We all know that organic farming is the trendy thing for young urban foodies to try out these days, especially when you’re unemployed and daydreaming about butchering your own pig next to a hot lumberjack who bounces your baby on his knee while you expertly transform raw meat into porchetta. I know I’m not the only one out there with that fantasy. As an urbanite who spent the last few years “being rural,” I’m here to knock some sense into you. Try to keep the following in mind as you contemplate the move out to the country this winter:

1. That poop smell is coming from you.
You will most likely acquire what experienced farmers like to call a “dried poop spot” on your pants from all those times you sit in cow manure while trying to take artsy photos of the sunset behind the barn.

2. Country folk are more hardcore than you.
When your neighbor tells you about the time a tractor rolled over him when he was nine, don’t try to empathize by responding with, “Once I slid off the highway in a snow storm and scratched my bumper.” Nothing can beat the I-was-trapped-under-a-tractor-as-a-small-child story.

3. You will get Lyme disease.
You just will. A deer tick is the size of a fucking sesame seed. Good luck finding them on your head, or worse, your crotch. [Try falling asleep thinking about that one, ladies!]

4. Farms have no money.
Translation: you will either be sleeping in a tent or in a building with no heat. It’s all fun and games until October hits and you find yourself wearing an entire outfit to bed, complete with earmuffs, a scarf, gloves and two down blankets.

5. Wildlife is real.
When a massive raccoon with distemper stumbles up the driveway towards you in broad daylight, be thankful you thought to pack those ski poles. They make excellent poking devices. Also, those giant prints in the mud behind the tent where you sleep probably belong to a cougar.

6. There is no such thing as “dating”.
Spoiler alert! The hot lumberjack man doesn’t exist. Sorry. If you cry yourself to sleep because you can’t get any in a city with hundreds of singles playing hard to get, just wait until the most eligible bachelor within a 50 mile radius is a middle-aged bear of a man who belches the word “hay” in response to the question, “So, what do you feed your goats?”

– Katie Godfrey secretly enjoys everything about country living.