[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
If you can see snow, you’re too close.
[/QUOTE]
QFT. Snow properly belongs in postcards and Currier and Ives prints.
It was a riff on a song by Vicki Lawrence. The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.
Do it. 12 years ago, I moved 7,000 miles away and don’t regret it for a second.
Let me tell you something you don’t know abut snow:
Snow is white.
Snow is fluffy.
Snow is pretty.
and …snow is COLD.
Cold, cold,cold, and (have I mentioned it yet?) COLD.
The cold is painful: the hairs inside your nostrils freeze, simple breathing hurts your lungs. Your fingers become too numb do simple tasks like pick up a pen, even wearing gloves.
(Gee, let’s play “guess where this guy is from”…Hands up all those who think that I was born in a snowy part of the country, and moved away to a warm climate as soon as I could, and have vowed never to return? ) 
Living with winter is like having a broken leg and needing to use crutches for 6 months.
Sure you can do it, and even enjoy life despite it.
But it changes everything you do in daily life—it affects your body, your mind, your moods, and your ability to do the simplest tasks (such as putting on your shoes when you leave the house).
Think back to those ski trips you mention. When you wanted to step out of the cabin,you spent 15 minutes getting ready–2 pairs of socks, long underwear, heavy jacket and then a set of overalls on top of it all, and by then you were so bloated in layers that you couldn’t bend over to tie your shoes, and then you had to clumsily try to squeeze into your snow boots, which were wet and soggy, and the buckles were hard to close.
Hey–remember how that was a lot of fun, because you were on a ski vacation?.
Well, let me tell ya… doing all that every time you take out the garbage is , well, not a ski vacation.
And digging the car out of the snow is also fun, if you’re with a group of friends on a ski trip. On the way home from grocery shopping…not so much.
Do this!
After all, there are only about a hundred million northerners who disagree with me.
When I was 24 I moved from the suburbs of Dallas to NYC. I met my husband there and we got married and had a baby. Last year we decided that we couldn’t raise a baby in NYC and did a lot of research about where would be the best place for us to raise a kid and decided that MA was the perfect place for us. We moved to a suburb south of Boston and we’ve been thrilled with life here except for that whole sports thing*. I’ve been to western MA and it is beautiful but a bit to rural for us. The state as a whole is fabulous though and I highly recommend it.
*Sports is a religion here. It is a bit weird if you aren’t used to it and since we moved from NY we got a lot of comments about how we’d better not be Yankees fans and the like.
So you want to have a nice quiet farmette where you’ll be within easy distance of Massachusetts’ finest city? Go for it.
Your husband can also add to his mechanical item collection an old, cheap pickup truck with a snowplow. If your house is back from the road any distance at all, you will need it. Other than that, believe me, Massachusetts governments at all levels are well aware that keeping the streets clear of snow in the winter is possibly their most important job. Do make sure you have good tires.
I could never move to Massachusetts. I mix up its abbreviation with Maine’s.
Preparing to go grocery shopping, where you step out of your house a few dozen yards to your heated car, and then from your heated car across the parking lot to the heated store, is a whole different world then preparing to go out skiing all day. I live in Minnesota, and I’ll just wear tennis shoes, a leather jacket, and maybe gloves (my steering wheel isn’t heated).
As far as snow tires, I’ve never bothered with them. With modern AWD and FWD systems they’re not as important nowadays (but if you have a large RWD car, look for something else).
15 years ago we moved directly to MA (a suburb south of Boston no less!) from the suburbs of Dallas, and we’ve never regretted it. It’s a very different feel from what I’d expected, which was something more urban than this…instead, even this close to Boston there are trees and rivers and places to hike.
Western MA is really lovely, we spent a long weekend there this year in fact, and has fantastic museums and places to hike. I’ll end up retiring somewhere along an arc drawn from western MA to upstate Maine…
Sounds like if I can stand the winters I’ll be good. Big if, of course.
A few things to consider: Jobs are scarce in Western Mass. If your political views are centrist or right leaning, you will need blood pressure pills at the very least–our senators are a fake Indian and a man who has only a ice cream truck job on his resume before leaving the dreaded private sector. High speed internet access is spotty–they are rolling out wireless Broadband, but the hills work against that. Ditto having a dish for TV–can’t see some birds in some locations. That said, it is a beautiful area. Avoid Springfield and Holyoke areas.
Do that. Rent, don’t sell, your home in CA and rent a place in MA to see what it’s like. If you sell your home, you may find that you can never afford to move back.
I would give advice, but I’m not the right person since I did the opposite-- grew up in New England, and moved to CA. Snow is bothersome, but when you grow up with it, it’s just one of the things you’re used to. If I were to move back to MA, though, I’d probably look for a place north of Boston, closer to the shore. But housing is a lot more expensive than in western Mass. Tripolar is only half kidding. Western Mass might was well be the midwest to people who live in Boston. BTW, RI actually has some wonderful towns to live in and lots of ocean/bay access.
You forgot to add that snow is heavy and bulky and semi-permanent. Because it typically begins to snow in November to mid-December (though Halloween snows with accumulating amounts and conversely still green Christmases are not unheard of) and doesn’t stop until mid-March to early April and doesn’t melt much, by early February there is so much snow you begin to run out of places to put it. But you have to do something with it, just to keep your driveway clear. So you end up needing to expend more energy to toss it on top of the ever-taller piles along the side of your driveway. It’s a frustrating draining activity and people resent it a little more every snow storm. As chappachula said, you have to respect the danger that intense cold can represent: I got frostbite 3 times last winter from shoveling snow while wearing gloves and never got it again once I switched to wool mittens instead.
It very much depends on the car. My little Nissan Versa handles terribly in the snow without snow tires, but bigger/heavier cars I’ve owned have done better.
There have been good answers in this thread. I am a western MA transplant to the Bay Area–20 years now.
I miss MA every day and could never move back because of winter. Whoever upthread mentions the trees looking dead for six months nailed it. Just thinking of that image shivers me timbers. If you are not a winter person, and there are those people, winter is to be endured. Wet feet, slush on the floor, driving in shitty conditions, feeling trapped in the house, that overheated dry baked feeling to the air and how your nose feels breathing it, hundreds of dollars to heat the house every month–I could go on and on.
Some people like it, many people accept it and deal with it, it crushes some people’s souls. You won’t know until you try it, I guess. Just remember you can hobby farm just as easily in North Carolina and points south, where winter exists but not nearly like described in this thread.
Good luck, and how I wish I could join you. Please eat your weight in Atkins Farms cider doughnuts for me please.
Snow shouldn’t scare you, but it gets awfully tiresome six months into winter (Ethan Frome was nonfiction in that regard). That’s especially true within 20 miles or so of the coast, where the ocean and lower elevations keep it from getting cold enough to be dry and it falls directly as slush. If you’re looking for a rural location, as it seems you are, that probably also means staying far enough inland that it might actually be fun at first.
If you’re of a progressive mind, you’ll probably be actually exhilarated to be in the lead on so many social issues that the rest of the country takes a generation or so to catch up with. It’s a proud tradition, one that many of us here in the civilized world feel a responsibility to keep pushing. Here’s a good summary of the results.
I agree. That said, I use PeaPod grocery delivery for non-perishables. Hey, I’m not hauling 35# of cat litter and 20# of cat food across snow/slush/ice.
I don’t mind the cold or the snow; I do mind f-ing up my knee even more. Plus, it’s more fun to read by the fireplace with the cat than to go shopping…
Good point. I used to hit the ground by slipping on ice at least once or twice a season. In my 20s, no big deal. In my 50s, the consequences are much bigger.
Take extra care not to litter if you’re in the Stockbridge area. I’ve heard stories about what can happen to you if you’re not careful about that.
When you look at properties, ask about the property tax. Expect to pay 1% to 1.5% of the property’s value every year in Massachusetts. That’s not too bad by the standards of the Northeast, but it’s approximately double the rate as in California. If homes are that much cheaper in Mass., your tax bill in dollars may actually go down.
You might be shocked at what your heating bill will be. When you look at houses for sale, ask about their annual heating costs. A big drafty old farmhouse could easily cost $5000 a year to heat. You can save about half on your heating bill if you find a place with utility gas (natural gas piped right to the house) but in New England that tends to be available only in built-up areas of larger towns and cities. In rural areas, you’re usually dependent on fuel oil or trucked-in propane (both expensive), electricity (very expensive), or wood (inconvenient, dirty, and not exactly cheap these days).
If you purchase a home in CA, your property tax is 1% of the value of the home, plus county and city fees. Not sure how you’re getting the 2x, unless you are looking at the average tax rate, which isn’t of much help to someone buying a new home since it includes people who have owned their homes for 20 or 30 years.
Property tax increases in CA are limited to 2% per year, but that doesn’t apply to local fees.