We do not own the farm and we do not live on the farm which allows us the "freedom" to live wherever we want. I put freedom in quotations because realistically about a 10-minute drive is as far away as we want to be considering one or both of us make the drive multiple times per day. This allows us to experience the best of both worlds: the openness of the country and the convenience of town life.

Farm Kids

Playing in fields is something we both did as children.

We both grew up in rural areas of varying degrees. While John was on the outskirts of town, that town was very small and limited in what it had to offer in the way of entertainment. I (Emily) grew up just a 10-15 minute car ride from town depending on your final destination. We both had to come up with our own amusement which usually involved some degree of dirt. From fishing in the mill pond to lobbing dirt clods at siblings, we always found something enjoyable to fill our days with. When we got married, we moved to town while still preserving our "country" way of life by having the farm.

City Life

Walks are our favorite way to spend an evening together.

I think we can both say that we've really enjoyed some of the benefits of living in town and have had very few negative experiences. We love being able to walk downtown when the weather is nice and are very much looking forward to taking our little farmer to the park and splash pad this summer. Walking through residential St. John's gives us time to admire some of the gorgeous old houses that are very large and ornate even by today's standard. The best thing about being a 10-minute walk from town is that you can get ice cream and the calories don't even count because you walked to the ice cream parlor and back! We're pretty sure that is how it works anyways.

One Day...

Of course, we both miss the true "country way of life". It's nice not having to worry about being too loud for your neighbors and having the experiences that you can only have outside city limits. Playing horse poop baseball, climbing in a pile of corn, scaling up a hayloft, and learning the true meaning of work till the work is done are all things we want our son to experience. This is why, though we truly enjoy living inside city limits, we have already begun making plans to build our perfect farmhouse on our future feedlot. Until that time, we will very much enjoy the "calorie-less" ice cream walks and the short jaunt to any place we need to be!