New Surroundings

Things have been crazy. Our lives have been uprooted. We said goodbye to family and friends. And now we are here...in North Dakota (of all places).

Have you heard about this little oil boom they are having up here? Oil was first discovered here in 1953 and was named the Bakken Oil Field after the man who owned the land where it was discovered. This is a shale oil formation that could contain as much as 167 billion barrels of oil. They've had these oil booms before. The locals are still somewhat skeptical. This has happened and ended as quickly as it started.

But this time it happened during the financial crisis, providing North Dakota with the lowest unemployment rate in the country (about 3%) and a state budget surplus topping $1.6 BILLION with only 684,000 people living in the state (per U.S. Census estimates for 2011). All this during a time when a majority of the country was in dire straits. Many studies are pointing to a 30-40 year life-span for these production wells requiring 9,000 oil rig workers to maintain the rigs, transport the oil, and run the operations in McKenzie County where we are now.

This is still the Western Frontier. The nearest McDonald's is 45 minutes away (thankfully). Big box stores are 1 hour or more away. The nearest mall is one hour away. The base population for this town is 2,500 people. There are probably close to 6,000 people who live here now. Many of those extra people are men who come up to work on the oil drills and rigs and leave their families at home for many months. It is sad to think that some of these guys don't see their families for as many as six months at a time.

There is no housing. They live in RV's. Yes, RV's in -20 degrees. Some of them live in huge complexes of trailers or modular housing that the oil companies build. Rent is outrageous: as much as $1000 per month for just one room in a single-wide trailer.

We don't have a house yet. We are in a single-wide trailer. I consider us very lucky.

We have most of our stuff (what was left after garage sales) in storage up here until we can build ourselves a house. That's why we are here, not for the oil (at least not directly).

We are here to build a new community. We hope to double the size of this little town and give those 9,000 oil workers a place to live with their families. We may get a chance to build a new high school and civic center for the city.

They have so many people, but not enough resources. The woman who runs the day care turns moms and kids away every day. The grocery stores recently had a major crisis on their hands when Hostess went under...there aren't any other bread suppliers!

I thought I might try the the only pizza place in town tonight - they don't deliver right now because they had staff quit and it was going to be an hour and a half before we could get a pizza. The guy I talked to suggested that we put our order in sometime in the morning to make sure we could get our pizza when we wanted it that evening.

This is good. This is a "no-spending LIFE" not just a "no-spending month." It will take careful planning for meals so that I can make sure I have some easy-to-make and healthy meals on those nights when I would have called up the pizza delivery or taken the kids through the drive-through.

I still want to do the couponing and the "green" living, but it is going to be harder and more thoughtfully planned. I don't have a garage to store my stockpile. I can't have 30 cans of cream of mushroom soup; I don't have any extra room for storage. But I will need a couple extras just in case that big storm hits and we can't leave the house.  

This is our new adventure. Come along with us.

--Katie