Town Meeting is great in towns that give it the cultural place of honor it deserves…but it can also be “meh” in towns that treat it like just another thing that has to be done. My town unfortunately feels like the latter, and you can tell that the zeal residents used to have for town meeting (and all that it stands for) is waning…which really worries me. One town over, they begin the meeting with a coffee/tea/pastries social hour and wrap it up with a big potluck. The difference in how excited and invested people are is palpable.

I deeply worry that if Town Meeting (as a concept) isn’t given an injection of pride, energy, and excitement, that we may be in danger of losing a quintessential way of life here in Vermont. The fact that not everyone gets the day off is damn near criminal (it should be enforced in both the public and private sector, IMHO). Towns should make it something that everyone - especially newbies and young folks - look forward to coming to.

If a tradition isn’t celebrated & upheld as something essential and something to look forward to, it eventually starts to feel like it’s just peer pressure from dead people. If that happens to Town Meeting in Vermont, our state is in danger of becoming like every other place where folks choose passive convenience over critical thinking and community care.

Do NOT use Discount Van Lines. They presented themselves as an interstate moving company but they’re really just a broker. All of their positive reviews were fabricated. The guys who showed up to pack our stuff were high and tried to say we hadn’t paid for our furniture to be wrapped/padded even though we had. One of them I hooked a trailer on a hill and it rolled down the hill and plowed into our neighbor’s shed, and the movers tried to tell us that we were liable for it. We ended up doing most of the packing ourselves even though we paid for full service. Then - not trusting these guys - I put an Apple AirTag in one of our boxes. When the truck didn’t arrive on the day it was supposed to, I called to ask where it was and they lied and told me they were on their way, when I’m reality they had gone to Buffalo instead of coming to Vermont. The truck sat in front of a house in Buffalo for three days, and all the while they were telling us they were on their way but having engine trouble in Virginia. I finally called again and told them that if they weren’t here with our stuff in 12 hours, I’d be calling the Buffalo PD to report an interstate theft. They showed up in 11.75 hours and told us that if we didn’t pay an additional $1800, they wouldn’t unload our stuff or allow us to unload it. Things got heated and eventually we just had to pay them the money. They unloaded our stuff into the front room of our house (even though, again, we paid for full service, like unloading things into the correct rooms). They went out of their way to use the corners of furniture to gouge our plaster walls. They ruined an irreplaceable vintage chair that my partner’s grandfather gave him. When I tried to seek remuneration from Discount Van Lines, they said we had no claim because we had paid THEM for insurance but that didn’t cover damages enacted by the company they contracted to.

It was basically the worst fucking nightmare we’ve ever experienced during a move. But hey, at least it cost us almost $10K to move here! :(

Bottom line: STAY FAR AWAY from Discount Van Lines!

We’re not super worried about cell service as long as decent internet is available. But I appreciate the info - you’re like the 3rd person that has mentioned that. It kinda surprises me that more folks have mentioned Eden having bad service for cell and internet than the other places we’re looking, all of which seem further-flung from major towns (like Stowe, etc.)

That’s all great to hear - thank you so much! Sounds like Grand Isle is pretty rad. :D

Awesome, thanks for the info! We kinda love the idea of being so close to the water, and I suppose being close to Burlington and Montreal doesn’t hurt since you could still enjoy a rural vibe! And I’m not mad at high school choice.

Thanks for the heads up!

Ahhhh, awesome! I’m so glad to hear this! Everyone making an effort to help out on a community level says more about a town than the amenities it has, IMHO. I’m so glad that there’s a library…a good library can be life-changing (I know it was for me).

We don’t do much “big shopping” since we tend to buy in bulk and grow/raise a lot of our own food. And public transportation isn’t a huge deal for us…we’re a one-car/two-motorcycles/two e-bikes family, and I WFH full-time.

And I’m SO glad to hear there’s a good arts scene! I’m a printmaker, former college art professor, and I used to own/run an art gallery and community workshop space in Atlanta. I’d love to bring something like that to life again wherever we finally put down permanent roots. The arts infrastructure in Randolph is so good that they don’t need me, lol (which is awesome in its own way).

Where do you work, if you don’t mind my asking? We’re going to see this property in Newbury tomorrow afternoon and maybe we can swing by where you work and say hi if you’ll be there!

Thanks for the info!

I think of pretty much every town in VT as “rural” with the excepted of Burlington and Montpelier, and maybe Waterbury/Stowe…so maybe I’m biased in my answer here.

But Randolph actually feels weirdly…metropolitan?…for a small town. And I say that as a former resident of both actual cities (NYC, ATL) and big towns/small cities with great cultural resources (Asheville, Chattanooga). We have a James Beard Award-winning restaurant in addition to two amazing breakfast spots, two pizza places, a great coffeehouse, a Filipino-American fusion restaurant with amazing cocktails, a Mexican restaurant, a great bakery, an ice cream spot, and a steak/pub type place. We also have a dispensary, a yoga studio, a recording studio/music venue, a boutique florist, a community pottery studio, an awesome library, a gourmet grocery, an epic performing arts hall, and an art supply store. Like, Randolph is kinda the bee’s knees. If we could make this house work for our weirdly-specific wants or find something else affordable around here, we’d definitely stay. But Randolph has gotten so rad that it’s just not affordable anymore. :/

All of that said, as much as we deeply appreciate all of these things, we don’t need them. So being a little far-flung from those amenities isn’t a big deal to us. We need a couple of acres, a big garage, good food access for what we can’t grow/raise, and good internet (or at least the promise of good internet coming soon). So Eden doesn’t sound too shabby, nor does Newbury. Still not sure about the other places we’re looking, tho!

Ahhh, that makes a lot of sense re: the schools. Equalized funding doesn’t necessarily attract and retain equalized talent if a school is in a place that’s seen as “less desirable” to live in for whatever reason. Such a shame. :/

Thanks so much for all of the info!

Super helpful perspective, thank you! Re: schools, we were so jazzed before we moved here to hear about Vermont’s amazing public schools…but now we find ourselves paying 2x more property taxes than ever before and suffering schools that are dramatically more dismal than anything we encountered in the South…which is REALLY surprising. It seems like the applause about great public schools comes from a handful of exceptional places in the greater Stowe, Burlington, and Woodstock areas, and most everything else is average at best and failing at worst. So…we don’t have high hopes for good schools in any area we can reasonably afford. :/

Ugh, amen to that. It’s limited everywhere that’s actually worth living. :( If we could afford Johnson or Hyde Park we’d be there in a heartbeat but I think Eden is the closest to Stowe that we can manage. That property isn’t our favorite on the list but the closer you get to Stowe, the less you get for your money, it seems. :/

Also, thank you so much for your specific and helpful feedback! :)

Did you wanna flesh out that explanation, orrrr…? :P

Ehhh, a little over an hour to go through Burlington, across 89, and up 100 from Waterbury. It’s about 5 minutes more than he commutes now because, ya know, we can’t really afford to live any closer to Stowe. Definitely sucks…but it also sucks now. :/

I wish our pittie was cool with other female dogs - if she was, we’d take Konane in a heartbeat! But I’ll share this with my neighbors!

Great idea! There’s wayyyy too much for us to use on our own for soil amendment but we’d be happy to have someone cart it off if it’s useful to them!

Previously had an old Jotul wood stove, heating a smaller house, with more land to spread ash around.

Hearthstone specifically recommended seasoned wood and they were adamant about NOT using kiln-dried wood in this particular stove, for whatever reason.

What’s the “3 year plan”?

By “burn down the ash”, do you mean get a super-hot fire going to burn the charcoal and larger bits down into more compact ash?

We’re definitely doing this! Hadn’t thought about the neighbors maybe wanting some as well, though. Good call!

I keep a “log book” (a record of how many logs we burn, hehe), and we’ve averaged 12-15 22” long logs per day on days when the temperature stays below 40. It’s a hungry house, heat-wise. But it still seems like a helluvah lot of ash/charcoal!

It’s seasoned but yep, it may still be a bit damp! Only been stacked properly for a month.

Well, it’s that much between ash and charcoal. Not sure of an efficient way to sift the charcoal out for further burning, so that combination adds up pretty quickly. And I did overestimate a bit, but not much…we fill that can every 14 days.

How are you generating so little ash?! Our stove is marketed as one of the most efficient ones on the market. Maybe we’re not burning our fires hot enough? I see that someone else said wet wood…the wood is seasoned but has only been stacked for a month, so it may still be a bit damp.

The VT/NH mountains one has already been covered in a suuuuper interesting episode!

Same deal with all of the Klar signs around Orange County. It’s over, y’all. You spent thousands of dollars and dozens upon dozens of hours to deploy those…now come get them. It’s as bad as a billboard.