I recently heard a song that spoke to me on so many ways. I don’t know how I hadn’t heard it before. The song is Buy Dirt by Jordan Davis with Luke Bryan.
Blow up your TV throw away your paper Go to the country, build you a home Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches Try and find Jesus on your own
A few days before he turned 80 He was sittin' out back in a rocker He said, "What you been up to lately?" I told him, "Chasing a dollar" And in between sips of coffee He poured this wisdom out Said, "If you want my two cents on making a dollar count
Buy dirt Find the one you can't live without Get a ring, let your knee hit the ground Do what you love but call it work And throw a little money in the plate at church Send your prayers up and your roots down deep Add a few limbs to your family tree And watch their pencil marks And the grass in the yard all grow up"
'Cause the truth about it is It all goes by real quick You can't buy happiness But you can buy dirt
Before you get caught on that ladder Let me tell you what it's all about Find you a few things that matter That you can put a fence around And then he laid it out
You can buy dirt And thank the good Lord for it 'Cause He ain't makin' any more of it.
Such wisdom in those words. I wish someone had told me that long ago. I have said many times land is where it’s at because they aren’t making more of it. They are wiping it out. Filling it with concrete jungles. Places that most live out their lives and raise their families. Working hard to pay for a home where they can’t do what they want to because of the HOA. When we sold our home in a subdivision in January 2022, we bought our 5 acres for only $30K more than we sold our home for. We got lucky and got in on the end of the housing frenzy. We sold our house twice in a week and got top dollar for it. We got so much more for our dollar with our new house. We made our dollar count. It came with a fence thankfully and so much more. We have our jobs in the city, but we retreat to the country. We do what we love around the homestead and it is work. We are watching our grandkids grow up in such a better place. We go to the Cowboy Church and put our money in the plate. We pray daily and our prayers are answered most times. The one thing I don’t agree with is you can’t buy happiness. I guess you can’t technically buy happiness as a product or commodity. But buying dirt bought us happiness. Happiness in so many ways. First by having the land and open space. Not having neighbors right in our face. We have neighbors but they are far away, and we can only see one of our neighbors and they don’t live there. Most of our neighbors are cows and horses on lots of beautiful land around us. We have trees and undeveloped land around us. That’s what I want as a neighbor. Second is the space to grow and enjoy. We have a little paradise that we are always working on. Adding livestock to share our lives with. Thirdly having a place for our children and their children to live and grow up. A safe place free of flooding. A place where they can live a life in nature with wonderful experiences. Owning property, one's own business, and carving a life of one's own making is all part of the American dream and we are living it daily.
I wish we could have done this sooner. Better late than never. We were blessed to find our place when we did. In the short time we have lived here the city is getting closer to us. I guess you can’t really get away unless you go out in the middle of nowhere. One day even that won’t be possible. Everyone is buying dirt and building more concrete jungles in the country. Which to me is defeating the live in the country idea. Bringing the city to the country erases the country. It cancels it out. Hopefully we are far enough away from the city it won’t reach our doorstep. I enjoy my windy country drive to my house 4 miles off the main road which for now is still in the country. So, we will put down deep roots and add more limbs to our family tree on our dirt. We will continue to pray and fill the plate at church. Because God isn’t making more dirt, we are thankful for ours.
So yes, you can buy happiness indirectly. You can buy dirt and goats and that’s the same thing.
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