Distance from Disorder
Moving To Arkansas
This is the first in a series of articles about our move to Arkansas. the cool things we are doing there and the stuff we are building.
This article, in particular, is very subjective and entirely from my point of view. I certainly won’t be offended if you disagree with me, but this is my story, and I am sticking with it.
Hopefully, those considering a similar move will benefit from our story.
Life in the Rogue Valley of Oregon
About 22 years ago, I moved from California to an area outside Ashland, Oregon. It was paradise—forests, rivers, and beautiful mountain hikes were a short distance away—a lovely place to raise kids. It was an interesting mix of tradespeople, artisans, actors from the Shakespeare festival, and high-tech folks. As you can imagine, overcoming the inertia and being willing to move to a new place requires a lot of impetus. Let me tell you what drove us out.
Over time, though, as progressive politics gained a monopoly over the state government, Oregon lost its luster, corruption began to run rampant, and the place changed for the worse.
A History of repeated injuries and usurpations
“Let these facts be submitted to a candid world".
— Declaration of Independence, 1776
The legalization of marijuana farming bore massive unintended consequences. I watched as century-old pear orchards were ripped up and converted into cannabis fields. The influx of get-rich-quick investors eager to profit from this new gold rush created a monumental environmental disaster, especially regarding water usage and soil damage.
Further, the legalization of recreational marijuana usage resulted in dispensaries popping up everywhere, especially near schools and colleges. Oregon became a leader in drug culture and political corruption.
Seizing the potential business opportunity, drug cartels entered the Rogue Valley and also established massive black-market marijuana sites, which also brought corresponding human trafficking.
Oregon passed a bill that effectively decriminalized all drug possession and yet spent no effort on drug treatment. We observed firsthand the proliferation of fentanyl use and overdose, sadly, even among high school students.
Once a place relatively tolerant of politics, a strong divide developed during the 2016 presidential election, Antifa, and BLM riots. Oregonians started to wear leftist politics on their sleeves, and anyone outside the far left feared expressing their opinion.
The Wuhan COVID-19 virus hit. Governor Kate Brown and her Oregon Department of Health minions capriciously shut down schools, gyms, and many already struggling small businesses for over a year. Of course, they kept open the marijuana dispensaries, the bars, and the strip clubs, which they deemed as essential business.
Oregon threatened to force mandatory vaccination on its citizens. So much for “my body, my choice.”
The school shutdown devastated the state’s already failing education system, producing some of the lowest test scores in the country. To add further injury, they eliminated all high school graduation requirements. Like many parents, I had enough. I pulled my kids out of their shitty public school system and instead pursued GEDs.
The divide became more expansive, as did the popularity of virtue signaling. It was easy to identify the signs of mass-formation psychosis: look for people wearing masks while riding in cars alone or hiking outdoors in the woods. I even had to deal with a few unwise individuals who thought it was a good idea to enter the realm of physical violence with me because I refused to wear a mask.
Oregonians seeking individual conformity Despite the uptick in violent crime, an out-of-state special interest group successfully funded an unconstitutional and Kafkaesque ballot measure to ban modern firearm ownership. The measure passed with a suspiciously small margin ( < 1% ). Currently, the law is still being fought in court using taxpayer money.
Oregon went from being affordable to having one of the highest cost-of-living rates in the country.
But the straw that broke the camel’s back for me was the mismanagement of forestry in the state. Every summer, we experience millions of acres of forest fires and the associated hazardous air quality. As part of the rescue efforts, we experienced the massive devastation of one such event, the Alemda fire, up close and very personally.
Ultimately, Oregon’s evolution into a one-party political system run by a minority of cities so disenfranchised the rural counties that they are now pursuing succession to Idaho. Maybe so, but I will certainly not hold my breath waiting for change.
"We gotta get out of this place!
If it's the last thing we ever do…”— the Animals
Why Arkansas?
After experiencing life firsthand under the petty tyrants of Oregon, I swore we would move to a place where the citizens have little to no tolerance for government infringement on people’s freedom.
We meticulously analyzed what we wanted at our next stop. One of the prime goals was that we wanted a place where we would not feel ostracized and were among other people who understood the spirit of agency and self-sufficiency.
Some of the items we factored in included:
The ability to grow enough food to supply a market garden: - Water availability, sunshine index, soil analysis, and excellent growing season.
Government issues: firearm regulations, building codes, and the states’ historical response to COVID-19. What are the taxes? How do they manage wildfires? What is crime like?
The true cost of living (not the fudged government static). But what do the foods we eat, the items we buy weekly, the fuel we use, and the medical services we receive really cost us?
Distance to a good gym, a nice downtown area, an active chamber of commerce, a good library, and a farmers market. The place should be growing nicely but not too fast.
We also wanted a place with a more diverse demographic than Southern Oregon. Does everyone drive the same kind of car or eat the same foods?
There are many litmus tests you can devise. What we looked for was a place where people are friendly and have a high sense of agency, a place where you can’t help but know the postal and delivery drivers personally. Large cities need not apply.
What eventually rolled out of our equation was Hot Springs, Arkansas. Hot Springs has a lot going for it. It is inside a National Park with easy access to forests and pristine lakes. It hosts many tourist and recreational options, including a thoroughbred racetrack. There is a local college and two hospitals. The closest city with a significant airport is Little Rock, about an hour away.
The environmental tradeoff of the almost certain yearly forest fires we experience in Oregon for the possibility of tornadoes in Arkansas is an acceptable risk.
After much research, we found a few good places, but one in particular stood out. It was a rural property about 30 minutes from downtown but far enough outside the city limits that I wouldn’t have to beg some petty tyrant for permission to build what I wanted.
Stella Porta
We visited the property during the hot, even for Arkansas, summer months and were amazed by its greenery. Water availability wouldn’t be a problem; There was a full-time running creek, a pond, and plenty of well flow and springs. The owner was leasing some of the property out for cattle and had over a mile of pipe feeding the water stations.
The place included a ton of acreage, a modern manufactured home (with a tornado shelter), an insulated garage, a three-overhead-door metal shop, a hay barn, an equipment barn, and two tractors. There were also at least two potential building sites for a custom home.
One of the things that absolutely astonished me was how clear the night sky was here. ; it was like you could reach out to the stars. This prompted me to name the ranch Stella Porta.
The process of moving
Once we pulled the trigger on the property, we wasted no time moving. We were adamantly not going to endure another grey winter in Southern Oregon. Our plan of action involved sorting, packing, and purging our personal items, as well as dismantling our existing workshop and collection of supplies.
Rather than hire a moving company, we purchased two 20” one-use intermodal shipping containers from Medford Mobile Storage. They were much more sturdy and secure than a shipping pod, and since we owned them, we could load and unload them on our own schedule. They could also be used as utility storage for supplies at our new home.
Apparently, we estimated correctly because we packed both containers to the brim. I even included a utility trailer in one of the containers.
We took possession of the property in November, and some of us got there over the Christmas holiday. The containers arrived in Arkansas in January.
Unfortunately, the unloading process wasn’t as smooth as we had hoped. We could not find a local company to transport the containers; instead, we had to employ a crane company in Little Rock to unload them from the carrier. All this happened during a 5°F cold snap, which is apparently a big event in Arkansas.
What complicated matters was that the crane company had expressed concerns about the weight limits of the creek bridge at the entrance to our property. They were unwilling to cross it with loaded containers. So we arranged to drop the containers off at our neighbor’s field across the street and unload them there. Then, once empty, we moved the containers up to their final location on our own with a forklift. There was lots of shuffling, but we did manage to get our stuff here.
Success!
We have been here for about 10 months at the time of this writing, and looking back, I am astounded at how much we have accomplished, many of which I will be writing about in future articles:
Unpacked and organized both our personal and storage items.
Established a market garden, Stella Porta Farms. This includes a greenhouse and crop irrigation system.
Established an independent solar-powered creek pump, water storage, and irrigation system for our market pumpkin patch.
Internet, wi-fi, and solar-powered surveillance systems are available across the property.
Repaved and corrected the drainage on our roads with city pit aggregate.
A decorative gate and archway were installed at our entrance.
Carport to protect our vehicles from elements.
Built a functional guest house with its own plumbing and electrical.
Converted the three-door barn into a finished workshop.
As I write this article, we are even working on a walk-in refrigerator for the crops.
I am grateful that we found such a fantastic place to live where we can experience blue skies and be surrounded by the many nice people that I have met.
Great write-up, Vinnie. I'll follow suit with my own narrative of our move to Maine. I'll tell you, Maine is by far not the most perfect place for many of the reasons you gave as reasons to move to Arkansas. Family was a major contributing factor to our decision. Well, we are here and making the best of it.
Congratulations! I left WA state almost four years ago. There are a lot of good people there, but I would never be able to retire or own my own place. I'm much happier in rural KS