3 ms·

That sounds like an interesting communinity, where do you live?

by zardo 11y ago

codingdave 11y ago
Central Utah - quite a few small family/hobby farms, but also I-15 comes down through Salt Lake and Provo, so there is a strand of civilization (jobs, people, etc) along the interstate south of Provo that makes the small towns be a little more suburban than you might expect. And many of us have quite decent internet connectivity - my town in particular has its own municipal network, currently at 120MB, and they are upgrading to gigabit fiber over the next few years.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  Would you be more specific? What town are you in? How much land do you have? Do you have water rights? If so, how hard/expensive were they to get? What do you grow? Do you grow just for your own use, or do you sell some? Do you do contract programming, or do you work for a single company? If for a company, how hard was it to get that set up? How often do you go into the big city (Provo/SLC)? For what? What's the biggest drawback (to you) of living this way? Feel free to not answer any of this that you feel is too intrusive...
  - codingdave 11y ago
    I'm in Spanish Fork, UT. We live on 3 acres. We have our own well with water rights for the home and livestock. We used to have more, for field irrigation, but we did not use those water shares, and in Utah you either use your rights or lose them, so we sold them to the city. Water rights often come with property - they are part of the real estate purchase. They can also be bought and sold like real estate, and if you watch public announcements, there are occasional auctions. Their cost depends on the source of water - it varies greatly. We mostly have focused on getting the property fixed up, and getting animals running over the past 2.5 years. Many people bite off more than they can chew, but I have a rule that we take on one new kind of animal or food procution at a time, and learn it well before adding more. It slows down the process, but I have seen too many people crash and burn by trying to do everything all at once. So for now, we have a flock of chickens that gives us more eggs than we know what to do with. We have bees for honey, and goats, which give us all the dairy we need, as well as some meat and fiber. We have fruit trees. This winter we are getting drop irrigation installed through a few dozen raised garden beds, so our veggie and produce production should be up to speed next year, hopefully. And we may start up a 2nd chicken flock for meat. I expect we have 2 more years of building out our property before we are truly self-sufficient. I work full-time for a single company. We are a SaaS companies that has no office, and everyone works from home. Finding the job was a lucky break, but once I had the job, they could care less where I live, so I found a place I like and moved there. The job has its ups and downs, like any job does, but it is hard to argue with working from home, wherever and whenever you want. That being said, one of the main reasons I am not farther from Provo and SLC is that it is a nice safety net to know that I could get a job and go back to the commuting life if I ever needed to. I go into Provo regularly - it is the closest Home Depot, as well as the closest place for lots of retails shopping and ethnic food. And it is only 15 minutes away, so coming from a larger city, it doesn't even feel like much of a trip. But we also do a lot in town - it is not that tiny, over 30K people. There is a movie theatre in town, groceries, ranch stores, some restaurants, etc. We head to Provo probably once a week for other things, up to Orem for a pet store and art supply stores maybe once a month. And Salt Lake? I really thought I would go to Salt Lake more than I do, but I have not been there in a long time. Maybe once a year for an IKEA run, or for a fancy date night with my wife. The biggest drawback is social - living in a small town makes it hard to build up a large group of friends. It is easier on me because I am married with kids, and don't need much more than that. You also have less diversity around here. It takes a conscious awareness to try to expose my children to more that the world has to offer.
  - micro_cam 11y ago
    I'm not the OP but doing something similar and feel like answering as well to promote the life style. I'm near Hamilton, MT, a town of ~10k an hour from Missoula. Hamilton is home to Rocky Mountain Labs, the US's center for ebola research which attracts lots of scientists and post docs so it has kind of a collage-town-minus-they-undergrads feel. Also amazing outdoor recreation if you climb, ski, hike, hunt, fish, mountain bike or pretty much whatever. We have ~4 acres with good water rights and a gravity fed irrigation system. We paid under 300k for that land with a large house in good shape on it. We do have electricity from the local rural electric co-op, a microwave link for high speed internet, a well for drinking water and propane for heat and cooking. You could pay under 200k for a smaller fixer upper in a less desirable spot still with enough land to grow some stuff. We are basically at the level of having a (very) large garden but have some established apple trees and are putting in larger amounts of plum, appricot and peach trees and blueberries, raspberries and tons of strawberries. Maybe soon grapes...some people have had success with wine grapes in the valley we are in and we are in a good spot for it. We grow things for for our own use though if we grow enough we will sell or trade...many of the species I list are just starting to do well in Montana thanks to global warming and newly developed varietals so I kind of view growing them as a research project. I plan on keeping engineering as my main money maker. There are lots of full time farmers in the area and some great farmers markets and farm stands. I work for a single company I connected with through hacker news. Before that I convinced my boss to let me go full time remote after working in the office for a few years. I work in a specific area of machine learning which is in demand at the moment and have enough open source contributions to convince people I can work from wherever. I go into Missoula (70k people) about once a month for a Costco and specialty grocery store run. Hamilton has two micro breweries, a great coffee shop and good grocery and hardware stores and I could easily get by without the city but there are some things that are cheaper and easier to find in Missoula. Missoula is also a great outdoorsy, progressive, town with a thriving river surfing community. Biggest drawbacks is that local politics at the moment is dominated by ridiculous tea party shenanigans. Even the conservatives seem to be getting fed up with the sheer incompetence of some of the candidates but there has been some elimination of local women's health services and other services like that.

That sounds like an interesting communinity, where do you live?

by zardo 11y ago

That sounds like an interesting communinity, where do you live?

Central Utah - quite a few small family/hobby farms, but also I-15 comes down through Salt Lake and Provo, so there is a strand of civilization (jobs, people, etc) along the interstate south of Provo that makes the small towns be a little more suburban than you might expect. And many of us have quite decent internet connectivity - my town in particular has its own municipal network, currently at 120MB, and they are upgrading to gigabit fiber over the next few years.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
Would you be more specific? What town are you in? How much land do you have? Do you have water rights? If so, how hard/expensive were they to get? What do you grow? Do you grow just for your own use, or do you sell some? Do you do contract programming, or do you work for a single company? If for a company, how hard was it to get that set up? How often do you go into the big city (Provo/SLC)? For what? What's the biggest drawback (to you) of living this way? Feel free to not answer any of this that you feel is too intrusive...
- codingdave 11y ago
  I'm in Spanish Fork, UT. We live on 3 acres. We have our own well with water rights for the home and livestock. We used to have more, for field irrigation, but we did not use those water shares, and in Utah you either use your rights or lose them, so we sold them to the city. Water rights often come with property - they are part of the real estate purchase. They can also be bought and sold like real estate, and if you watch public announcements, there are occasional auctions. Their cost depends on the source of water - it varies greatly. We mostly have focused on getting the property fixed up, and getting animals running over the past 2.5 years. Many people bite off more than they can chew, but I have a rule that we take on one new kind of animal or food procution at a time, and learn it well before adding more. It slows down the process, but I have seen too many people crash and burn by trying to do everything all at once. So for now, we have a flock of chickens that gives us more eggs than we know what to do with. We have bees for honey, and goats, which give us all the dairy we need, as well as some meat and fiber. We have fruit trees. This winter we are getting drop irrigation installed through a few dozen raised garden beds, so our veggie and produce production should be up to speed next year, hopefully. And we may start up a 2nd chicken flock for meat. I expect we have 2 more years of building out our property before we are truly self-sufficient. I work full-time for a single company. We are a SaaS companies that has no office, and everyone works from home. Finding the job was a lucky break, but once I had the job, they could care less where I live, so I found a place I like and moved there. The job has its ups and downs, like any job does, but it is hard to argue with working from home, wherever and whenever you want. That being said, one of the main reasons I am not farther from Provo and SLC is that it is a nice safety net to know that I could get a job and go back to the commuting life if I ever needed to. I go into Provo regularly - it is the closest Home Depot, as well as the closest place for lots of retails shopping and ethnic food. And it is only 15 minutes away, so coming from a larger city, it doesn't even feel like much of a trip. But we also do a lot in town - it is not that tiny, over 30K people. There is a movie theatre in town, groceries, ranch stores, some restaurants, etc. We head to Provo probably once a week for other things, up to Orem for a pet store and art supply stores maybe once a month. And Salt Lake? I really thought I would go to Salt Lake more than I do, but I have not been there in a long time. Maybe once a year for an IKEA run, or for a fancy date night with my wife. The biggest drawback is social - living in a small town makes it hard to build up a large group of friends. It is easier on me because I am married with kids, and don't need much more than that. You also have less diversity around here. It takes a conscious awareness to try to expose my children to more that the world has to offer.
- micro_cam 11y ago
  I'm not the OP but doing something similar and feel like answering as well to promote the life style. I'm near Hamilton, MT, a town of ~10k an hour from Missoula. Hamilton is home to Rocky Mountain Labs, the US's center for ebola research which attracts lots of scientists and post docs so it has kind of a collage-town-minus-they-undergrads feel. Also amazing outdoor recreation if you climb, ski, hike, hunt, fish, mountain bike or pretty much whatever. We have ~4 acres with good water rights and a gravity fed irrigation system. We paid under 300k for that land with a large house in good shape on it. We do have electricity from the local rural electric co-op, a microwave link for high speed internet, a well for drinking water and propane for heat and cooking. You could pay under 200k for a smaller fixer upper in a less desirable spot still with enough land to grow some stuff. We are basically at the level of having a (very) large garden but have some established apple trees and are putting in larger amounts of plum, appricot and peach trees and blueberries, raspberries and tons of strawberries. Maybe soon grapes...some people have had success with wine grapes in the valley we are in and we are in a good spot for it. We grow things for for our own use though if we grow enough we will sell or trade...many of the species I list are just starting to do well in Montana thanks to global warming and newly developed varietals so I kind of view growing them as a research project. I plan on keeping engineering as my main money maker. There are lots of full time farmers in the area and some great farmers markets and farm stands. I work for a single company I connected with through hacker news. Before that I convinced my boss to let me go full time remote after working in the office for a few years. I work in a specific area of machine learning which is in demand at the moment and have enough open source contributions to convince people I can work from wherever. I go into Missoula (70k people) about once a month for a Costco and specialty grocery store run. Hamilton has two micro breweries, a great coffee shop and good grocery and hardware stores and I could easily get by without the city but there are some things that are cheaper and easier to find in Missoula. Missoula is also a great outdoorsy, progressive, town with a thriving river surfing community. Biggest drawbacks is that local politics at the moment is dominated by ridiculous tea party shenanigans. Even the conservatives seem to be getting fed up with the sheer incompetence of some of the candidates but there has been some elimination of local women's health services and other services like that.