Living rural

Most of the population of Utah lives in three or four counties clustered around Salt Lake City. There are 29 counties in Utah (I know a song that names them all! Beaver, Carbon, Davis, Morgan...) and my county is home to just under 1/100th of the population of Utah. 24,000 people total in the county.

This is obviously a benefit for us. There's lots of open space, lots of undeveloped land; mountains and nature and trails and nobody-owns-this surrounds us. Land is cheaper here – which is why we're here. We wanted at least an acre and a house that would fit a large family, and we couldn't afford to buy it in the more populous counties with the conveniences and amenities.

Are there downsides? Yes. Only one violin teacher in the entire county, for instance. Only jazz dance (really a kind of pre-cheerleading) is taught here. Signing up the kids for city league soccer or baseball means you're driving between eight different towns, because each town only has enough for one or maybe two teams.

But still, we love it. Our neighbors are übergreat. We're happy with our house and yard, with the wide blue sky, with the quiet and lack of pollution.

But if there's anything that's going to drive me out of Sanpete County, or indeed out of Utah, it's the near-constant drought conditions. However beautiful it may be to see a brilliantly blue, cloudless sky every day, it ain't good for the lawn. I am so tired of water rationing and setting my entire schedule around when I can and can't use the irrigation water! I'm tied to the yard every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening, dragging hoses, hooking up sprinklers, fine-tuning spray patterns, trying to rectify this or that brown spot. The green lawn is worth it (or I wouldn't do it), but after several weeks of gorgeously clear weather I can't help but wish for a rainstorm. If only!

We've had way-below-average snowpack for more than a decade now, and this state has never been one much for summer rainfall. I know our reservoir is at only 40% of capacity, so I'm just hoping I'll be able to water the garden this year, and that all the grass won't die. *sigh* Because it would be prohibitively expensive to reseed an acre of grass.