Cortland is a city in Cortland County, New York, United States of America. Known as the Crown City, Cortland is in New York's Southern Tier region. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 19,204. It is the county seat of Cortland County. Largely in an agricultural area, with deep fertile valleys surrounded by high hills, the town is most famous for it's college. Interstate 81 winds around the northern edge of the village.
I am a country boy at heart. I might live in the city, work downtown and take the bus every day but that’s not where my heart is.
Seeing those mountains in the distance, the forested hills and the little farms and homesteads carved out of the mountains just touches something inside me. The rundown trailers, the old tractors, the pigs, goats and cattle. The rusting away junk cars, the burn barrels and the brush / debris pile some day soon to be burned.
A lot of people call them ignorant hicks and hillbillies. But I don’t know, I think anybody who can scrape together a living either partially or entirety off the land is pretty damn smart and educated, even if it’s not through traditional channels.
They call it rural poverty. A lack of material stuff. Although I don’t think one can really call homesteading cheap when you look at the cost of machinery and feed. And many of rural people live a life much richer than city folk.
