"(Living in the Sticks) and the Single Girl" by Sheri Dixon

Carving out a homestead is a fantasy of many a young boy. Even now, when Saturday morning programming does not include anything like Davy Crockett or Grizzly Adams, there are still young boys whose dads and granddads go huntin’, fishin’, and card playin’ up at the lake or river. Chances are, that those young boys have a sister or two, and the girls may be harboring similar fantasies.

Lucky is the gal whose dad takes her along on these treks to the woods and fields.

Luckier still is the gal whose MOM takes her fishin’ and teaches her to bait her own hook.

I was a child of the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s when men were Men, and women raised them. June Cleaver kept her house immaculate and always wore pearls and heels to BREAKFAST for Pete’s sake. The moms from Happy Days, the Partridge Family and the Brady Bunch did the same. Heckfire, even Samantha on Bewitched who could do her housework by wiggling her powdered little nose didn’t do much else all day long.

Oh sure there was Marlo Thomas, you know, That Girl. And Mary Tyler Moore. And Laverne and Shirley. THEY had jobs. But THEY were single. They were allowed. And it was always inferred that once they snagged a man, they’d be quitting that (whisper and spell it out) j-o-b, and having babies and simonizing the whole house along with the rest.

I was luckier than most as I was a Girl Scout back when scouting was still about camping and learning outdoorsy stuff. When I was a scout, we earned badges for fire making and knot tying, and our high school troop saved up for several years to go to the big Girl Scout camp in Wyoming for a week of primitive camping. Little girls loved riding the big hot stinky school bus to day camp in the summer where I was first a counselor, and later the camp director. We taught them how to lay a trail, build a fire, make stuff out of sticks and we ate s’mores and drank “bug juice”.

By the time my daughter was a scout, badges were not stressed as much, and had been altered to be more “relevant” to this new world (I was too depressed to even look to see what they changed them up to) and her high-school troop saved up for a trip to Europe, where they stayed in hotels and shopped. The one time I volunteered to be camp counselor in this new age of scouting, the girls were delivered individually by moms in minivans and sat around complaining that it was hot, there was dirt, and they looked down their tiny perfect noses at me with scorn when I referred to the Kool-Aid as bug juice.

As a whole, Americans are a whole lot more urban than they used to be. This is no surprise to anyone, and for the most part this is looked at as a GOOD thing.

If you are a contemporary American couple looking for the simple life, it’s hard. Your family and friends will suspect some sort of brain-damaging food poisoning. You will be looked-at with amused and bemused affection and the barely-concealed suspicion that it’s a passing phase that the male half of the couple is instigating to make up for some sort of failure in the corporate jungle. It is the female half of the couple’s job to either talk him out of it, or go along with good humor till the phase is over.

And a lot of the time that is exactly what happens.

Sometimes a single male, perhaps after a divorce, will take off into the wilds to ‘find himself’. This is accepted, even encouraged self-therapy. “Do the boy some good to get a little dirt under his nails. Build up a few muscles. Work out of the emotional doldrums” etc. etc. etc.

Here’s where it gets weird.

Say you are a single FEMALE, perhaps after a divorce. If you announce to your family and friends that you are going to move out to the sticks and apply yourself to the pursuit of a simpler life, they will be coming after you brandishing anti-depressants and a straight jacket.

How will you live?

Won’t you be lonely??

Who will take care of you???

Just smile sweetly and tell them it will do you good to get a little dirt under your nails, build up a few muscles and work out of the emotional doldrums.

There are a lot of resources on finding the right property. All those are unisex and depend not on gender for relevance. Sometimes you have to be a little more cautious depending on the realtor- some will think they can pull the wool over a ‘little filly’s’ eyes on a place, but no more so than any other city slicker they see coming down the pike. The advantage of being female is that you are used to this attitude in most of life anyway and can smell a rat from a mile away.

With few exceptions, the manual labor of farm life is what will pose challenges. Although I’ve known women who could bench press the average tax accountant, most of us (collectively, not just females) are much much more weenified than in past generations. Renovating or building a homestead, working on fence, managing livestock, maintaining a kitchen garden, and general repairs will seem daunting, especially if you have to ALSO have employment off the farm to survive (and most of us do, don’t feel badly if you need to also).

I have homesteaded with and without husbands and have to say that if your husband is not behind the idea 120%, it will be way harder than if you are by yourself. You will naturally be second-guessing and micro-evaluating everything you do all on your own; you will not need someone peering over your shoulder waiting to say ‘I TOLD you that wouldn’t work’. In such a case, some hard choices will have to be made, and those choices will depend on the personalities of those directly involved and must be made accordingly.

So.

You have found and moved onto your piece of rural paradise.

Now what?

You need tools. In addition to the tools you will find in the ‘handy toolkit in a box’ you can get at your local Home Depot, you will need a good sledgehammer, a good prybar, a good hatchet and saw, a case of duct tape, an endless supply of baling wire, and a hot glue gun (for the delicate repairs).

If you possess a natural aversion to bugs, rats, mice or snakes, get over it.

If you are afraid of the dark, buy a really big flashlight and a lot of batteries.

If the complete quiet punctuated by the odd unidentifiable cry of a country night creeps you out, you have made a bad life decision.

To survive and thrive in the country as a single woman you need to always keep in mind the Three L’s.

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