Is that a cow in my yard?

When Steven and I first started looking for houses we had a few items on our wish list.  Well, make that a few thousand.  But there were only a few (really, this time) that were "have-to-have" type things.  Individually we wanted things that were a bit different.  For the man of the house it was a garage.  His baby had to have a home!  Click for a reminder.  I had two main have-to-have's; an actual laundry room and a front porch big enough for at least two rocking chairs.  Check.  Check.  And Check. 

Together our main thing was to be somewhere we could have some land.  We didn't need a ranch or anything but we didn't want to reach out of our window and touch our neighbor's house.  I'm all about liking the neighbors but i don't need to hear alarms or activities in other homes.  We wanted a house in Johnston County.  In other words, The Country.  And we got just that.    

There are a few ways to know for sure that you live in The Country.  One of the first tell-tale signs is the over abundance of farms.  On the way home, I pass multiple fields, all growing something that someone or something will be eating in the months to come.  Rows as far as you can see full of everything from corn to strawberries.  

Where there are farms, there is farm equipment.  All the roads that we drive on day to day have been there for decades.  And back when they were nothing more than dirt and rock and clouds of dust, tractors roamed free.  Well, in Johnston County, they still do.  When it's plowing time, picking time, planting time or any time in between, you're going to eventually find yourself stuck behind a tractor going just over the speed of snail.  On occasion, the nice man at the wheel might pull over as far as he can and wave you around.  But mostly you're stuck.  I guess they figure they were there first.  And they'll be there last at that rate. 

From our front porch i hear church bells, crickets and the wind in the trees.  We have deer that roam through our yard at night and a giant bunny that murders flowers.  There are fireflies by the hundreds (they're kinda magical, aren't they?) and 100 times as many stars.  And, on random afternoons, when looking out in to the back yard, you just might see this...

Yeah, that's a cow.  Not sure if you can really tell from the picture but that's what it is.  The tangle of trees and other shrubbery that you see marks our property line.  There's a little wire fence that keeps the cows on their side and us on ours.  It's so little you can't even see it there.  And that cow was staring Steven down while he took this picture.  It was really funny actually.  Well, funny until a cow takes you down.  I guess that's something else you could hear about in the country.