Welcome to Noble County!

 

 

Noble County, located in the Appalachian region of Southeast Ohio, is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.

Right after being offered the job of Community Development Educator for OSU Extension Noble County, I came down with my mother to look for a place to live.  We spent the day driving around and I remember stopping along State Route 821, pulling off on the side of the road and looking out at one of the valleys spread out below us, a mountain rising behind it, the grass bright green and dotted with sheep, the sky perfectly blue.  I turned to her and said, “I can’t wait to live here.  It just makes my soul happy.”

In fact, every day when I drive in to work, I watch the sun come up over the mountains.  The sky slowly lightens from deep blue to light pink, the mist rising off the meadows and the trees along the mountain tops backlit by the dawn.  They look like they’re the skyline of heaven, the fog cutting them off from the ground and I think to myself how lucky I am to  be here.  How lucky I am to be a Buckeye once more after my exile to That State Up North.

Noble County isn’t perfect.  No place is.  It suffers from unemployment, from not enough infrastructure, and all the other issues facing rural places in Ohio (and rural places everywhere else, too).  But a place, like a person, doesn’t have to be perfect in order to be loved.  Spend any time here and you’ll see that people do love Noble County.  People are proud of their roots here.  They know their neighbors and they support their kids.  While other youth fairs struggle, our Youth Livestock Sale broke a record, bringing more money to our kids than every before.  And our kids turned around and donated more of the money they brought in to charities than every before.  Supporting each other is a learned behavior, and it’s one that is still taught here.

I’ve been told (more than once) that I’m not from here.  That’s true, I’m not.  But I’m here now and I intend to stay.  I’ve fallen in love with Noble County, and if you give us a chance, I think you will, too.

 

 

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