I fucking LOVE Vermont!

[piratefish08]

My wife and I spent 3 days last week scouting little farm houses and job searching. Montpelier to Burlington mostly - and a lot of little towns in between.

We've settled on where and how we want to live. Quietly on a small farm, a dozen chickens, 3 or 4 pigs and a garden near a little school district. Either solar power or a turbine to offset our electric bill - whichever is most cost effective. There were a lot of both on our scouting trip.

We want to be near a weekly farmers market and have the chance to volunteer locally at a food or homeless shelter.

Now we just need jobs.

But the decision is made - Bernie Sanders will be my Senator.

The insanity in this country shows no sign of reversing so we're focusing our family's efforts on trying to be slightly sheltered from the crazy and a little more self sufficient in a great state like VT.

It seems like a much more rational use of our energy than trying to change things from the top down................

[redwitch]

1. I was in Vermont all last week.

Scouting out new accounts. It is a lovely state. Brattleboro has FIVE independent book stores. Ferrisburgh has a huge solar array that can power 170 homes on a sunny day. Burlington has Lake Champlain, Middlebury is absolutely charming. The mountains, the lakes, the quaint towns are all wonderful. And they have Bernie Sanders too. :-) I live just across the border in upstate NY. Once upon a time our county was part of Vermont. Wish it still was! Good luck with your move, you've made a good choice I think.

[piratefish08]

4. our move is only hypothetical and wishful thinking at the moment

but I really think it's just a matter of time - we're prepared to wait for the right set of circumstances as long as the move to a certain area remains the end game......

[Arugula Latte]

2. I love that state, too.

I could live there if I weren't such a wimp about the cold. (My childhood spent mostly in California ruined me forever on that.) Brrr! But it is a wonderful state. Congrats!

[piratefish08]

3. it's only a 3 hour move for us - I currently freeze my ass off in NH.

I think winter is just a few weeks longer there in the mountains.

[freshwest]

5. Happy for you.

[geardaddy]

6. That's our dream too.

Congrats!

[Kali]

7. ever actually LIVED in the country?

"how we want to live. Quietly on a small farm, a dozen chickens, 3 or 4 pigs and a garden"

sounds idyllic. pigs stink and tear shit up, EVERYthing EATS chickens, there is no pavement, trash pickup, police or emergency services, the neighbors are mostly conservative gun aficionados, there is either a hell of lot of dust or mud, insects and other pests like it out here too. It's HARD WORK to live in the sticks, having to go to a job too is exhausting.

I see so many people moving out to these little unsustainable acreages to enjoy the "rural lifestyle" but then they want to have quality shopping opportunities and restaurants, starbucks and all the amenities of urban life too. I don't begrudge anybody the dream of rural living but you need to either be EXTREMELY wealthy or know some reality of the actual day-to-day work of it all.

It all looks great on a visit or road trip, pigs have really stinky shit.

[piratefish08]

8. country-ish? the places we were looking at were no more than a mile or two from the good sized towns

of Montpelier and Burlington. the best of both world's really.

I've helped raise and shared chickens and pigs on a friends property for a few years now - I'm no expert but could definitely take on a few animals. We've always had nice gardens - smallish because of where we live now.

We're not looking to charge into a rough and tumble farm life - our jobs will sustain a modest lifestyle - we just want to become much more low impact than we can be where we are now.

and yeah - pig shit stinks. the rest smells like bacon though.

[tigereye]

9. Kali, you live in the real country- most folks just "sort of"

live in the country. Or folks that buy up real farms, tear down the trees and barns, build McMansions and complain about the actual folks who still have farms and animal or roosters keepin em awake. (at least that's how it seems to work where I grew up...) :crazy:


However, folks just moved in next to my parents have some really pretty chickens in a small coop. (small town) That's kind of neat, I thought.


:hi:

[MrMickeysMom]

10. That was a nice trip to go on..

Now, if we could just multiply it x 50.

Bernie won't live forever, and we need a legacy, damn it.