URBAN EXODUS: Romanticizing Country Life
The urban exodus trend proves land is the greatest asset after all
Ever thought of up and leaving your city life behind for the fresh air and scenic views of the countryside?
Every couple of years you’ll hear a few stories about people who have made the migration from city life to country life. Influencer Paige Lorenze drew attention with her move from NYC to a country cottage in Connecticut, documenting her new rural life on YouTube, riding her horses, growing her own vegetables, and partaking in activities like fishing with her Florida-boy boyfriend and professional tennis player Tommy Paul.
From a brand perspective, it helps catapult her clothing and lifestyle brand Dairy Boy, now that her audience could see her authentically living the life represented by the brand’s aesthetic.
What I love about this, is that people - myself included - saw an alternate path. You don’t have to exist in the chaos of a city in order to be successful. Now, that is nuanced. Influencers who have made their exodus to the country still have strong ties to and resources in major cities, where they regularly visit for events, photoshoots, pop-ups, press opportunities, meetings, and so on.
Let’s be honest, they aren’t REALLY detached from city life, but it’s safe to say they found an escape latch.
This past year in particular, fashion of all things has driven more interest in country life. Horse girls are having their moment thanks to Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, the equestrian aesthetic came on strong off the heels of quiet luxury, and city folk are discovering the practical functionality of the barn coat and field jacket.
In recent years, we’ve seen farm life become highly desired by celebrities, and rural property as a major asset, largely driven by the pandemic and the motivation to get the hell out of the city. Many celebrities purchased land ranging from farmettes on 10-20 acres to sprawling ranches of 1,000 acres or more. Reese Witherspoon, Russel Crowe, Jennifer Garner, Kanye West, and Bill Gates, who is the single largest owner of farm land in the US, to name a few. I’ll come back to Mr. Gates later and why that’s so terrifying.
Jeremy Clarkson debuted Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime, his brilliant reality series depicting his clumsy attempt to succeed as a bonafide farmer on his 1,000 acre property in the Cotswolds, a place he aptly names Diddly Squat Farm. 10/10 recommend.
While the urban exodus may be popular amongst a certain niche who romanticize country life, I believe that owning farmable land will be the single biggest asset of the next 100 years and beyond.
Last Spring, I finally pulled the trigger and made my own urban exodus, and if I may, I’d like to explain how I moved from Austin, Texas, arguably one of the more “happening” cities in the US, to a small rural town in Upstate NY.
Living in Austin had been a dream, for a time. But after ten years enduring unrelenting growth, it felt increasingly stuffy and claustrophobic. After a number of years, the whole scene had lost its luster, and the months of oppressive heat every year finally got to me.
I felt like I was living indoors. Winters were short but harsh, with dangerous ice storms that left Texans without water or power for days on end. Summers were never-ending and hotter than hell, fluctuating between damagingly long droughts and disgustingly sticky, humid days.
We were regularly placed on water restrictions. Once popular swimming spots started blooming toxic blue algae that killed dogs (not to be dramatic, but it did. So tragic). Lake Travis continued to drop to shockingly low water levels, leaving people who purchased lake houses with not much more than a dock to nowhere.
This may seem like I’m complaining about the population boom and the weather - which I am - but I’m making a point. I had started to grasp an evolution - moreover - a de-evolution of the area. I began to plot my escape in Fall of 2023 after Austin experienced what was the second hottest summer on record.
Not to sound like a prepper, but an urban exodus isn’t just a romantic idea - it’s a strategic move to maintain your basic needs 10, 20, 30 years down the road, when resources may run thin, and climates may evolve to make living in cities like Miami, Austin, New Orleans, and Los Angeles downright dangerous.
Reason no. 1 why the number of people making an urban exodus will continue to grow? The desire to sustain quality of life.
Since I’m on a roll, let’s stick with Austin as an example.
An article published this past May in Austin Monthly titled, Is Austin Going to Run Out of Water? says that according to some climate models, the weather patterns of the arid West Texas desert will inevitably engulf Central Texas as the “dry-line” makes it’s way East. Droughts are temporary. A shifting dry-line is not.
So there’s that. Moreover, Austin cannot support the strain of population growth on its infrastructure and resources. Tesla, Amazon, Apple, and now X (?!) have put down roots chasing favorable taxes. Individuals, including myself, flocked to Austin for better weather (the irony), a better quality of life, and no state income tax (valid).
But the population boom is a serious strain on Austin’s resources. Take water aquifers for example. Counties in the greater metropolitan area are partaking in water wars and seemingly nobody knows about it. According to Austin monthly, Texas relies on the diminishing aquifers for roughly 60% of its water.
This is a long quote from the Austin Monthly article on , but it’s absolutely IN-SANE and shows the blatant GREED for what should be a shared natural resource.
“The result is an increasing number of long straws going into the same milkshake—and some are greedier than others. In 2022, Aqua Texas, an arm of the larger utility company Essential Utilities, sucked up nearly double its legal limit. When the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District proposed $448,710 in penalties, the company countered with a dismissive proposal of $0. The two parties have yet to reach a settlement over the 2022 overpumping, so Aqua Texas is currently operating without a permit. That hasn’t stopped it from pumping. Last year, Texas Monthly reported that Aqua Texas blew past its permit of 90 million gallons and pulled 156 million gallons from sites near Jacob’s Well. Then, the company filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to set aside penalties. In the meantime, Jacob’s Well—a spring that historically has managed at least a trickle during even extreme droughts—spent 222 days bone dry before flows hesitantly returned this January.”
The population boom largely caused by the insurgence of big tech gave housing developers the green light to build massive communities with zero consideration for how the eff they’ll resource them.
Will Austin run out of water? Charlie Flatten, general manager of the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District, sums it up, “The rate of use exceeds the rate of recharge. You do the math.”
I realize this is a threat for all Americans, not just for Texans, but I think some Americans, like Texans, should be more concerned than others about the speed by which they’ll be hit by these crises.
I also realize I referenced the Austin Monthly article and don’t have a dozen other sources to back it up. I’m a busy lady.
But isn’t that f*cking nuts? I’m no climate change evangelist, but you’d have to be utterly daft not to find that seriously ominous.
Anywho, I had heard enough. I finally got over my FOMO for all the goings-on in Austin and beat feet out of there last Spring, driving 23 hours to the Finger Lakes region of Upstate NY, where my mother has a homestead and regenerative herb farm, called Fall Brook Farms.
Let me pause here to acknowledge the uniqueness of this situation.
Okay. Let’s continue.
The property is truly special. I never fully appreciated it until recently. When I think of a place to go to escape the next pandemic, this is it. The main house sits on the edge of a sizable gorge, with an 80-foot waterfall spilling over the top and landing in a pool below. The water follows the gorge down to the river, which runs along the bottom of the property.
On the Northern corner of the property sits The Littlest Apothecary, a bite-sized shop I promised my mom I would take over and manage upon my arrival home.
From the main house, you can see the entire valley, including the rolling hills of yonder. Some fields are agricultural, some are left mostly untouched as wild grasslands.
Out for a walk after work with Dave and The Littles.
A short walk down a gravel path from the main house leads you to the stable and stable house. The original stable from the 1800s burned down and was rebuilt in the 1930s. The accompanying stable house (not pictured) was ordered from a Sears & Roebuck catalogue in the 1930s. Imagine that, you could order a house from a catalogue!
One of my favorite places on the property is the pond in one of the lower fields. Overlooking the pond are two old barns built by American pioneer Horatio Jones in the 1790s.
[Fun Fact: In 1779 Horatio’s militia group was ambushed by the Seneca Native American tribe. Horatio, 16 at the time, was captured and adopted into a Seneca family where he became fluent in the language. During the remainder of the war he is said to have been instrumental in helping to rescue others taken prisoner by the Seneca.]
Moving up here and taking the leap of an urban exodus has changed the course of my life. It changed how I talk to myself, how I dress, how I work, and how I sleep (much better). Most importantly, it has changed my priorities.
One of the major influences is being around my mother, Shannon. I joke that Shannon is an earth witch. She grows all sorts of medicinal plants and herbs using regenerative farming practices in the gardens and greenhouses, some of which she bottles and uses in her acupuncture clinic (also on the property).
She’s full of knowledge, boundless energy, and curiosity, and I know I’ll look back on these years we spent together as some of the fondest memories of my life. The reality for most of us is that we don’t live near our families anymore. Gone are the days of multi-generational living. For example, when I was in Austin, pretty much all of my time was spent around people my age. We don’t acquire enough wisdom and alternate perspectives when we isolate ourselves with people our own age.
One of the big changes in moving to a rural town is spending time around people older than me. I’m sorry to say, but most of the time they are far more interesting. They’ve lived more life and acquired more wisdom, they have trade skills people my age don’t have, they know the meaning of hard work, and many of them have an unmistakable attribute I find lacking in the younger generations: Grit.
In addition to spending my time differently, for those of you who are insiders, you know that this is the place my CPG brand - Good Psyche - was born. So it feels pretty full circle to bring it home. I had to get over the FOMO of leaving a city where everyone is a founder or “solopreneur”, afraid my business would suffer being out of that environment.
Yet now that I’m here, I feel I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. Plus, should sh*t hit the fan, it feels like a safe place to be. Sure we aren’t totally off the grid, but I feel more autonomy and security being on farmable land with a fresh water source nonetheless. The Finger Lakes remain crisp, clear and full. Having four seasons is refreshing. Plus, we aren’t experiencing triple-digit summers, at least not yet.
It’s not all easy-breezy. Living on any property with any decent amount of acreage is hard work. I’ll admit I’m not out there mowing and weeding. My contributions are in running the apothecary. The point is, it’s difficult and expensive to own and maintain land! Yet we are far from the only ones trying.
The concept of acquiring land is not new. Land will always be valuable because you can’t make more of it. But I think modern times have applied new types of pressure to the idea of sustaining one’s quality of life. Despite what your realtor would like you to believe, I believe that in coming decades, owning farmland, big or small, will be a greater asset to Americans than ever before, certainly more than any shiny downtown condo or suburban home.
The appeal of the city buzz, the nightlife, events, fashion, restaurants, network and opportunities is not lost on me. Like Paige and others who run businesses from rural locations, I fully plan to make my way into the city for certain occasions.
However, the globalization and industrialization of farmable land all over the world by corporate entities slapped me with the realization that big tech and corporate agriculture giants are forcing out sustainable, regenerative farming practices in favor of low cost, mass-produced, over-processed, monoculture crops, and they are slapping patents on seeds, fertilizers, and meat alternatives, etc. It is the de-democratization of land and food.
This is where I circle back to Bill Gates being the single largest owner of farmland in the US.
Aside from the obvious doomsday outcome of billionaires and corporations potentially owning every parcel of growable land, why else is this particularly concerning?
**Buckle up**
Controlling the food supply is scary enough, but even more alarming is the sharp decline in food quality due to monoculture farming. Monoculture farming is growing a single crop on a swath of land, season after season, year after year. It's primarily used as a way for commercial agriculture to produce a lot of one thing, like corn, and do it cheaply.
When you look at a natural, unadulterated ecosystem, you'll see a variety of plant species growing over, under, and around each other. Nowhere in nature do you see a single species occupying an entire ecosystem, and with good reason.
The forced lack of biodiversity creates an imbalance to the natural order. It invites pests and in turn requires the use of fertilizers. It leaves crops vulnerable to pathogens, inviting blights that wipe out portions of the food supply, and it depletes the health and fertility of the soil, thus yielding produce stripped of its vitality. Just compare a fresh farmers market tomato to one at your big box grocery store. The lack of minerals and nutrients of a monoculture grown tomato are visible even to the naked eye.
Put simply, the first rule of healthy soil, thus healthy food, and thus healthy people, is biodiversity. Without biodiverse ecosystems, the checks and balances of the natural world fall apart, allowing pests, disease, and pathogens to run wild.
"You can't have a healthy civilization without healthy soil." - Joel Salatin
Shannon’s sheep.
On the opposite side is regenerative agriculture, a method that works with the wildness of nature to improve and sustain the health of the soil and the produce. One major benefit to regenerative agriculture is carbon sequestration. Healthy soils act as a carbon sink, capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
This helps to mitigate the environmental impact while also enhancing the resilience of crops to extreme weather events. Seeing regenerative farming in action is to witness the symbiotic relationships within the wildness of nature.
On top of unprecedented levels of farm debt and bankruptcies looming over many of America's farmers, the average farmer today is 58 years old. That's not far off from retirement. And if their offspring has no interest in carrying on the family farm, what are they to do besides sell it off?
The voracious giants are there with grabby hands and cheshire grins, ready and able to gobble it up.
Denying access to healthy food and medicinal plants that help prevent the need to enter the healthcare system with chronic conditions to begin with, is robbing us of our sovereignty to control what we consume, and the sovereignty of the seed, meaning, it is an attempt to patent and own the very intelligence of nature and deny its potential to organically sustain human life.
Okayyyy wowww I really went for it there. Whew!
ANYWAYS,
Land the plane, Trish.
I’m not trying to yuck anyones yum. Tons of people thrive in city life, or even suburban life. And that’s great! My point with this post is to perhaps inspire some curiosity about country life, and reassure you that this is not where dreams go to die, but instead where many dreams hatch and come alive.
Personally, I feel physically and emotionally healthier. I spend more time outdoors, my eyes soak up greenery wherever I look, and the visual and physical space dissolve any claustrophobic tension. I feel less anxious, more at peace, and my daily life has even more meaning and purpose.
Plus, I get to wear my favorite clothing genre whenever I want.
Thanks for reading!
