As the butter churns – what it’s like to move from the big city to a rural farm

If you’ve ever thought of ditching the big city and trying to live a more peaceful life in the country then you must read As The Butter Churns. It’s an entertaining eye opener.

Basically, As the Butter Churns, is the story of a family who moves from Los Angeles to a rural farm in Washington. Big Change!

Reading the Begin at the Beginning page it sounds like Denise and Tom had it made in Los Angeles. She had an idelic job in the advertising field. The philosophy at her last job was:

If you had to work from home because your child was sick or you had to come in late because there was a school assembly then you had to stay home or come in late.

Unfortunately for Denise that company closed. She interviewed for new jobs in the advertising field, but she soon realized that her youngest son would end up in day care and she’d be working long hours. That’s when the idea of becoming a school teacher came to her. Within a week she was enrolled in a course that would allow her to become a teacher in one year.

Denise sounds like the kind of teacher that you remember fondly when you’re an adult. Each year she and her students make historic films. That’s right, the kids get to act in movies! How cool is that?

Parents also loved the idea of what she was doing – with her husbands help. Tom’s an artist and he helps with the costumes and sets. So they decided to create a History Camp for kids called Forte Flashback. From what I gather it’s meant to give kids a taste of colonial times.

Now I haven’t figured out exactly how they came to move to Washington State. Obviously changes were in the work with Denise’s career and the idea of Forte Flashback. It sounds like they were living in a lovely home in L.A.. Like us, they’d done a lot of Do it Yourself reno jobs around the home to make the home their own and it sounds like they had a fabulous garden with over 100 rose bushes and lots of trees. However maintaining that home seems to have gotten expensive. Perhaps all combined caused them to move out of the big city.

Now the family is on a journey. Oh what a journey it is!

The story of a city girl from Los Angeles who quits her job, packs her bags and moves her family to a rural farm in Washington to start Fort Flashback, an American History camp for kids. Things don’t go exactly as planned. Find out if Denise ever gets funding, if she eventually catches the oxen as they run down the road or if ten-year-old Henry forgets to wear his shoes to school – again. Will Grandpa Horn leave everything to play jazz on the streets of Paris? Find out at As The Butter Churns.

Denise was a copywriter in the advertising field, so of course her posts are well written and entertaining.

She talks about day to day life on the farm and what’s happening with her, her husband Tom, their now 10 year old son Henry, her colorful jazz musician father, her sister Lisa, brother-in-law Chris, and their two girls Quinn 11, Phoebe 6, and all of their combined pets and farm animals. After describing the gang Denise says “We’re like the Osmonds, but we drink and we’re Catholic.”

Denise started her blog in June of 2007 when they moved from California to Washington. July finds the family getting settled and contemplating purchasing cows for the farm.

The posts are regular, pretty much daily as far as I can see, and they make for a good read. I think I might add this blog to my daily reading list so I can keep track of what’s happening with this interesting family … oh and their cows like good ‘ol Abe here:

Hopefully Denise doesn’t mind that I’m using one of her photos. Abe is just too cute in this one. Sounds like he’s a character too.

I grew up in a big city, but we had a cottage on our old family farm land that we went most weekends, plus we also had a farm in the middle of the city that I visited regularly just to see the baby cows, so reading this blog takes me back a bit to the things I liked about country life and perhaps what could have been if I didn’t end up moving to an even bigger city.

As I said at the start, if you’ve ever contemplated moving from the city to the country you should read this blog to see what it’s really like!