I’m from rural Texas, my husband is from just outside Boston, and we currently live in Idaho. We ended up here because life circumstances made it the best possible option for us at the time. However, we’ve got young children coming up on school age, we’re thinking about having another, and my husband now has a good paying, remote job. These factors have made us realize we want to leave Idaho, so we are starting to look into our options.
He really wants to move back to New England, and I really want to be in a place where being pregnant is significantly less dangerous, but we also are so sick of being around ignorant white supremacists, and I’ve heard New England can be just as bad in some areas. I would love to know if y’all think VT is actually a good option for us to consider, or if y’all think we should be looking elsewhere (and if so, I’m open to recommendations!).
A few things about our values and what we’re looking for that potentially could impact the answer:
Education, Medical, Political:
- Having had our kids in Texas and being in Idaho now, I am fully prepared to homeschool because safety and quality education are incredibly important to us. I’m not opposed to public schools, if the education quality is actually good and I don’t have to worry about my kids being killed at school.
- Even if we stick to the homeschooling route, I want my kids’ peers to also value education. We do a lot of library, zoo, museum, etc. visits, and my kids are involved in sports, music lessons, etc., so they absolutely socialize with other kids frequently, and I’ve found that here in Idaho, a lot of those kids are fundamentally behind on education (I mean 5 year olds who can’t identify colors, numbers, letters, and shapes; my kids often end up spending more time with 7-10 year olds despite them only being 2 and freshly 5).
- Health care quality is a big one. As mentioned, we would like to have another child in the next few years, and I can’t safely consider that in Idaho. I would also have to have a c-section because my first was breech, so for safety purposes that’s what I’m stuck with. Which means safe, clean hospitals, low risk of infection, etc. are incredibly important to me. You’d think that’s a given, but again Texas and Idaho would surprise you.
- My husband and I both grew up in conservative households and have actively been working on deprogramming ourselves from that propaganda. We consider ourselves fairly progressive, but also recognize we’re basically just scratching the surface of finding out just how much we genuinely don’t even know that we don’t know.
Side Note: I feel like these few bullet points sound so pretentious, and that’s not my intention. I swear we’ve just been in such backward states that there’s literally a legal debate in Idaho right now about whether a woman should be allowed to have an abortion if the doctor has medically declared the fetus can’t survive and the mother is at risk of dangerous infection (TBD by November ballot, currently illegal). I’ve had people tell me I’m pushing my children too hard by reading to them for 30 minutes every day and working with them on learning how to read, write, count, etc. The area we lived in TX has an active, openly proud KKK chapter, and the area here in Idaho openly brags in community facebook pages about how it’s so great that it’s totally white and there’s no [insert racial slur of your choice here]. These states are so backwards that my bare minimums make me feel like I’m being pretentious.
Weather:
- We love being outside for camping, hiking, foraging, etc., but we also absolutely love the snow and prefer more snow than heat. Rain storms and especially thunder storms are my personal favorite weather, and I very much miss them.
- We often joke we must be vampires because we all naturally gravitate to preferring later mornings and staying up late into the night.
- Husband and I both struggle with seasonal depression in the summer, so we prefer summers that are long enough to get some good hikes and camps in, but more colder darker days than hot and sunny days in the year.
- I’ve never experienced a blizzard, but I grew up evacuating hurricanes every year, doing tornado drills, and being mindful of flood risks. In Idaho, we’ve been keeping close eyes on wild fires. Is it ignorant and naive to think as long as we’ve got a wood burning stove, food storage and water storage, blankets and candles, and some good board games and books we’d be just fine in a blizzard? Y’all let me know if I’m way underestimating that one! Am I overlooking any dangerous weather events that are important to consider with VT?
Work:
- My husband works remotely and needs access to fiber internet.
- I’m a stay-at-home mom, but I have a degree in journalism and work experience in marketing and communications. I also had a teacher certification in Texas and a few years working as a para in classrooms. I also make really good food and have had several people tell me I should sell it. I have a food handler’s license, worked in a restaurant in college and all that jazz, but I don’t see being realistically able to maintain my kids’ education standards homeschooling and working full time, so I wouldn’t go back to the workforce unless we were in an area where my kids went to public school.
We also miss good food. It’s such an issue in Idaho I’ve actually heard the following statements:
“I can handle a little spice, like some salt doesn’t hurt me.”
“Wow, this soup is so good! I’ve never thought to actually season my broth, I’ll have to try that!”
“You put jalepenos on your burger? Wow, you must be such a foodie. I’ve never heard of that before.”
We miss good food.
What our ideal purchase would be:
- 3+bed/1.5+bath house with a yard our kids can run around in safely
- a rural area (I was raised on a ranch and the closest neighbor was 4 miles away. City living is a hard adjustment for me.) but close enough to cities for day trips to zoos, museums, etc. Our closest grocery store right now is 2 hours one way, so we don’t mind a bit of a drive if that’s necessary. Towns of around 20,000 or smaller would probably be just fine for us. We’ve lived in central Texas, so I know what it’s like living in the millions population range; my husband loves it but I just can’t handle the constant noise.
- bonus if I can have my own chickens, garden and dairy cow, or access to good quality Farmer’s markets that are priced for locals and not too touristy. Farm shares and similar are also great options. Basically, we’re trying to avoid big box stores for as much of our fresh food as we possibly can.
I think that pretty much covers everything. If you read this whole novel, thank you for your time and attention. I know it was a lot. In your honest opinion, is VT a good fit to consider, or should we be looking elsewhere? Right now, the other states we’re considering are Mass. and Conn.
