Last fall this was a harvested soybean fields. This year it's the site of frantic construction efforts to create a subdivision of new homes. You can see homes in the distance, creeping northward.
Last year there were barns and silos. Those were demolished in one morning. the oak trees were dispatched in one afternoon. The farmhouse was isolated and eventually moved.
And now, in a most ironic move, the developer has had a windmill delivered. Not the honest-to-goodness workhorse of old farming tradition, but a sleek silver Hollywood movie prop kind of windmill. It's to stand at the entrance of the subdivision to visually complete the sense of why people will be moving here.....everyone's dream to live in the country.
The dream will tarnish a little come next spring when residents start writing letters to the editor about the layers of dust on their cherrywood dining sets when the still-farmed fields to the west are plowed. They'll discuss the smell coming from the field as the farmer spread manure, and howl in objection as their small pets are snatched by coyotes as they allow them to run unattended in their yards.
I've overheard people saying that country life ain't all it's cracked up to be......depends upon your expectations.
11 comments:
Wow. I bet most of those people in the houses couldn't even describe what a windmill was used for on the farm.
Ugh, I hear ya. My parents have lived on the same farm for 35 years, and new houses have crept in from the east and west but are still about a mile away. And yet these new residents don't like the smell of the livestock when they go for their walks by my parents' farm, and have made all kinds of trouble like anonymously turning them into the DNR for "manure runoff" (which the DNR dismissed).
Or when people move to the country and let their dogs run free, and then get upset when a farmer shoots their dogs for terrorizing his livestock.
I worry about this happening to us. The city is trying to buy the field that borders us on 2 sides for development.
I hate to see new housing built on farmland. When will it stop!?
I thought we had it bad, and we do. But this is an ugly sight. Such is 'progress'. Makes me reeeally mad.
I have noticed our farmers putting up signs that announce," Warning! This is agricultural land, expect seasonal noise, dust, heavy machinery and smells"
You can bet that they will want city water, sewage, and cable TV. And a nice shopping center nearby so that they won't have to drive into the city to get their necessities. And then we need to build new roads and schools to accomodate them all.
This is just so sad. I live in Florida where concrete is soon going to cover the state. There will soon be no country left anywhere. Where are the people coming from and where do they get the money? Median price for a house in my county is over 300,000. There is no affordable housing for service people.
It's the only profitable cash crop left:
Subdivision.
Thanks to everyone for their comments. We're not in such dire straights concrete covered landwise as is Florida. It is bad enough in Illinois, but Florida is particularly distressing to me because I remember the Cross Creek Florida of my childhood. There seems to be very, very little of that left in Florida.
I live in Alaska now, but grew up in Ohio. Last November I returned for the first time in 18 years. What was predominantly rural and bordered on Amish country is now much more thickly populated. Just to the east development has over run what was once rural. It has become one giant suburbia. There were more people in one county than in the entire state of Alaska.
Oooh, that windmill!! What a cruel irony, a slap in the face of past, hard working generations who struggled to make that real farm produce real food.
Can't remember who first wrote about it, but isn't it ironic how when developer destroys a nice oak grove, etc, they often end up calling the place "Oak Meadows" or something else "slap-in-the-face" like that?
Sigh....
Post a Comment