My parents led the "Good Life" in Chenago Forks on 100 acres replete with fruit trees vegetable gardens, milk house, barn and main house built in 1845. My mother went so far as to raise bees for honey and won NYS first prize. She also would spin all her own yarn from all sorts of fibers including sheep, dog, melon fibers etc. One misbegotten adventure was her attempt at raising a genetic cross between chickens and turkys called Turkins. Funny looking yes but inedible. You could pressure cook them for 2 hours but the flesh was still rock hard.

Up by the stair step stream were big turtles and glow in the dark vegetation. Down in the hay fields you could surprise deer poking about the tall grass.

Dad would split the firewood which feed the cook stove, Franklin furnace and fireplace. Best of all the wood pile was home to forlorn looking possum.

There was phone (party line), electricity and gas and even a gas tank and pump at the end of the driveway but still all in all it was pretty rustic. Even the smallest intrusion of civilization could seem like an attack.
Mom had just hooked up an antique wall phone the day before a telephone man arrived and scurried up a pole near the house. Thinking the telephone company was discconecting them over the additional phone she ran and told my father. He was puzzled but sprang to action. He went out to his truck and took the keys out of the phone truck. A minute later there was a phone call my dad answered out of breath and said right off the bat "I've got your keys so you best just leave our line alone". After two more phone calls and a degree of decorum restored it was explained that the phone service was merely being upgraded from party line servide to private.

Sometimes the boondocks can get the best of you.