Mutterings and Musings

Countrylife

Challenge: What did you like / dislike about where you grew up? What do you like / dislike about where you live now?

I grew up on a very rural farm in the West Country. As a young child, it was idyllic; we had an enormous garden with an ancient orchard at the bottom. Mum was a stay-at-home mum and loved crafts and nature, so we were always doing things like making kites, mushroom hunting or blackberry picking. We had a string of farm cats that we tamed (if a farm kid ever tells you to put your hand in deep between bales of straw, don't. Feral kittens have a nasty set of claws and hiss like demons) to such an extent that they'd follow us everywhere. We'd walk across to the next farm once a week to collect fresh milk or climb the hill behind the house in the summer to check on the reservoir water levels (dad tried to keep the farm off the mains as long as possible) and the cats would follow about ten feet behind the whole way.

One winter dad brought home three pigs he couldn't foster onto another sow (dad had a real knack for pig farming; he'd get litters of 12-14 piglets from a lot of his sows (context, 6-10 is fairly standard), and if the sow couldn't feed them all, he'd foster them off on another (again, context, a lot of pigs won't take other piglets). Well, it was like Christmas had come early. For several weeks we had these, initially, tiny piglets growing in our kitchen by the Rayburn. They needed constant bottle feeding and although we knew perfectly well they'd end up back on the farm and head off to slaughter once big enough, we adored having the piglets in the house. We used to say goodnight to them before bed every evening and race down to see them before school the next morning.
And creep down the stairs late at night to watch when we knew mum and dad were carving up half a pig he'd brought home to butcher. I swear the only reason we weren't allowed to watch was because the kitchen was tiny and dad knew sister and I enjoyed sword fighting a little too much....

But that being said, as we got older living on the farm became a nuisance. We were miles from our nearest friends. There was no reliable bus service and dad was always to busy to provide lifts (mum died before we were teens). Living on the farm became more like a medieval prison than an Enid Blyton novel. We used to walk miles just to get the (extremely unreliable) bus into town and miss on sleepovers because dad worried about our school grades.
It took me moving to university and having a city centre campus to realise how much I loved the countryside. I wouldn't trade my uni years for anything, but it's very telling how quickly I moved back to the West Country (unusual for professionals in the UK) after graduation.

I now live on the outskirts of a small village; within walking distance of the local town, but surrounded by fields and farms. It's the perfect compromise for Best Beloved who wants to be able to walk to pubs and restaurants (thanks covid) and me who wants zero neighbours. Our house is near the end of a very narrow lane, with fields at one end and the village pub at the other. The church we got married in is a one mile stomp across the fields (Best Beloved and his ushers actually donned wellies to walk to the church. BB's very urban cousin taking a self with some Devonshire Ruby cows is still one of my favourite wedding pics) and the coast is a thirty minute walk the other way. And in between are several pubs and foodie places.