Deer Diary Country Life Origin Story

In this post, I thought I’d do something a little different. I wanted to get more personal and write more about the blog’s origin story: Leaving life in a big city to live a country life.

If you read the About page of this blog, you know the general story. After being born in San Francisco and having spent almost my whole life living in a big city, my husband and I moved to Vacaville, CA, and are now living the country life on 10 acres of land. For the most part, our lives have been transformed.

Maybe you are wondering what prompted this life-changing move. Well, my husband, Dennis, had the opportunity to become a partner at an auto body shop in Fairfield. This was a lifelong dream of his. He started his career painting cars and then worked his way up to managing auto body shops. He loved the business side of the operation but always wanted to be the one truly driving the success of the business. 

In June of 2022, he officially became a partner and since he would need to be in the shop 5 days a week, it no longer made sense for us to live in San Francisco. Honestly, I think we both knew it was time for a change, so this opportunity was the catalyst and we moved in December of that year. 

San Francisco will always have my heart. Before we moved, whenever I thought about leaving the city, I would get such a sad feeling inside. My heart ached. It is the city where I was born, where I met my husband, where the majority of the experiences that shaped who I am as a person happened. Also, in my opinion, it is one of the most incredible places I’ve ever known. From the gorgeous architecture, access to the ocean, diversity of population, and incredibly rich cultural landscape, there is so much to love and appreciate. I mean, look at this view…

Once we knew we were going to move, we had to find a place to live. Knowing very little about the area, we were pretty much left to our own devices to research. After many trips to scout out Fairfield and Vacaville, we became incredibly fond of the more rural areas. Country life was becoming more and more appealing. Not only is there a lot of farmland, but there are also lots of vineyards. It’s not very well known, but the Suisun Valley produces some incredible grapes. It would make sense because of the close proximity to the incredibly popular Napa and Sonoma wine regions but there’s quite a lot less hype around Suisun Valley. There’s a much more relaxed, laidback vibe and fewer tourists in general. I still consider it a hidden gem.

Two of our favorite local wineries are Vezer Family Vineyards and Suisun Creek Winery.

Back to my story…after several months of searching for a home, we found a very unique house on 10 acres of land in the Pleasants Valley Agricultural region of Vacaville. Talk about a complete change from everything we have ever known!

In San Francisco, we lived right on the street car line in a pretty active neighborhood with a medical school and hospital, so there was almost always some sort of noise outside. I remember our first few nights in our new house being almost overwhelmed by the silence. It was difficult to sleep in all of that quiet! 

Since we are in an area with a very high risk of wildfires, it’s important to care for the land to prevent fires from spreading and damaging the property. With 10 acres of land, a pushing lawnmower isn’t a practical solution, now we own a vintage tractor and 72” riding lawnmower. Dennis loves the equipment and I’ve never seen him more excited to spring out of bed at the crack of dawn on a weekend to take care of the land. 

Dennis now has space for a workshop; a lifelong dream of his! He’s slowly acquired many woodworking tools and has been using wood from damaged trees on our land to create custom woodworking projects. Here’s a blog post about his succulent table.

We also have a large, fenced backyard. This is where I spend most of my time outdoors. It’s been a lifelong dream of mind to grow my own fruits and vegetables. Now that I have the space and the ideal climate, I’ve really gotten into gardening. My first season was a great learning experience. More on that in this post. Most everything failed due to squirrels and birds eating and destroying everything but I did learn a lot about the basics and was able to keep some herbs and lettuces thriving. I even got a few small radishes.

This season, I have a greenhouse. Read all about that in this post. Now that the temperatures have stabilized, I’ll be spending this weekend planting seeds in my raised beds. I’m very hopeful that this year will be much more successful. I’m dreaming of all of the salads, stir-fries, juices, etc. that I’ll enjoy from my harvests.

This transition country life has also been an adjustment for our senior animals. Our currently 19 year old border collie, Lucy Valentina, has loved no longer having a home with many stairs and her own backyard to enjoy. This has increased her quality of life so much that she may be with us for even longer than we ever expected. It’s incredible! Our currently 18 year old cat, Mujinga, simply enjoys lazing around all day on her heating pad watching the birds in the bird feeders. She seems pretty content too.

I miss a lot about life in San Francisco. My Mom and Dennis’s Mom and sisters still live in San Francisco, so we certainly miss being able to see them as often. We also miss being able to get together with our city friends as often but we have made some wonderful new local friends that have made life even sweeter.

We also miss the food. So. Much. Being able to walk out your door and have a selection of incredible restaurants a couple of blocks away is something we never took for granted. We now realize how incredibly fortunate we were to have that in our neighborhood before we moved. 

Now we are cooking more and have started to discover more restaurants that we enjoy up here. 

I think the biggest takeaway from this story is that I do not regret moving to the country one bit. I truly love country life.

Now, I can’t imagine living in a big city ever again. The slower pace, less traffic, and being surrounded by nature, and peace and quiet have refreshed my entire being. Every day I learn something new and I’m looking forward to increasing my knowledge about nature, gardening, the list goes on and on. 

I started this blog to document this life-changing journey of adjusting to country life. It has been a wonderful creative outlet and because I’m inspired by something new I’ve experienced enough to write about here nearly every week, I know we’ve made the right decision!