Rural and Agricultural Living

Ashanti Bell

Rural and Agricultural Living Rough Draft Essay

February 3, 2023

ENC 0017- Professor Jose Macia

A Lesson in Rural and Agricultural Living

Have you ever lived in a rural area? If the answer to your question is no, then today I will take you on the journey of rural and agricultural living and what my experiences and life lessons have been. Rural and agricultural living can have its pros and cons to it but in the end and with the right help and support system it can definitely be achieved. Most days when I awake, and I have finished getting myself and my two youngest children dressed for school, and to start my day I am startled by the sound of roosters crowing. When I go outside, sometimes I am accompanied by the smell of burning sugar cane fields and the chemicals they use along with the process. When I lived in Cobb County, I was a dependent child and lived with my mother and adult brother and I did not have to concern myself with the responsibility about transportation. The other point I will bring to you about living in Marietta, GA which is in Cobb County, is that there is lots of red clay(and sometimes clay or dirt roads) that gets stuck to your shoes and the weather gets very cold or very hot.

These are just a few things that I can name about living in a rural and agricultural area. Along with living in a rural and agricultural environment, the job market in my opinion is also affected by living in a rural and agricultural area. I must admit, that although there are no jobs available or the fact there aren’t any good jobs available, which means that we have to travel to the next city for jobs the environment can be quite peaceful and I sometimes would not have it any other way. Those were just some of the pros and cons that I decided to include in the story. I have lived in an agricultural city named Belle Glade which is in Palm Beach County, and I have been here for 3 years. In addition to living here in Belle Glade for 3 years, coming from an area such as Pompano Beach or Fort Lauderdale, I can say that this was a huge change, but a necessary adjustment. Although I have lived in Cobb County in high school which is similar, I did not expect to see such a rural area in Florida, that was so close but so far away from home.

When I first moved to Belle Glade, I did not have a vehicle until I got my income taxes. While I’m no stranger to using public transportation the amount of buses and transfers and 1 hour rides in between driving, a bus ride in a rural city can take up to 4 hours, even if you are still traveling within Palm Beach County city limits. For example if you are traveling from Boynton Beach, FL to Belle Glade, Fl which are in the same county the estimated time to travel via public transit is 3 hours and 27 minutes. If you are limited with options, then trip planning is essential, whereas just getting up and catching the bus for what can usually be an hour ride would be much easier and less time consuming. This is just one of the major things that I have learned is crucially important to rural and agricultural living.

As previously mentioned in this essay, we have discovered many different things about rural and agricultural living from roosters waking us up very early in the morning down to properly planning your bus route if you don’t have access to a vehicle and getting red clay stuck under your shoes. The one thing that we can take away from this essay is that there are many small factors to living this type of lifestyle and identify that it is indeed a lifestyle. We can also conclude that although these things are minute, they help shape the lifestyle that we ultimately choose to live, whether it’s very rural with dirt roads or very agricultural with lots of fields and land there are indeed lessons that can be learned. All in all, it is what you decide to make of it.