Dear future Indiana friends and neighbors



Chenango County, NY


Dear future Indiana friends and neighbors,

We are moving here from New York. And we've heard that you're worried we'll suffer from culture shock, miss the hustle and bustle and bright lights of the Big Apple.

We are from New York...UPSTATE New York. A very different beast than the City.

We're from a county with more cows than people, our "town" has a population of about 700. Our county seat is the only city in the county and has a population of not quite 7,000. The nearest grocery store is 15 miles away, the nearest mall 40.

A night on the town means going to the fire station's spaghetti supper fund raiser or the nearby motorcycle bar (snowmobiles in the winter). Traffic jams are deer or cows or the occasional escaped goat crossing the road.


We tell people we're an hour from everything--the "big" cities of Binghamton or Syracuse, an interstate highway, a Starbucks. There are no art museums, ethnic restaurants (does Italian count?), or major league sports within spittin' distance. Heck, we can't even get cable.

We can see the Milky Way at night, hear the crickets and coyotes, watch fireflies.

We're moving to Washington County, Indiana--rural farm country. The county seat has a population of just over 6,000. We've been warned there are coyotes around our place and the deer wander into the yard. There are no streetlights on our road which is mostly gravel and we're about 2 miles from the volunteer fire department which holds ham dinners.

Culture shock? We think we'll fit right in.