant about not drinking the tap water – at least until the next set of test results. For now, I’m annoyed. I’ll be doubly annoyed when he shocks the well tonight and I can’t use the water until he gets the chlorine out tomorrow (I’m also on a septic bed. No bleach down my drains.)
This is what happens when you don’t go away for the weekend. You end up being inconvenienced by well-cleaning efforts, defrosting your freezer and cleaning out the fridge. (How is this “weekend”?) (he freezer went on the fritz, the compressor is fine but the plug was not happy and thus flaky. I think I have it running reliably again, and I spent the morning separating food from plastic, so as to dispose of each in its proper manner. My freezer is now humming along happily, and if it stops again, it’s not crucial. All that is in there right now is eight blocks of tofu. That was all that I felt like rescuing from the big pile of melted food. I choose to believe that with tofu you can freeze, thaw, and freeze again.
Only good thing is that the landlord has promised beer after the well-shocking process, and *I* don’t have any beer, thus I assume his fridge does. We shall see. At least I don’t have to drive to his house.