Our back four

Elburn Herald reporter recounts her transition from suburban to rural living

by Susan O'Neill

            The transition from Oak Park to Maple Park is just one word, but that word has made a world of difference.

            Living in the country is something my husband Jim and I had always dreamed about. Jim was raised in a small town in Michigan and spent a lot of time on his grandmother's farm. Although I was a city girl, born and raised in Chicago, I grew up in the 1960s during the “back to the garden” years.

            Jim and I found the place of our dreams on one of our drives in the Elburn area to look at property. We had found a few possibilities on the Internet, but on our way we made a wrong turn. That wrong turn led us to an old but renovated farm house and a few outbuildings on a five-acre piece of land about halfway between Elburn and Maple Park. The sign out front read “For sale by owner.”

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