My Little Village - A Tour

I live in a tiny little town. We're actually called a village. The population sign says there's 268 of us here, but I think that may include the surrounding farmers! Since it was in the 50's today - heat wave! - the boys and I took a walk around town to take some pictures. Here's a little tour of this little village I live in.

First of all, Roseland is the size of a cornfield. No joke. Look for yourself.

If you step out my front door and look to the right, you'll see this:


Our property goes out to that electric pole and all the way out to those little stumps that separate our yard from the AGP elevators. I should have taken a picture of our entire yard for you. Our property covers a little more than 1/4 of a block, and our house is tiny, so most of it is yard space. That chain link fence you see on the right side of the picture is 95 feet long, and our yard extends another 20 feet or so beyond the end of that fence line. Jeremy does the mowing.

If you turn left from our front door and walk out to the street, then look East, this is what you'll see:


Turning West looks like this:


Taking a right at this first corner here will take you to the one and only church in town. It's the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, and the priest lives right next door in that brick house. I really like where our house is located. There's only 1 house, an empty lot, and a small parking lot between our house and the church. I can see the cross through our kitchen window, which just gives me such a peaceful feeling.


Most of the people here are Catholic, and those who aren't go to one of the churches in the surrounding villages or they go into Hastings.

If you were to keep going straight down my street instead of turning, you'll run into our new "park" (don't get me started on what I think of it - although it's convenient for me, I think they would have been better off replacing the playground equipment at the ballpark and for $35,000 we should have a bathroom there).


On the corner just past the park, you see the bank parking lot and the fire station.


Here's a picture of our sign thing that welcomes people to Roseland. Look - a reminder for our sewer bills!


The town doesn't send out sewer bills, so you have 2 choices. You can either pay the yearly fee all at once, or you can try to remember to send $55 every 3 months. Most people pay yearly because it's cheaper, and you don't have to worry about trying to remember to pay something you don't get a bill for.

Looking towards the South down our main street from this corner (North of this corner is all houses), you would see:


The city water building that also houses the town tractor (you can't see it in this picture) would be just on the left. Next to that is an old store than someone turned into their home, then the gas station. On the right, you have our bank (you can barely see the corner of it), the town hall, beauty shop and empty space that used to be our grocery store until about 5 years ago when it closed, the bar, post office, an empty store that used to be a 2nd beauty shop (she closed about 1-2 years ago), and my favorite building in all of Roseland...


The old Bank building. Wouldn't this be a wonderful place to turn into a fun little store?!

Still heading South, just past the tracks is the 2nd grain elevator in town. AGRI Co-op is much bigger than the AGP here. Jeremy worked at AGRI for a few years before finding his current job. Although the money during harvest was nice, neither one of us misses his crazy harvest hours.


Keep going south and you'll run into the Jr/Sr High School.


The elementary school is located in Bladen and kids from 5 different villages belong to our school district. For some reason, the elementary school has the football field and track for the high school games/track meets.

Turning left (East) just before the school takes you to a place we spend a lot of time at during the summer:


This is our baseball field (it looks much better when the grass is all green). There's not much here. Some playground equipment, a tennis court that nobody uses, bathrooms, and a concession building. There's not much action here except during the spring and summer. Since it's right behind the high school, the track team uses it for practice. From late March/early April through the end of July, there's almost always a baseball or softball team there practicing or playing. I don't remember how many softball teams we have (3 or 4 - they go by age groups), but we have 3 baseball teams: A team (ages 5/6 thru 8 years), the B team (ages 9 & 10), and the Little League (ages 11 thru 14). Most kids are on one of these teams, and the school cheerleaders take care of the concessions for us (it's their fundraiser).

Admittedly, there are several drawback to living in a little town like this. The gas station's hours are 7:30am-5:30pm Monday-Friday and 7:30am-11:00am on Saturday (closed Sunday). The post office also has weird hours: 8:45am-3:45pm (closed from 11:45-1:15 for lunch) M-F and 8am-9am on Saturday. There's no longer a grocery store, and no place other than the bar to go out to eat at. When it snows, the Roseland Road is one of the last roads to be cleared.

But, we get by. Little Caesar's comes out on Wednesday evenings and parks their truck at the gas station for people who want to get some pizza. The gas station does its best to stock basic staples so people don't have to run into town just for a gallon of milk or a can of soup. Our little town is a very safe little place. With the exception of a couple of Jeremy's cousins, there's very little "excitement" of that kind. If a family has some kind of tragedy, you can bet there will be a benefit to help ease the burden. People here look out for each other whether they know you very well or not, and most are really friendly. It's a good place to live and raise a family.

So, that's my little corner of the world. What's yours like?