Trying to understand

I don't think that is true. It is just that most country folks that have lived it for a lifetime have learned to be self sufficient. They get by when need be. You help your neighbor if you can. You have friends that you see at church and other social gatherings but unlike some folks from the city most of us country folks have no need for the everyday I need someone here thing. Not to mention that most of us are to dang busy with the farm to have friends for tea and coffee everyday. That being said it doesn't mean we don't love the occasional visit from friends. In my experience when things go wrong true farm families pull together. I wouldn't trade it for the world. As far as superficial...........not at all. I think those sweet yet fake relationships are what are superficial. Those people to busy to stop and chat but man if your barn burns down lets see how fast the neighbors can help get a new one put up or raise the funds to get er done.

i grew up in the city and so did my wife... things are different than in the country. I really like our neighbors near our homestead. We live right across the street from a bar/restaurant (our house and land is right in the middle of an unincorporated town, which has a tiny business disctrict of a bar, sawmill, candle manufacturing place and a gun shop, we wanted land and a house but also wanted neighbors) and they have been incredibly helpful to us... another neighbor donated his time and skid steer to help with a dirt moving project and another time he donated his time and tractor to pull a spreader on my 5 acre field. I am extremely grateful for their kindness. On the other hand we had neighbors who would just walk into our house without knocking. This was extremely inappropriate for me and my wife. We like having boundaries and privacy. What if my wife was in the shower and a neighbor guy just walks in my house? We put a stop to that pretty quickly. Another neighbor just talks and shoots the ---- and it gets annoying within 3 minutes, plus we have heard all of his stories over and over.. plus he talks badly about everyone in town. Over all though the experience has been good... we just had to establish boundaries with our neighbors to tell them that we would like for them to call or knock on the door before they come over... and now we always keep the doors locked. We have had 3 or 4 neighbors on separate occasions just come inside without us knowing, and i know to them thats normal.. but I just do not feel comfortable with that. And going back to what some of you have said... most of them have lived there their whole lives, for a few generations. I try to be a good neighbor though, because I know that Im a young newbie and I dont want to annoy people around me and cause problems.

Philm, That is a practice from the days when doors were left open and if you stopped by the house and the door was open it was and invitation to come in. Most of these people would not expect anyone too not be decent and clothed during the day.

The reason I keep my distance from most of my neighbors is mostly because if one should dare to, say, knock on a door to let them know their cows are wandering around in the middle of the road, they act like I've come to take their firstborn from them or something...I really don't want a gun shoved in my face just because I was trying to be neighborly!

It's sad...didn't used to be this way.

We are incredibly blessed in our neighbors. All of us are aware that good neighbors are better than the best insurance policy.

There are a couple neighbors who are the "social butterflies" and I connected with them right away. We keep track of each other -especially the older folk - and we know that we don't have to be each others' best friends, just their best neighbors.

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Je ne suis pas Alice

http://homesteadingfamilies.proboards.com/

People are creatures of Habit, and some very slow to change.
They like whats comfy and known to them.
They just don't know other wise.

Even though there are also different types of folks.

I find many people unable to communicate they react rather then go to logic and reasoning first.

Once a punch is thrown well, two or more of these emotional types and well like the old Joke "and thats when the fight started"...

We must have hit the jackpot with our neighbors. I was the city girl and outsider when we moved into our area 20+ years ago. Our community is tight knit and everyone helps each other out. Some farm, some don't. The farmers around us got a kick out my lack of knowledge years ago but we're friendly fun people so I laughed right along with them. Now the young farmers come to us for advice now that we've been here for so long.

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frugaltable.com
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Living a rich life frugally....

This thread puts me in mind of when my Yvonne (total city girl) first moved to a little house in the country with me. A good friend of mine went to the city with me and helped load all of her possessions in a uhaul truck and move her down here. It had been a very long weekend, one full day loading the truck, then the next day driving it home and unloading. It was nearly dark when we got the last boxes off the truck, and quite a few were left setting on the porch to be dealt with the following day.

Next morning my Yvonne spots the neighbors dogs roaming the neighborhood and freaked out as one of them crossed over an unfenced property line onto our yard. It took some doing but I finally convinced her that these dogs were just running their normal track, and meant no harm to us or our property. She went off to work seemingly ok with the situation. When she got home that evening and started putting things from the porch away she discovered some silk flowers (a gift from her Oma) missing..... It was obvious to her that one of the neighbors had come up on the porch and stolen them! Again it took a bit of talking to convince her that our neighbors were just regular country folk, not the type to be stealing her flowers off the porch and most likely one of the wandering dogs had drug them off.

The following day the guy that had helped us move heard about the missing silk flowers and made a phone call to the house leaving the following message on the machine: "If you ever want to see your silk flowers again.... leave two dollars in unmarked dimes under the stone beside your mailbox." You should have seen her face when she got in from work that evening and listened to the messages on the machine! I cant post what she said... suffice it to say I had quite a job getting her calmed down. Later on that evening the sweet widow lady that lived next door came up, knocked on the door and presented Yvonne with her lost flowers.... seems as though her dog had brought them in the day before and she had cleaned them all up before returning them. We lived in that house for several years, never had any problems from the neighbors and have since sold the house to one of them. It turns out that all those neighbors were kin to each other and the house had been built by "grampa". I am very happy that things worked out the way they did and the old house is back in the family.

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"Nothing so needs reforming as other peoples habits." Mark Twain