Millions of peaches, peaches for me

On week today, my family and I are moving to a farm just outside of Kettleby, Ontario, about 50kms north of Toronto. It is not a house in a suburb, it is not small house in a tiny hamlet, it is a large(ish) 130 year old farmhouse on about five acres of groomed land, adjacent to a 100 acre working farm – corn I think and, well, I don’t know what else, I am not a farmer. We can’t see any of our neighbours, we can barely hear Lloydtown-Aurora Side Road, the closest road to our house.

It is isolated, a bit lonely and spectacularly beautiful.

The decision to move to this farm was made quickly. Not necessarily haphazardly, but definitely with the notion that whatever challenges that smack us in the face when we get there, they will be managed at that time. Obviously all the administration of life was thought of, school registration, commuting routes, the all important WiFi hook up, but the emotional management of uprooting our very urban existence for a rural one has yet to truly be addressed.

 So why are we doing it?

There are many answers here, some pat, others easily drawn out and dissected.

I could lie and say the main reason is because I wanted to offer my boys a slightly different take on life. One where the most up-to-date Iphone is not the most important thing in life. That it is OK to put down the screen and pick up a thick blade of glass and trumpet it through your thumbs. That not everyone wears flat hats and makes gangsta symbols or duck faces and Instagrams it. That creating funny Vines in a farm field is way better than watching salacious ones holed up in your bedroom. That being outside is way better than being indoors.

 I could also lie and say that it was because I needed to reconnect with Steph. That the attraction and acceleration and pace of the city combined my uncontrollable envy was causing me to resent her and either bottle up uncomfortably or get way too comfortable with a bottle.

 It wasn’t about getting closer to immediate family, providing them with an increased level of priority in my life, to let them know that I am willing to pack up my sexy, stylish big city life (sarcasm alert) to spend more time languishing in the bosom of their occasional judgment and often needed solace.

It definitely was not about the increased cost, the longer commute and potential devastation of another new school for Hudson at the delicate crossroad age of 12 years old.

What it is about for me is change. Change for me and as a result, change for my entire family. Simple as that. I needed to experience more in my life. I needed something different and also as a result, to show my boys that sometimes different is just fine thank you very much.

My past is riddled with banality turning into devastation with one bad decision. I have a penchant for doing negative things for a) attention and b) just to stir things up. Now I have not done anything dramatic for a long, long time but once you have the taste for destruction, you quickly recognize the festering flavour underneath your tongue.

The farm seems like a pretty wholesome alternative to seriously affecting those I love so much that surround my life.

Besides, it just smells so fucking awesome up there.

Stay tuned.