Someone asked if there was "community", a sense of community, in rural areas where large acreage separates neighbors. They wondered how it works. Here there is a strong sense of community. we're separated by mostly 100's of acres, but all the neighbor's know and help each other out. my closest neighbor called at 5 a.m. one morning last spring needing help with a horse in delivery. we threw on clothes and raced down there, but by the time we got there he'd pulled it himself. we're always watching for their cows to calve and let them know if there's trouble, because they don't actually live there, but come in the evenings to feed. the other neighbors who do live at their land visit when passing on the gravel road. it's common to be stopped in the middle of the road, engines turned off, talking for 30 minutes or until someone needs to pass. the grapevine is alive and well out here, too, lol. once my husband was on the phone with our most distant neighbor and i was outside getting clothes from the washer and i saw my goat eat my fresh picked tomato that was waiting on the top step for me to bring in. i started hollering at her and the neighbor on the phone with my hubbie heard me and got a huge laugh out of that. before 10 minutes passed, the closer neighbor was on the phone laughing over the goat eating my tomato too. this joke carried on for days, with the most distant neighbor stopping me on the road as i was coming in from work a few evenings later, handing me a tomato, cause he just knew i wouldn't have any because of the goat, haha. the most distant neighbor rides his 4-wheeler everywhere, including the 3 1/2 miles to our place to visit. he's an older man, disabled from a skidder accident years ago, and has diabetes. once he busted his toe, and rode his 4-wheeler all the way to our house to ask if i would put a bandage on his toe for him because he couldn't reach it himself.

see? there is lots of community here, even though we are sometimes miles apart. you'll likely find that so anywhere you go in the more rural areas.