I just spent an hour and a half trying to e-mail one of my editors a few pictures. And then my connection cut out before the transmission could be complete! This is just one of the challenges of country living. And there are many.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no wuss -- and no city slicker. I was born and raised in Fort Garry ( a suburb of south Winnipeg) and lived in the city until 1982. But on July 1, 1982, we moved out to a beautifully-treed five-acre parcel of land near Birds Hill Park and have loved it … most of the time … ever since.

So why did it take me so long to send electronic pictures? Because we can’t get high-speed internet out here. Service providers have been promising that it’s coming, but unlike the impending winter, I can’t count on services like high-speed service coming to our neck of the woods anytime soon. Sure, I’ve got a 56K modem. But the phone lines out here only allow it to connect at 28K. So there’s nothing I can do but live with it. Unless I want to pay more than $56 per month for a satellite internet service – which I can’t afford.

We can’t get cable television or gas heat either. But we’ve learned to live with the limitations of country life because, to us, the benefits far outweigh the negatives. Some of you may be thinking of taking the plunge and leaving the comforts of city life behind, so I’ll try and give you more insights on what you can expect should you choose to join the Jed Clampett crowd.

The first thing you have to realize is that you have to get in your car for virtually everything. There is no public transportation, and there is nothing within walking distance of us – except for a few great neighbours.

We used to have mail delivered to the end of our street but they changed that a couple years ago. It’s now more than a mile away to the group box where they deliver our mail to one of those old-fashioned army-green boxes you still see out in the country.

Coming home from a meeting one evening, I stopped to get the mail. It was a blustery end-of-winter night, with plenty of fresh snow blowing furiously about. As I made my way from my car to the mailbox, I dropped my flashlight. No street lights out here! The flashlight slid underneath the group box. On my knees I went, fumbling in the dark & the snow. Luckily, I was just able to reach and retrieve it. Then I tried to open our mail box. Our lock was frozen shut! I guess the heavy wet snow had plugged the lock. So I gave up and got back in my car.

I tried to turn the vehicle around on the gravel road, without having to drive a quarter mile up to the next driveway. That turned out to be another dumb move. I came awfully close to getting stuck in the soft, fresh early spring snow. There are no smooth moves out here unless you have a 4x4 – and who can afford to drive one of those with the price of gas these days?

Summer provides equally unsettling challenges. One day we came home from work only to find the house filled with honey bees! Our neighbour has bee hives, and I’m guessing the queen bee must have found a way to get in and the others followed. My husband grabbed a fly swatter and bravely began annihilating the bees one by one on the window, collecting their fallen bodies in a small garbage bin. I, on the other hand, ran outside screaming, and remained there. After spraying the house with bee killer, we headed for a hotel and stayed there for the night.

Mosquitoes are an accepted and ever-present challenge in summer when you live in the bush on the Canadian Prairies, but there have been years when we’ve been so inundated with them that we’ve had to run the 75 feet from the garage to the house in order to avoid being carried off by the bloodsuckers! This year has been bad, but is certainly not the worst I recall.

Yes, nature can be your best friend, but it can also be your most formidable opponent. I remember back in 1993, when the heavens opened, and there was torrential rain for hours on end. The power was out for an extended period, so the sump pump couldn’t run all through the night.

I got up in the morning, and found Goldie, our over-sized orange cat standing on the landing, looking down towards the basement in awe. Coming to her side, I discovered there was about nine inches of clear water throughout our basement! My husband, Reg was up north. I didn’t know what to do, so I called, Jim Kullman, our ever-helpful neighbour.

That’s one of the wonderful things about country life. You can still rely on your neighbours to be there when you need them. Jim came over in his hip-waders and made his way to the circuit box in the corner of our basement, grounding himself with a wooden chair as he made his way through the flood waters to turn off the electrical current.

It took a lot of effort to get the basement dried up and back to normal. Thank goodness for the support we readily received from family and friends. But we’ve stayed committed to country living … because we love it.

In my opinion, you either love country living – or you hate it. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground in between. We’ve seen about five different neighbours occupy the house next door over the past 23 years, because somehow the wrong people seemed to keep moving into the place. People who just couldn’t come to terms with the challenges of country living.

But if you find the right house for the right people, there’s nothing better than sitting on your deck, enjoying a barbeque and a cold tasty beverage, and smelling that clean country air as you watch the towering spruce blowing gently in the breeze.

-30-