College instructor looking for full time employment + place to start a small family

[sunsprit]

Originally Posted by Ilove_potatoes

Hmmm I guess you are right, I must subconsciously have this attitude. I apologize for offending you, and will try to be more careful in the future. Thank you for helping me become aware of this.

To your second point, I have been able to find several 2-4 acre lot parcels about 15-20 min away from De Moines. I think that's probably the best case scenario for me at this point. It is kind of a middle ground between everything I am looking for.

Thanks for the help!

FACT: I'm not offended, and your apology is unwarranted.


Other than expressing your views which reveal a profound lack of understanding of what you're telling people about yourself, there's no issue here. Whether it's "subconscious" or simply so much a part of the social environment that you're immersed in so it appears normal to you, it doesn't matter. What counts is what you're saying ... that you're giving up a handsome income so that you can live down to the financial levels of the rural folk who won't pay you what you think you're worth in another venue.

IMO, you might want to look at why you are thinking about leaving CA. "socially liberal" has lead to the policies/taxation/land management which you apparently want to leave behind for the greener pastures of those rural places where you can build your tiny house on cheap land and have a low cost of living from your own production. The dichotomy stems from the personal "fiscally conservative" bumping up against the "socially liberal" polices.

You might want to look at the numerous places in CA where a teaching job and medical job market is readily available and not too far from a semi-rural location where you can still have your little house and livestock and garden. IMO, you'll be a lot closer in ideals and living circumstances to what you take for granted now than making a distant move to a place where you have to compromise yourself such as Des Moines. You can have it all, along with that high CA income.

Or is the problem that CA has morphed into something that you don't like anymore? Who and what is responsible for that situation? are you perhaps part of the problem and just want to run away but spread more of the causation in other places with "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" polices? How about staying there and working to change CA back to what you'd like it to be?

[WyoNewk]

I'm an Iowa transplant. Iowa would be much, much better for gardening, and there are hundreds of small towns where you could own a couple acres right on the edge of town and have it all. Western Iowa is more conservative if that's what you want, but I've lived near Omaha, Des Moines and in the far NE corner of the state and never noticed much difference. I guess rural is usually conservative and laid back no matter where you go.

The only things I have against Iowa is the summer heat (humidity) and lack of good trout streams/lakes. Gardens love high humidity. I was back there several years ago and I ran into a guy from Texas at an interstate rest area. It was August during a hot spell. He said he'd never been so hot in his life. LOL Sad thing is, it wasn't an aberration, just a typical hot August day. Unfortunately, the winters are no more mild than what we have on the high plains of Wyoming, but they are shorter. Growing season is probably a month longer in Iowa.

Oh, got another one about Iowa summers. My wife is from southern Oregon where they get constant fog in early winter. (We joke that Oregonians don't know what sun glasses are for.) We took our camper back to Iowa for a visit several years ago, and when she got up the first morning to let the dog out she noticed it was foggy so expected cool air when she opened the door. Not so. She opened it to be hit in the face with 90 degree heat. She's been talking about that "hot fog" ever since. It's not intolerable for the millions of people who live there, but we're a couple old fogeys spoiled by the lower humidity of the west. And plants, they absolutely love it.