I think people move from the country more often than they used to due to cities having more services for older people. Very few people grow any food plants even if they live in the country.
@Victoria33 I think you are right in the main - Old folks, especially those whose family is widespread or whose family is small, cannot often withstand the rigors of country life - the generational promise has been broken by familial dispersal and the false promises brought by big government... So folks move on to where they can receive the services their family should be providing.
Thankfully, our clan is strong enough and half-wise together enough that I doubt my mother will have to leave her house, that she has built over many, many years to be a home, not only for my generation, but for many grands and great-grands too. It is my fondest wish as she approaches graduation from this life, that she would pass on in that very home.
We still do grow most of our own food - either at the familial garden, or my sister's garden, and soon to be my garden... And what we don't grow ourselves, is made up out of the tails of other gardens grown by our friends.
Our meat is our own, or hunted, or again, bought or traded from friends right here in the valley - The best friend of my youth owns a meat processing plant, so I can trust all the meat I eat, except the odd bit of hamburger or chicken when we are running short.
That is a capability only because of the family. Were it not for the Clan mentality, we would not have the manpower to do it in each individual House.
And that is a whole lot of what these young kids are coming to the sticks for... I won't deny that there is some doomsday involved - Nearly all of them feel something in the air, and want to remove their families from the populated areas that will be insane if things collapse (which you and I both know is just a matter of time).
But more than that, these kids are wary and tired of the plastic-banana existence they grew up in. To a man they are tired of chasing the carrot that they will never achieve, and will not suffer the the sterile and empty life of 9to5, college debt, mortgage debt, credit card debt, auto loan debt... just to spend their entire life working for the weekend and a big screen tv.
They want to put down roots. They want their hands in the dirt, the shit, and the blood. They want spirit. They want life. You should see the pride of accomplishment in them for every one of the achievements they successfully gain - the first calf or kid birth... fixing their own car or tractor... their first really productive year in the garden...
I just had a couple here to drop off a laptop, and the gal gave me a quart of dilly beans that she made all by herself as a gift. She got so much satisfaction out of that - That she could afford to give a little something, and that it was received with happy gusto.
The dilly beans are a perfect example of the difference. Not all that much in the making of it, I suppose, since she likely put up way more than she needed, and it was a token of a production run... But she prettied it up with a chunk of checkerboard cloth over the top, and a beautiful hand-written note - Just minutes in the making of it I suppose... But the whole of it resulted in a wonderful and very personal gift as a physical appreciation of me... and me being just a touch more than an acquaintance.
You just don't get that sort of thing in the city - or at least, I seldom did. That's the kind of folks these kids are - most of them - the kind to ride the river with.
None of them will ever be rich in the sense the OP is talking about a big acreage and a house full of kids will see to that... But country life is reckoned with a different kind of wealth, which is what I have been saying here.
