Who grew up on a farmland?

[Zorkaz]

I'm currently working on something called "The Farmlands", constisting mostly of well, farms, barns and a tiny town. (And "secret" things)

 

Now can somebody who grew up or still lives in such an remote american farm area please tell me:

-Do garbage trucks do come to your farmsteads or how is it being handled?

-Are firetrucks available in case something burns down?

-Would all farms be under the rule of a mayor or is it different for remote areas (Explanation: The Austrian system is a bit different)

[HeyYou]

Garbage trucks do indeed come out this way. (I live in southern michigan, in a VERY agriculturally inclined area.)

 

Emergency services are available, police, fire, etc, however, response times are not always the best. Sometimes they can take a bit to show up, and if something is burning, you can usually figger it's going to be a total loss, as the fire will have quite the foothold by the time the fire department shows up.

 

Most farms are outside city limits, so the Mayor has zero say in what goes on there. In fact, the government in general has very little say in what farmers do. They choose crops that grow well in their given climate, and sell to whoever will pay them the most. Its mostly corn, and soybeans around here, and a fair bit of the corn goes to the 'alternative fuel' plant in town. No clue whom they sell their soybeans to.

[Zorkaz]

Thx for the info

[HeyYou]

Whatever ya need man. :D

[ChuckYufarley]

I grew up in a small farming community in Northwestern Minnesota, and although my family were not farmers, we did live on a farmstead. Keep in mind that no two rural communities are the same, and I can only speak from my own experience.

 

In our case, we did not have garbage collection for many years. We had our own dedicated "garbage truck", which was just an old pickup with a topper. Every couple weeks we'd have to go to the county landfill to empty it, but the frequency often depended on the time of year. Winter time we could get by with waiting until the truck was full, Summer we'd probably go to the dump once a week.. However, there was a time when we did have a privately owned collection service. A local guy owned his own garbage truck, and could be contracted to collect your refuse on a weekly basis.

 

Emergency services varied. We did have a full time sheriff's department and a couple of town police officers. Our fire department was 100% volunteer, which would explain slower response times. In case of fire, the emergency dispatch would sound the town's emergency siren to alert the volunteer firefighters. Mind you, this was many years ago, before cell phones, so I would assume they've updated their procedures since then. When I was 12-13 years old, I managed to start a grass fire with a poorly aimed bottle rocket. From the first sign of smoke it was probably 10 minutes before the alarm sounded, and another 20-30 minutes until the fire truck arrived. I couldn't say whether or not our ambulance service had full time EMTs or not. We did have a small hospital in town. I had one or two experiences when an ambulance was called, and I would estimate the response time was in the neighborhood of 30-40 minutes, so I would guess the EMTs were volunteers as well.

 

As for our mayor, his duties were limited and focused mainly on functions within the city limits. Living outside the city limits, I would guess we fell under the jurisdiction of the sheriff's department and/or various county administrators. That being said, with the exception perhaps of major construction, permits and various ordinances are things most rural folks didn't fret over. Our closest neighbor was more than a mile away, so noise was never an issue. In 40 years the old farmstead has seen multiple buildings added or demolished and at least 3-4 major house renovations with nary a permit in hand. When you have a brush pile, you burn it. If you want to run a business out of you garage, there's no zoning ordinance to stop you. Well, there might be an ordinance, but I've never seen it stand in anyone's way.

[Zorkaz]

Oh that's interesting. Thank you.

Quite different to my densely populated middle-europe

[ChuckYufarley]

You're welcome.

 

Coincidentally, today I did a YouTube search for news from my hometown, and discovered that two businesses there had burned to the ground in the last 6-8 months. One was across main street from the fire hall.

 

I don't know if this speaks to the kind of information you're looking for or not, but one thing I'd like to add is that all across rural America, small towns like the one I grew up in are slowly but surely turning into ghost towns. Family farms are dwindling in numbers. There's little to no incentive for new business to set up shop. In most cases it's all they can do to maintain basic services for their communities. School enrollments plummet. In my hometown school enrollment is less than a quarter of what it was 30 years ago. To make matters worse, as services and opportunities become fewer and farther between, substance abuse and crime increases.

Edited January 19, 2022 by ChuckYufarley

[HeyYou]

You're welcome.

 

Coincidentally, today I did a YouTube search for news from my hometown, and discovered that two businesses there had burned to the ground in the last 6-8 months. One was across main street from the fire hall.

 

I don't know if this speaks to the kind of information you're looking for or not, but one thing I'd like to add is that all across rural America, small towns like the one I grew up in are slowly but surely turning into ghost towns. Family farms are dwindling in numbers. There's little to no incentive for new business to set up shop. In most cases it's all they can do to maintain basic services for their communities. School enrollments plummet. In my hometown school enrollment is less than a quarter of what it was 30 years ago. To make matters worse, as services and opportunities become fewer and farther between, substance abuse and crime increases.

Yeah, the family farms simply cannot compete with the corporate farms. Just a matter of scale. That, and they are being regulated out of existence.....