Bridging the gap between rural and metropolitan America

The honesty and goodness found in rural America is beckoning millions to consider slower-paced living on farms

I have spent equal parts of my life in the biggest metropolitans in the world, as well as the quietest villages in Upstate New York - a farming region of the country most people in the world are not aware exists. I have driven 10,000-miles across the country from Southwest Florida to the corners of Idaho and back, staying at farms, barndominiums, and bed and breakfast Airbnbs managed by generational farmers. I have spent considerable time in cities like Tokyo, London, and Paris, having also lived in Brooklyn, New York for five-years of my life.

I have experienced the culture shock that occurs when you drive from Houston or Austin to worn-down towns barely hanging on near Route 66.

I have observed the differences in these settings my whole life. Even now, I go between my farm in rural Saratoga County and the nearby closest ‘city:’ Saratoga Springs. I find myself to be someone who needs a bit of both the rural and the metropolitan in my life every week to satisfy all of my curiosities and socializing.

Having observed these two settings in close contrast to one another for all of my adult life, I am noticing something BIG that is happening across the country. And I don’t claim to be the first person to notice the trend - stats, home sales, and real estate preferences everywhere will tell you the same thing. From corporate burnout to realizing that job security flies out the window when COVID-19 barrels through your country, more city dwellers than ever started filtering their home searches for idyllic, rural settings in 2020.

But I would argue this movement is bigger than that. You can find plenty of writers and reporters breaking down the trends behind people wanting more affordable homes, more space, and freedom to make their own schedules. All of that is incredibly true. I am going to head in a more dramatic direction in this article and share what’s been on my heart as I stock up my farm stand in the country every day.

The search for honest humanity

Over the last 30 to 50 years in this country, we have championed and awarded ‘fakeness’ in all settings. It’s why I barely lasted four-weeks at a corporate job in New York City. I learned quickly that if I wanted a promotion at that job, I would have to stroke my manager’s ego daily. I would also have to generate ideas, create concepts, and finish projects that other’s claimed as their own.

‘It’s just what you do in the corporate world.’

Well IT rubbed me the wrong way. I have since observed people in public, as well as the people in my life, trudging through their corporate jobs since then. They adopt new voices on the phone, they lie during team meetings and claim they ‘love their job and their clients,’ they hang up and immediately sigh out the stress their bodies weathered to portray a fake personality for one-hour so they get a paycheck, and they endure mental manipulation by bosses that claim ‘they really do appreciate and love their staff.’

We all know it’s fake. I am not an astute seer to know it’s fake. Every person knows it’s fake - they don’t go down the rabbit hole, though, for fear they may quit their jobs and stare down the reality of starting from scratch or working for themselves. I get it! People are pushed to their limits right now, from mounting working hour demands, to affording groceries when they get out of their windowless office. It’s an abusive existence that has been slowly killing the people in this country since the mid 20th century.

I started working for myself at only 21-years-old as a way to avoid the phoniness of the corporate world. I was OK with barely making end’s meet, so long as I didn’t have to funnel my creativity into a boss who could care less if I lived or died. I went on to make social media content about freelancing and to help people escape the rat race. I would talk with so many people who wanted, more than anything, to remove themselves from the American corporate economy - but they just couldn’t pull the entrepreneurial trigger. It was too much of a risk.

And again, I completely understand, especially if you have kids to feed!

I felt frustrated that I couldn’t be of better help to people with the knowledge I had acquired about self-sufficiency. After 10-years of running a freelancing business, I closed it down - abruptly. I earn zero income from it today. Most people would say I am crazy for doing that. I disagree. I had to close the door, lock it, and throw away the key for this new purpose to hit me. And boy, it hit me HARD.

What I am seeing today is that instead of quitting these fake jobs with fake employers and fake bosses who know their business is destroying the environment (and don’t care), people are waging their own form of protest by moving to the country. I have had people tell me they didn’t ‘know what came over them’ when they opened up Zillow from their Upper East Side apartment to look up ‘farms near them’ for sale.

I’ve overheard:

“Me, a farmer? I can barely function if I don’t get a piping hot matcha oat milk latte from the cafe downstairs before 10AM.”

“I can’t fix anything. I don’t even have a license! I take the bloody subway to my job every day.”

“I want to move to the country, but then I’ll need to buy a gun, right? I don’t feel comfortable having a gun near me. I don’t even know how to shoot it!”

Which brings me to my first zany point of this article: something spiritual is happening. People with no farming experience are feeling called to the country… in DROVES. I have met countless couples at my farm who moved up here a few years ago from Queens, Harlem, Brooklyn, Boston, and even DC, with no idea what they were doing. They just knew it was time to go.

You might argue they know it’s time to go because they are burnt out from their jobs. This is absolutely true. But people have been burnt out from jobs in the past and don’t make, en masse, the decision to go from the most urban of centers to living off the grid in a mountain range. That’s a pretty drastic change. And it’s a big risk for the city dwellers who are doing it anyway.

They are fleeing to the country.

They are fleeing to a place that has honest human energy to it. They are fleeing to a place where they feel safe. Their souls are looking for a connection to nature, to the food they eat, to the land they live on. Being able to buy whatever you want, whenever you want, has peaked. We don’t want that anymore. People want to feel like human beings again. They want to put the WORK in to their property, meals, and families. We have reached the consumerism tipping point that I would argue reached its pinnacle in the 2010s. We are on the other side of it now, which means a few things may be en route for this country.

A land revolution is on the way

The corporate economy that owns America today (corporations swallowed capitalism for breakfast decades ago - we do not live in a free economy) has pillaged the environment, stripped our country of its natural resources, abused people here and abroad, funded wars, removed creativity and imagination from workplace and schooling settings, and has convinced all of us it’s very ‘woo woo’ to talk about these topics. Corporations have eaten the souls of the workers who support them. It’s bigger than working long hours - these entities have taken the awe and wonder that comes with being a human being and locked in up in exchange for a 401k.

Do you ever notice people don’t draw, paint, craft, sew, sing, dance, or garden for fun anymore? Sure, some people do every now and then, but it’s not the norm. From my conversations with my grandparents while they were alive, I learned that it WAS the norm for people to do all of these things and more in the past. They did it because they had to at times, but they also did it because they loved creating. Phones and social media majorly stole some of that creativity, but I would argue that corporations and office jobs do even worse damage as someone who uses my phone daily to share my art (writing, videography, and photography).

A spiritual awakening is sweeping across the country and its biggest form of protest is saying no to the hyper-connected and hyper-convenient landscape that’s filled with poisoned water, food, and drugs in city centers.

People want to feel good again. And they want to be around good people. Since I opened my farm stand in July, I have had someone stop by and spend money nearly every single day. I have HANDMADE crafts outside that were made with love, plants grown here at my farm, and free pamphlets and booklets. I have free Amish books they gave me to help get their community business. I have pumpkins for sale I grew with free seeds I got at a local garden store. The positivity that emanates from my Amish-made farm stand draws people in every single day. And my farm is NOT on a main road!

Not only that, the farm stand draws in GOOD people. I have never once had someone steal from my farm stand or cash box. I don’t lock the cash box each day. I can feel I don’t need to. There is a good energy out here in the country that is tangible. Stealing from a farm stand is not something you do out here.

And people around the country are craving that HONESTY. After decades of enduring phony people at phony jobs, Americans are standing up and saying NO to it. Americans are waking up to the fact that just because a company gives you an extra two days of vacation time per year doesn’t mean that company hasn’t devoured their soul. Americans are realizing it makes more sense cost-wise to grow their own food and homeschool their own kids than pay for daycare. The corporate economy of the last 50-year has sold us lies boxed up with a pretty blue ribbon that makes it a nice post on Instagram. We’re not buying it anymore.

While this spiritual awakening is occurring, people all over the country know, subconsciously, they want to head out into rural areas. They want to be in the towns and villages where everyone knows each other’s names. They want to know the farmer who raised (humanely) the chicken meat their family is going to enjoy that evening. They want it all, even if they arrive at the farm with zero prior agricultural experience. I know this because you can find tens of thousands of comments from these people across my social media accounts.

A land revolution is imminent, as the 2025 Farmer’s Almanac detailed that $24 trillion worth of farmland and farms will be for sale over the next 20-years. Americans want these farms. They are willing to take the risk. But they aren’t going to show up at these farms without a fight. Wall Street, the corporate machine that has choked our economy for too long, investment companies, government-controlled big ag, and foreign conglomerates want the land, too. They know there’s a spiritual awakening happening, and as they lose their grasp on our attention, they are going to try to thwart our self-sufficiency efforts.

There is something in the air, and it’s the same air that swept through the land, both here and in France, towards the end of the 18th century (we are creeping towards the 250th anniversary, a full cycle). The separation between rural and metropolitan America is starting to close, and as more city folk intermix with country dwellers in the years to come, this country is going to experience some much-needed healing among its people.

I do not believe a civil war awaits us, as others predict. But I do believe a land revolution between the common man/woman and the elite is inevitable. And I do also believe that foreign involvement or intervention, on American soil, for the first time, is inevitable as well.

The best way to outsmart these actors? Buy the farmland. Start the farm. Buy the farms for sale around you before Wall Street does. Take the risk. I am doing it right now ALONE and it’s working. I had never gardened a day in my life until this past summer, and now I make $20/day selling pumpkins at a farm stand. Everyone is craving a house in the country because there is no such thing as being ‘born a farmer.’ It used to be normal for EVERY person to garden and grow/hunt their food. It’s only taken lofty convenience, some convincing ads, and chemical-filled food to put the American people in a mindless consumerism stupor. You’re feeling a craving to buy a farm because your SOUL is desperate to do what your ancestors did before you.

Bridging the gap between ‘city dwellers’ and ‘country bumpkins’ is going to heal this country in ways we can’t even comprehend.

Be open to the incoming class shifts

My final ask is for those of you reading this who have lived in the country all your lives: be nice to the newcomers. I faced some pushback to buying my farm at first. We are ALL Americans, no matter where the person came from. If you don’t like how the city people vote, instead of badmouthing them and speeding by their driveways, why not pull in and talk to them? Why not share with them WHY you believe what you believe? Why not start a weekly potluck for the community?

The spiritual pull is there, whether people are ready for it or not. Americans are feeling the desire to get into the country for what’s to come. They may not even be aware their subconscious is tapping into something much bigger than them. They want to control their resources and where their food comes from. Historically, that means a revolution of some kind is on the way.

Perhaps feudal living, with smaller communes / kingdoms may be what we’re dealing with at the end of the next 20-years. From an environmental point of view, that wouldn’t be so bad! I’ll save my feudal commentary for another article.

As always, stick around for more content designed to help you find farms, buy farms, secure loans, manage farm stands, make money on farms, save the bees, and more. You know the drill.

I currently give out Amish booklets and native seeds for free from my farm stand. Paid subscribers are more appreciated than you will ever know!