We Got the Farm!

View from the kitchen window of the villa on the five-acre avocado farm

It's official! Next Friday we will begin our nine-month experiment in country living, of which we already are getting a taste--we just learned that the area does not have cable access and, thus, has very limited options for speedy internet connectivity and phone service. Bummer. But discoveries such as these are what make our decision to lease, rather than jump right in and buy, a five-acre avocado farm in rural San Diego county so valuable. I have to give myself mad props for my forethought. My younger self was more impetuous when making major decisions (e.g., dropping everything to move to Las Vegas for the millennium).

Slow internet aside, I'm eager to head for the country. And it really is country--we have to swap municipal services like sewer and gas for septic and propane. It's coyote territory; fencing will be key to our pets' safety. Now that it's actually happening, I'm startled by how comforted I feel to know that it's only for nine months...we have an out if we need one.

On the other hand, we could discover that life outside the city is amazing. In that case, we have nine months to think about how many acres we want (will five prove to be not enough?) and where we want them.

I guess we'll learn a lot about ourselves between now and next March. In the mean time, if I had to say "where my head is at," perhaps William Butler Yeats said it best in 1892:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.