Country surprises?

Don't forget about all those terrifyingly vicious rabid wooly bears.

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'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Make a house notebook. Page one is all the emergency numbers, numbers for all utility companies, all neighbors, and next of kin.

Page two is contact numbers for a plumber, electrician, and any other handy person that you or your spouse might need to contact. Water well service, septic service, ISP, etc.

Page three is a diagram of your place and all the buried lines.

The remaining pages can be appliance warranties, owners manuals, etc.

Other:

Get a driveway alarm unless you have a dog that knows to let you know that someone is heading to the house.

Get food grade five gallon water storage containers. Fill them and put them where they won't freeze.

Make sure your water system won't freeze. Be sure you know where your water lines are buried. Ditto on phone, electric, etc. Make a diagram and put it in your house notebook.

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

We had the same surprise as you. lol It didn't take long for the trash to pile up. One of our neighbors uses a mom and pop company, but they only pick up three bags a month. With our family we will fill that many in a week. We decided to burn what we could use them for what we can't burn.

I think our biggest surprise has to be how nice everyone is here. We kinda expected people to give us the cold shoulder because we are from California.

Literally LOL....So true. We even installed one after moving here and noone has used it yet.

The thing that surprised me is roosters cock-a-doodle-doo all day and ALL night but never at the crack of dawn.

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~TBB
The early bird may catch the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.

I totally agree with Wayne about the time necessary to not be considered a newbie. May take 20 years or more. Don't engage in gossip or even honest assessment of a local with a local. You don't know who is related to whom, who works for whom, etc. In rural areas that have not seen a lot of growth from the outside, seems like everybody is cousins. And it's ok for family to criticize family but not outsiders to do the same.

That being said I wouldn't trade the country for anything. A lot of good people with similar outlooks as mine.

Keep those doors locked though! Came out of a shower with a towel wrapped around me years ago and was face to face with a 70+ year old man looking for my husband. No harm intended on his part. He just figured I didn't hear him knocking on the door. I COULDN'T with the shower running...

And if you have young ones consider 4-H. It's a great way to get to know your neighbors and for everybody to learn a lot about many different subjects.

Also, find out when the local fair takes place and go. Usually inexpensive and a fun time!

I'd check it out yourself. There is a chance what you thought was a septic system is a cesspool with no field. You may not want to advertise the fact by involving others.

Rural gas stations run out of gas! And decide on their own hours, so I second having a few gas cans full. The hard part is keeping them full, somehow they are always empty!

And make sure you're really OK not locking the doors, we live in a very rural area, but there's lots of petty crime thanks to drugs.

The custom here is to pull in the driveway and sit in the car. Sometimes get out and stand by the car. The only people who ever knocked where the Jehovah's!

If someone lives down the creek from you, they live below you, if someone lives up the creek from you, they live above you. Elevation has nothing to do with it.

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Vicker
If you're born to hang, you'll never drown.

Hey it's not my fault I didn't know what it was.

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Knit and crochet design, editing, and teaching. See my blog or my Ravelry page!

Also 4Farthings dairy goats, heritage poultry, and bees!

Yeah I'm working on that... better safe than sorry and all. Part of the problem is old houses just have more outside doors than I'm used to I think, I will get used to it though. Being so dog tired from unpacking things all day while trying to get a garden in doesn't help. But I *really* want that garden, dang it!

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Knit and crochet design, editing, and teaching. See my blog or my Ravelry page!

Also 4Farthings dairy goats, heritage poultry, and bees!

Before we started keeping the front gate locked..they would blow the horn here and it drove me nuts. DH was raised here and I have been here 18 yrs and I still think it is rude to pull up in the driveway and blow the horn. I wouldnt go out..if they wanted to talk to me you can get out of the car and come to the door...lol

Now they have to call before they drop by because we have to go down and unlock the gate..lol

Seven kittens from the neighbor down the road. He went on vacation with the garage door open and they ran out of food..............

geo

That's a lot of kittens. We have are getting three cats from the local feral cat program, and they are all FIXED. The speed at which cats become "too many" is quite alarming!

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Knit and crochet design, editing, and teaching. See my blog or my Ravelry page!

Also 4Farthings dairy goats, heritage poultry, and bees!

Having grown up in the country, not much surprises me or catches me off guard. So let me turn it around. In the mid 80s I left the farm and moved to a small city about 3 hours away. I had been living in my apartment a week or 2 and one evening after work I was bored and picked up the phone book and started looking thru it. Not sure why except that it had just come that day. And what did I see but an ad that said Dominos Pizza. We deliver. I was 27 and had always had to drive over 40 miles round trip for a pizza. When the delivery guy handed me that hot pizza at my front door, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

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" Do or do not, there is no try. " - Yoda

Bobby B, I so relate to delivery pizza! The small town I grew up in was 7 miles from nowhere. When I got my first apartment with delivery food and cable....

I wouldn't say I was surprised, but I'm having a heck of a time figuring out areas based on what locals call them. Around here, there are people who live "on the hill" and then there are people who live "over up on the hill." It's not the same hill! We finally figured out we live over up on the hill - sometimes referred to as "upta the hill" - not just on the hill.

The small town I work in is reached by a 15 mile road, everything is referenced by mile markers, "I'm at the 6th mile marker, oh they live over by the 10". So when we moved out to our town when people asked where we lived I'd smartly answer at the "3 mile marker" on our road, which is the main road in town. They'd look at me funny and say, "huh, never figured out those new mile markers". Now we say we live next door to 'Fish-on John'. Although Howard lives in between, no one knows Howard as he's only been here 5 years or so. Everything on our stretch of the road relates to 'Fish on John's' house. And he's moving soon : )

Ok, so things that should not startle me: cows. In the dark. I didn't know their eyes were reflective like a dog's, and HOLY CRAP they were right on the fence tonight.

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Knit and crochet design, editing, and teaching. See my blog or my Ravelry page!

Also 4Farthings dairy goats, heritage poultry, and bees!

I did learn that cows will sling spit up onto their backs. For flies or itches, I guess. That spit makes a really wide arc. If you're too close, your face could easily get in the way.