Moving to a Farm from the City Changed My Life

On this episode of Our American Stories, after moving from the bright lights of Tampa, Florida, to a farm in the small college town of Oxford, Mississippi, Jake Keiser didn’t know what to expect. Thankfully, her neighbors had her back. Here's Jake with her story of recovery in small-town America.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go
to the iHeartRadio app, go to Apple Podcasts or wherever
you get your podcasts. And now another story from Jake Kaiser.
Jake is the author of Daffodil Hill, Uprooting My Life,

(00:37):
Buying a Farm and Learning to Bloom, which tells the
story of the traumas she's faced and how moving to
a farm helped her heal. And today he tells a
more lighthearted story about the culture shock she experienced while
meeting her neighbors after moving from the big city to
the small town and how that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

(01:00):
Here's Jake.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
After I moved here right away, the most surprising thing
was how welcoming my neighbors were. Of course, they you know,
had some nosiness to him. They wanted to see what
was going on who had moved in. But one shows
up on a tractor and I hear it coming out

(01:38):
that I'm like, there is a tractor, a freaking tractor
coming up with my driveway. I'm not even sure of
the last time i've seen a tractor, especially when up close,
and the man. There was a man on it who
was dressed nicely jeans and boots, but he has his
shirt plaid shirt tucked in and just pulls right on up.

(02:06):
Wanted me to know about my property lines. That's very
important here. So the next namber that shows up, I
hear another loud noise. Didn't sound like a tractor, but
it'sund like a loud motor. I look out the window
and there's a woman with long blonde hair and big sunglasses,

(02:31):
and she's on a four wheeler holding a pie in
one hand and the other is controlling the four wheeler,
and there's a big dog on the back, a lab
and she gets off comes over the door as I
open it, and she just kind of comes in and

(02:52):
introduces herself and hands the pie to me, and I'm
floored that someone made me a pie, although it turns
out it was actually from the Pickley Wiggly, and she goes,
I didn't have time to bake, but this from the
Pigley Wiggly, it's really good. It's like an egg custard.
And I just couldn't believe that I was being welcomed

(03:14):
with a pie. How many times have I think I've
probably moved at least thirty times being a military brat
and you know, just being very transient growing up, and
I don't recall anyone ever welcoming me to a neighborhood,
much less giving me a pie. Well, then another neighbor

(03:34):
shows up after she leaves, another neighbor shows up and
he he says, my wife's out of town. And she
said it wouldn't be neighborly of me if I didn't
take you to dinner on your first night here. And
I was like, okay. So he ends up picking me

(03:55):
up early four or five and we went to the
Cracker Barrel and that was the first real conversation that
I had with a neighbor where he informs me he
wanted to know what my basically state my business here?
What am I want to do? And I mean, I

(04:15):
was a silly city girl, and I'm like, I just
want to I just want to make sure everything is
productive and pretty. And he just thought the look on
his face was like what I'm like, Yeah, I like
form and function. It's got to have both. It's got
to be beautiful, it's got to produce and I was

(04:37):
sitting there spouting off all these things I wanted to have,
Like I wanted to grow truffles. They don't grow here.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
I literally I didn't know that some of the breeds
of chickens I wanted did not exist in the US.
But he ended up calling me unusual. Its like, you
are an unusual girl, and I said that is not
a compliment. He goes, I'm just telling you you're unusual.
I'm like, okay, this is not going very well. This

(05:07):
is I felt a little silly, but I felt like
they thought I was silly and I had no farm
cred whatsoever. And he said, I want you to know
that we're your family. It doesn't matter what race you

(05:31):
are what really, because he'd asked me if I was
going what church I went to, and I told him
I didn't to have a church, and he said, well,
it doesn't matter what your religion is, what's your race is,
what's your age or socioeconomic situation is. In hard times,
we are your family. And there may be times like
let's say, if there's a tornado or something, when you

(05:54):
won't have acts, you won't be able to leave, or
people can't make it into us and we are all
a community, we are family, and it touched me deeply.
I thought, this is exactly what I've been looking for.
And turns out one of the reasons he was asked
me what I wanted to do? You know what kind
of animals I wanted is because everyone kind of keeps

(06:16):
track that you know, if we need something, we know
who's doing what, and you know to an extent and
how we can all help. Or maybe he's got extra
hay that is going to go bad, but I need bedding,
and so that things everybody just kind of helps. Like
if I've got too many eggs, I know there's plenty

(06:37):
of people around me that are willing to take them,
because I was only one at the time. With chickens
around here, most people had, you know, major livestock. But
it was that sentiment of we are family that hit
me hard and in a fantastic way.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
And a special thanks to Alex Cortes and to Robbie
Davis for working on this piece and putting it together.
And a special thanks to Jake Kaiser. What a thing
to have happened to her from going to the big city,
moving around all of her life to suddenly being greeted
by men intractors and women in four wheelers with pies.
The story of moving from city life to country life.

(07:22):
Jake Kaiser's story here on Our American Stories. Flee Hibibe
here the host of our American Stories. Every day on
this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country,
stories from our big cities and small towns. But we
truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are

(07:45):
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