Wisconsin for living
Another state I’ve considered moving to would be Wisconsin. It’s a big state with vast rural areas, famous for its dairy industry and the sand hills that Aldo Leopold once wrote the Sand County Almanac about. It’s also home to the Blue Karner Blue Butterfly, similar to the Albany Pine Bush.
It’s vast fertile lands, such as the sand hills once fertilized by prarie grasses and now by manure and nitrogen fixing alfalfa and soybeans are great both for milk production and for deer, turkey, migratory birds, beaver and wildlife for hunting, trapping and observation. Northern Wisconsin has vast forests, a large portion that are federally owned and available for a wide variety of recreational pursuits.
Wisconsin is cold and snowy a big portion of the year and is part of the rust belt. There is a lot of salt on the roads but at least they are fairly quickly cleaned in the winter. If I had a good wood stove and a small well insulated off grid cabin it wouldn’t be a big deal. Hills in Wisconsin are relatively small and roads relatively straight so icy roads are less of a problem – although the rust belt still means throwing away cars regularly – even though they don’t rust the way they once did.
Wisconsin has its urban population centers and an under-girding of progressive politics but it’s also a very conservative state – much more than Minnesota to its west. Gun laws seem reasonable maybe not as permissive as some of the western states.
That said that in deep rural Wisconsin, your unlikely to be looked down upon for being a gun owner. Farmers aren’t likely to care if you hang a deer out back or process your own meat hung from a tree or work on your own car in your backyard. Raise a hog, goats, chickens or bull calves, and thru aren’t going to care – they’re in the same business. Code regulations are less in farm country, bonfires and household trash burning allowed. Dairies can be a cheap source of bull calves to raise for food or even fertilizer for the garden. And good farm stand produce like sweet corn in the summer. I’d probably choose a property that is more upland and less desirable for farming, just because it’s cheaper but I would have no problem living next to a farmer’s pasture or corn field.
Wisconsin at the state level officially forbids open burning of your household trash but most rural towns are much more permissive – many actually encourage residents to have burn barrels for non-recyclable trash to reduce disposal costs and landfill reliance. In dairy country that is spread out, I doubt most farmers give a damn about your fires as long as you don’t set their fields with valuable crops on fire. Many farms burn their own household trash along with net wrap, silage wrap and bags that corn seed and other feed comes in. Better than sending it all to the landfill as is the norm in New York – and saves a lot of money over having a dumpster.
Living in area near fertile dairy country can have it smells during part of year – early spring and late fall as manure is applied to the ground and a earthy smell as a ground is broken. Storage, use and disposal of spoiled silage can be real pungent too, although freshly chopped corn is wonderful. Especially with more modern controlled methods of liquid spreading used on larger, more modern farms which apply more carefully but in a pungent way. But I don’t care that much about the smell – my neighbors growing up raised hogs and the town I went to Boy Scouts in is famous for their milk production and the cow smell that goes along. Flies can also be a concern in farm country, especially during certain times of year after manure is applied or near barns themselves.
Zoning and codes varies a lot from town to town in Wisconsin and are an important consideration especially if I want to have an off grid property. Even though I don’t plan on doing a lot of building on my own land I don’t want to be tied down by a lot of red tape for minor upgrades when I follow code reasonably close. I want to be able to work with the town inspector do what needs to be done for as simple and minimalist structure as possible. Small towns usually are a lot easier to talk to and meet face to face with government officials.
Is Wisconsin my next home? Probably not but it’s a possibility on the list of many I’ve explored in recent years on the blog. Here are some of the previous posts I wrote: