"Moving away from the city". What to expect?

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sedona

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My family had 240 acres a few miles out of town.They sold 10 acres at a time and a pretty nice housing addition was built in the late 90s.There are probably 8 homes on the 240 acres so people aren't too close.The inconvenience of going into town to get bread,get dinner,get gas and everything else was enough for all but one of the people to move back to town in less than 5 years.I wouldn't mind having some land outside of town but i don't want to live there.
 

GC7

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My family had 240 acres a few miles out of town.They sold 10 acres at a time and a pretty nice housing addition was built in the late 90s.There are probably 8 homes on the 240 acres so people aren't too close.The inconvenience of going into town to get bread,get dinner,get gas and everything else was enough for all but one of the people to move back to town in less than 5 years.I wouldn't mind having some land outside of town but i don't want to live there.

Great point. The entire reason I made this thread is because I have always lived in a city and most stores and restaurants have been a 10 minute drive away. It's very easy to get used to this. So I want to know all the bad things about living "away from the city" (since it seems to be bothering everyone that I said "in the country" and had a very different concept of that).

But nowadays with Amazon being the way everyone shops, how much does that help with living away from the city? If you can at least get USPS service then you should be able to get regular deliveries of things that you would have bought at Walmart anyway.
 

okcBob

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That IS what country living is. Dirt blows. Tumbleweeds blow. Dirt blows again. Smells blow to you or away depending on wind direction.

If you live on a dirt or gravel road, dirt blows. It usually finds a way inside the house.

I see people move in a double wide or build a house 50 feet off from a gravel road and then gripe about everyone driving by so fast. (Many county road speed limits are 45 and 55 mph)

with all that wind, any special precautions needed regarding fire ?
 

sedona

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I am one of the few people that doesn't shop at Amazon.Family dollar,Braums and Homeland are where i get most of my food items.I can be at Braums and back home in 15 minutes pretty easy.I go to Homeland maybe once a week.I buy gas,wash my car,go to the bank and library on the way to braums.The shooting range is 50 feet from braums so i have pretty much everything i need within 3 or 4 miles of my house.
 

SoonerP226

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Think bigger. Half an acre is just a hair bigger than an average city lot.
Yeah, if you're looking at 1 acre rural lots, you're looking at a glorified trailer park (if it's not now, it probably won't be long before it is). Personally, I wouldn't want to look at anything where the lots are platted under 10 acres; most of the lots in rural developments that I've seen are in the 2.5-5 acre range, but they're very spendy and, IMHO, give you all the inconvenience of rural living with the drawbacks of city living.

I'm not passing judgment on "glorified trailer parks" or rural developments, but neither of those environs are where I'd want to live, and I'd suspect that anyone who's trying to get out of the city would feel similarly. I don't mind having neighbors, I just don't want them right up in my face.

Well and septic ain't no big thing, as long as you're not an idiot about the septic and the land has good groundwater. You definitely need to check on the groundwater situation if you're planning on building; there's great groundwater in Cleveland County, but if you cross over the Canadian into McClain, there are areas where the experienced well diggers will tell you straight up that they won't waste your money by digging a test well, 'cause there's no water to be had. The Oklahoma Dep't of Environmental Quality (DEQ) oversees wells and septic systems, and they have a pretty decent GIS site that can get you a lot of info about the water situation in an area where you're looking.

Pump jack concerns are a bit overblown. My grandparents had a pump jack maybe 100 yards from their house. My grandma didn't like it, but I never noticed it while I was there. It was just background noise. The cicadas around my house made a lot more noise (seriously, on late summer early evenings, they were deafeningly loud), but maybe I'm just more noise tolerant than most.

The prevailing winds in Oklahoma are from out of the south and west, so if you think smoke will be an issue for you, look for chimneys and burn barrels in those directions. I've never found that to be an issue, although I have occasionally smelled smoke when I stepped outside in the morning.

As far as shooting goes, yeah, some people are idiots. That said, although I've heard shooting, I've never seen evidence of projectiles impacting on my property, but that's yet another reason I'd be looking for a bigger property.

I never had any trouble with ATV riders, but my property is so heavily forested that riding on it wouldn't be much fun at all. I suspect that most ATV riders won't intentionally ride through a fence, so that would most likely keep them out.
 

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