We Moved to the Country… It Tried to Kill Me (Multiple Times)

We moved to the country chasing the dream: land, peace, maybe a few chickens… and possibly a holy, wholesome life.

What we got instead? Heat exhaustion, ER visits, falling off ladders, tractor accidents, lawsuits, dead chickens, and a strong suspicion that the property itself is cursed.

In this episode of Diary of a Crappy Catholic, I share what really happens when a suburban guy tries to become a homesteader in the Carolina heat… while juggling family struggles, unexpected chaos, and the slow realization that maybe—just maybe—this wasn’t my spiritual calling.

Turns out, the “simple life” isn’t simple. It’s just… louder.

Transcript

How does that saying go? It's never take advice from people who have nothing to lose by giving you bad advice. I think some of that advice was moved to the country, move and be self-sufficient, live off the land, and stuff like that, which is pretty funny to say to a suburbanite. But anyway, we moved out to the country several years ago.
 
 And I don't know about you, but you see a lot of those YouTube videos where the family moves out there and all of a sudden they're homesteading and you see the happy little children and everyone's dressed up like Amish or something. And they're, you know, they're out tilling the land and they're gathering eggs. And the wife is in the kitchen making all kinds of stuff from scratch and everything like that. 
 
 And yeah, that's, that doesn't work for everyone. We were in suburbia and we thought it'd be a good idea to move out to the Carolinas, right? Find some, find a nice house property. But my mother-in-law has dementia and Alzheimer's disease, and it was starting to ramp up about that time. 
 
 We thought, you know, if you move out where somewhere where it's warmer, we would find a house where she could have her own part of the house and yeah, life would be better. And to help convince me, I have three adult children in the Carolinas who I've been estranged from. So I thought that might be an opportunity to, you know, maybe get that relationship up and going.
 
 So we get out here and we've got a 4,000 square foot home. You're like, Oh wow. That's, that's huge. 
 
 And it's a big house. But again, half of that is for mother-in-law to have her own home. And we have, my wife and I have our own, right? So that was wonderful.
 
 Now it's on 14 acres and some of you might be thinking, man, that's fantastic. 14 acres. I could have livestock and I could do farming and I could do all this, you know, a little house on the Prairie kind of stuff.
 
 And that's kind of what I was thinking, I guess, is that you move out here and there's a whole, you know, a lot of the Catholic homesteaders like, you know, come out here and live your faith and all that other stuff. So I was, you know, filling myself with a romantic dream and you know, sometimes dreams, you know, nightmares are dreams too. They're just not, you know, the best kind of dream.
 
 So we, uh, we moved out here and it was July. I see. Yeah. 
 
 We moved in July, July of a few years ago. And I'll never forget that my wife and I were on the property and she looks around and she goes, Oh, have we bitten off more than we can chew? Like, no hogwash. That's not even possible. 
 
 We're going to take this on. Now that was my 20 year old brain who thought it could do anything and could still, and then all my body parts were working and then everything could be pretty easily done. And I could easily, easily convert from suburbanite to a homesteader farmer living off the land kind of guy. 
 
 My first, uh, my first hint that maybe this was not, uh, how things were going to go was, you know, if you've ever been in the Carolinas, you better like heat and you better like humidity. So I've lived in California before and it would get to be like one 15 and a dry heat, which is the dumbest thing you could ever say. Well, it's hot, but it's a dry heat. 
 
 And I tell people, it's like, well, turn on your oven to the lowest setting. It can go stick your head in. That's dry heat. 
 
 Okay. So it's still hot. So we move out here and here I am thinking I'm going to go out there. 
 
 And of course I've got my work boots and my, my wool socks and long pants and long sleeve shirt and hat and everything. I'm out there doing work and little, you know how quickly that when it's 90 degrees and 3000% humidity can just kind of like suck the life out of you and knock you down on your tush. So yeah, that was one of my first wake up calls here. 
 
 And, uh, very, very optimistic there for, I was probably optimistic for about a month or two. So I get knocked on my keister by the heat and how you came up to the house and basically laying in my underwear on the floor. Sorry, kids, that's not a very pretty picture just because it was so hot. 
 
 And I just, I mean, it just sucked the life out of me. So, you know, Hey, no big deal. It's hot. 
 
 It's summer. Things like that happen. And then there's something on this property, perhaps there's some kind of little demon or mischievous spirit or something like that because our next boondoggle was, you know, getting on a ladder to get some, get some growth off some of the outbuildings cause it had been neglected.
 
 And I was out there pulling some things off the building. Next thing I know, well, that ladder just decided that it didn't want to be under me anymore. So it kind of, it was probably a 12 foot ladder or so and it kind of disappeared.
 
 And next thing I know I land on my shoulder and, uh, Hey, emergency room visit number one. So messed up my rotator cuff, which as a 60 year old man does not translate well. Like if maybe I had been 20 anyway.
 
 So that was my first fun adventure here. Now when you move out to the country, you have a lot more equipment. So when I was in suburbia, I had a riding more, which I knew how to change the oil and fix and stuff like that.
 
 I could do that. And I had a snowblower, which my neighbor across the street, thankfully was very handy. So he helped me with that. 
 
 Now out here, all of a sudden, you've got a tractor, you've got a zero term more, you've got, um, what are those things? Oh, generators, right? Cause Oh, the power is never going to go out here in the country. So all of a sudden you've got this machinery and stuff that I've never even, even, you know, looked at other than the catalog or on TV, like green acres or something. So of course, you know, YouTube is up and around and I take my, my laptop out to the garage because on our tractor, we're going to take, I'm just going to take off the backhoe.
 
 It came with a backhoe. I was going to take it off and put it. We had to put something else on. 
 
 Right. So here I am so proud of myself. I'm driving out to this little, little garage and I, there's a roll bar on the tractor, right. 
 
 To keep it from getting hurt. If you roll the tractor over, which whoever heard of that. So to get in the garage, I take the pin out and I put the roll bar down and I'm watching the video.
 
 I'm so proud of myself. I'm hitting the toggle. I'm moving the backhoe. 
 
 Well, see the reason why that roll bar stays up with the pins in there is for this reason, because when I moved that backhoe, when it decided to detach, well, that, that roll bar came crashing down. And thankfully my forearm was there to keep it from falling all the way. And you know, scratching the paint on the tractor.
 
 So it hits something called an ulna nerve. And if you know what that is, that's your funny bone nerve. That's the one that if you ever hit it, you know, you're just like, Oh gee, golly gee.
 
 And you're jumping up and down for a minute or two. Well, it felt like that for like an entire day. Like it was just constant.
 
 Now I am a writer by trade and it messed up my nerve and that goes up and down into the pinky and the next finger. So here I am over a year and a half later and I've still got tingles in here and it's hard to type. Anyway, I get to go to the emergency room again.
 
 Hey guys, how you doing? It's just me. What happened this time? Numb nuts. Were you from the city? Yeah. 
 
 So there I am with a, you know, a messed up forearm. Wow. So now I'm healing. 
 
 Okay. I'm learning. So what happens next is I am like to go up to one of the old buildings and go exercise. 
 
 And of course it's still hot out and I've got this huge, almost like an industrial fan, like a floor fan. And I it's five 30 ish in the morning and it's still dark out. So I'm walking down the stairs with it. 
 
 Well, my foot decided it wasn't going to find that last step. And so my whole body came crashing the ground. The fan went flying and I looked down at my knee and whatever that muscle was that goes from the upper thigh to your knee, just apparently just kind of ripped in half or something.
 
 So I go back up the stairs on my, my forearms, my now healing forearm. And I get up there screaming for my wife and the ambulance comes. And you know, around here, well, let's just say we asked them nicely not to have the, uh, the sirens going.
 
 Cause you know, Oh look, the suburbanite dweebs got in trouble again. Anyway, so I go in there and Oh, guess which doctor it is. The same doctor who did my other surgery. 
 
 So I'm making friends. It's good to be on a first name basis with doctors here in the area, especially when you get to know you as that guy who ain't from here. Of course, not long after that, but long after that we have something called hurricane Helene that came in and hurricane Helene knocked over a bunch of trees and messed a lot of stuff up.
 
 But fortunately, Oh, about a week before that, we had had a new roof put on our house because we were going to get solar. Well, we got the roof. We didn't get solar because their company went bankrupt and they tried to get us for, for all the money for, for the, uh, for the roof. 
 
 So that's a long story. But you know, when you live up North and you come down to the South, I don't know, maybe it's just me. You think Bible belt, you think Christians, you think nice people, people trying to live godly lives and everything like that.
 
 Well, those folks are the solar company. I don't know which Bible verses they were, they were leaning on, but they're going to give it to us. And they're going to, you know, even though they fell apart anyway, long story, we have a roof, no solar panels. 
 
 What are you going to do? And it wasn't a, Oh, so after hurricane Helene, it wasn't long after that that there's a water tower on the property next to us that was gushing out water that came down and did a lot of damage to our pond. And they told us that it was just runoff from the road that did that. So, Hey, who knew, but you know, which Bible verse you're going to use for that one.
 
 I don't really know. So now we've got a lawsuit with them to get our property taken care of and, and fix hopefully. Now, one thing that was fun out here and if you've never had chickens before or livestock of any kind, that's been a lot of fun.
 
 I learned that chickens give you eggs. They also give you heart palpitations. The, uh, they get, uh, they get kind of eaten by foxes.
 
 So I found out that first year. And then last year I found out that raccoons like to rip their heads off and leave their carcasses just laying there for you to find. So that was kind of cool.
 
 So I've learned about animals and not falling in love with animals and you learned that, uh, you just need some eggs. And you also realize that you spend thousands of dollars to get those eggs versus going to the grocery store. Even if the prices went up a few dollars, you're still kind of making out. 
 
 So I learned that too. I learned that about livestock and how cute chickens are until something kills them. Are they, you know, let's see, we had foxes, there's hawks and, uh, yeah, raccoons. 
 
 So there's all kinds of things just, uh, waiting to rip them apart and kill them. So that's kind of fun too. You'll learn all about that. 
 
 Now, after a few years I've got two of my grown children who decided they're not even going to return or even respond to me whatsoever. And the third one who I haven't seen in over a year tells me back in March that he's been meaning to talk to me and he's going to write to me and still hasn't month and a half later. So no reconnection with, with children. 
 
 Uh, I'm failing as a farmer and I don't mean that in a bad way. Like it's even a big deal anymore because I know I'm not, maybe my life is just a warning. And if you are all excited about moving out to the country and if you're all excited about taking on a new life, maybe my life be a warning to you that it may not be for you. 
 
 So hopefully you don't make the mistakes that I've made. So here I'm sitting on 14 acres and a 4,000 square foot house, which, um, yeah, and summer's coming again, so I can hardly wait. It's going to be a great sweat fest. 
 
 But, uh, I do know this. I do know that the, of course, the answer is to move back to suburbia where obviously nothing ever goes wrong.