Rural Suburbia: The Beginning

Written Date: 7 March 2022

My sister lives in classic suburbia.  Her streets have sidewalks and are arranged, oddly for New England, in a block formation.  My nephews will be able to walk to school once they are old enough to do so.  She and my brother-in-law know their neighbors by name and it is not unusual for my nephews to go across the street to play with the neighborhood children.  My sister lives in classic suburbia, with walks to the town library and a small yard where my nephews play while my sister and brother-in-law are in the house.  They keep a window open to hear if there’s any trouble.  

The house my fiance and I have bought does not match up with any of this definition.  The street it is on does not have sidewalks, and we are too far away from the schools for any future children to avoid the school bus system.  Our neighbors are close but not so close that I could casually chat to them from our driveway.  We have about twice as much land, a little over an acre,  than my sister does and there are several acres of unbuildable woodland behind the house.  Unlike my sister’s house, this house has a chicken coop, three rabbit hutches, a small barn and paddock, a greenhouse, a small above-ground pool, and a garden shed.  

It feels rural, even though I know it’s technically also suburbia and this has caused me to think about the definitions we have of rural and suburban.  Is this small homesteading attempt of mine suburban homesteading?  Or are we too rural for that moniker?  If our neighbors are within 500 feet of us could we even be rural?  I suppose it must be a continuum, a spectrum, of ruralness and suburbanness.  We are more rural than my sister but more suburban than many others.  This is our rurally suburban homestead. 

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