We’re considering moving from MA to either NC, SC, TN or GA. I know there are a lot of positives. But what are some of the negatives that you didn’t know about before you moved and wished you had?
That EVERYTHING shuts down for 2 inches of snow. 3 inches? We are down for days. I have come to embrace it though. I bring plenty of work home, buy plenty of beer and work at the kitchen table. Seriously though, here in NC they do not manage the roads well in regards to snow. Several days after a storm you still risk hitting snow, slush or icy in shady areas. Back home, these areas would have been scraped down days earlier.
However, the last storm here in January I was riding 2 days after in sunny, 70-degree weather!
For reference I made the move from Maine to North Carolina about 7 years ago.
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Negatives? …why did we wait so long is the only one I can think of
The move took most of our horses about two years to fully adjust being moved from northern Kentucky to Texas… the first winter they had their 3 or 4 inch winter coats for about a week then had a second thought… finally just adjusting to just changing to black bays
the one we brought in from North Dakota believes we do not have cold weather, never has put on a winter coat of more than 3/8th of an inch
We still have all of our winter Baker Blankets which are used rarely these days ( afew are over fifty years old now, one is sixty years old)
Summers are hot, but mostly manageable when one remembers where we came from the minus 25F temps that were relentless, 55 inches of snow and all the water lines froze as they were only down three feet… now a winter coat is long sleeve shirt
Also about one hour more daylight in the winters down here than up there
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My husband did a ton of research for us before we moved from Colorado to South Carolina, so I had no negative surprises. I’m still happy we made the move.
Rebecca
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+1
G.
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Quality of hay generally just as good (I know this varies significantly)? More flies? More rain?
Moving south just makes so much sense now but my husband keeps telling me that there must be some negatives that I haven’t considered.
Thanks for your input.
We moved from MA to KY four years ago and absolutely love it. Cost of living is less, taxes are less, price for land is way less, no traffic unless you go to the big cities. I always tell DH that it looks like we’ve gone through a nuclear holocaust on Sunday if we’re driving on the parkways. :lol: But chiggers are a nightmare. We had never heard of them or that they are everywhere down here. My poor husband wasn’t thinking one day when he stopped to talk with some neighbors and stood in a hay field for an hour. BIG mistake. Anyway, aside from those, poisonous snakes are a little more numerous around here as well. But we don’t have mosquitoes, at least where we live. And, I was able to ride in the outdoor arena yesterday in 60* weather. So it’s worth it!
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Do the chiggers bother the horses as well? I’m guessing you’d find them in pastures? What can you use to prevent chigger bites? (Me too - never heard of them!)
Here’s an article about them:
https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-…-chigger-bites
Some people call them Red Bugs too. The itching is the worst symptom, and it can be intense. They do tend to be worse in some geographic areas than others. I don’t know that they go after animals, but the way they go after people is awful. They usually are in the tall grass.
Snakes. In MA, we don’t think twice about running out of the house in bare feet - that could get you a nasty surprise in the south.
Snakes bother the horses much?
It isn’t common for snakes to bother horses but it can happen.
once I was on a trail ride, felt my mare step high, looked down and we were stepping over a 5 ft long rattlesnake! OMG. It rattled a little but didn’t coil.
My family has an approx 15 horse boarding barn inan area thick with copperheads and rattlers and never had a horse bitten. Both my grandmother and Dad have been bitten, though.
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One thing I have noticed during the 40+ years I’ve lived in NC, is that out in the countryside if you have not gone to high school in your local area there is not much of a social life.
If you go to church regularly it is a little better as far as social life. Out here, often the first question is “what church do you go to?”
The big cities have so many migrants from the Northern states that may be changing now, but away from the big cities social life revolves around grade and high school friends, relatives, and church, especially Southern Baptist.
The saving grace is that it is MUCH CHEAPER to live outside the big cities in the South, and it is still cheaper to live in most of the cities than up North (unless the Northern city is dying.)
It is also often MUCH CHEAPER to feed and keep horses down here. Most winters horses can survive OK on pastures with supplemental hay if there is snow and ice, or in winters like this one with weeks of lows in the 20’s F, which is a relatively new phenomenon. Full service barns are expensive down here though, and I do not know if they are any cheaper than up North.
We get MANY ice storms down here. Since there are a lot of trees around fallen branches, trees and power lines are problems after ice storms, snow storms, hurricanes, and the frequent strong thunderstorms. If you buy a house you have to weigh cheaper power bills in the summer (since the shade trees do help) versus the costs of removing dangerous &/or fallen branches/trees from the roof. After bad storms with powerful winds it can be very, very hard to find roofers that can repair your roof. All through the year It is a VERY GOOD IDEA to stock up on food and drinking water for yourself/your family whenever bad weather is predicted, and it is essential to keep extra hay and grain around for your horses for those days that you just cannot get to the feed store or the farmers cannot make it down your road due to the snow and ice or fallen trees. It is also a very good idea to store as much water as you can for your animals if you get your water from a well, because sometimes it can take WEEKS to get power back to all the areas after a severe storm.
North Carolina tends to shut down for snow or ice, with the bread and milk disappearing from the grocery stores. Many people really do not know how to drive safely in snow or ice. Only major thoroughfares are plowed after snow storms. One time, years ago, the Mayor of Charlotte, NC decided that only one lane in each direction of the major (6 to 8 lanes) road through Charlotte. That really messed up the city for weeks. There has been improvements in keeping traffic moving on the major roads, but the neighborhoods off the main roads and out in the countryside rarely see any plowing.
Flies (including buzz-bombers), mosquitoes, ticks and fleas are a plague in the summertime, as are the high heat and the awful humidity. Stepping from air conditioning to the outside can feel like stepping into a sauna during the hottest summer days. Stock up on hot weather technical fabric clothes, these make the hot summers a lot more bearable and be sure to keep a LOT of mosquito repellent around for yourself. The horses also need a good bit of fly spray from the last frost in the Spring until the third or so frost in the Autumn. I use a riding fly sheet as well as fly spray in the Summer otherwise the horses really do not keep their attention on my aids.
Springtime is wonderful, like the Garden of Eden, sometimes I think Heaven must be similar to North Carolina in the Springtime. Then comes Summer, and all resemblances to the Garden of Eden quickly disappear.
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One horse snakebit in many decades here, native southerner, and it cost $1500 at vet’s. Siamese cat bitten decades ago, and I forget the cost as my parents paid. Both survived. chiggers, aka red bugs, used to get us kids in the salt water marshes but no where else. Horses, dogs and cats did not get bitten then or now. The chiggers got us kids where any elastic or waistband fit tightly btw, and no where else. We don’t get many ticks anymore. I think mosquito control planes, which spray in the spring and summer, have gotten rid of a lot of skeeters and chiggers and ticks.
The main problem we have is the invasion of yankees. If you do come, please do not complain about everything. It is very irritating to have people move to the south and then complain about everything. We are just like people all over the country.
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Moved from CT to the Atlanta area of GA back in 1996. Couldn’t get home fast enough. Yes my house was 1/3 cheaper with almost non-existent property taxes, but that’s where the pros ended for me. Things I didn’t expect were many.
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Road rage drivers. My god there are some really angry people there. Way worse that CT which I never imagined. Traffic that makes NYC traffic look like child’s play. Picture 7 lanes in both directions and nobody going anywhere. Any weather of the winter variety shut everything down for several days.
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Heat/humidity/more heat…lung crushing humidity. You can take a shower, dump an entire container of powder on yourself and be soaking wet 5 seconds after you leave the house. Forget about a windows open season and listening to the happy birds chirping outside. It goes from raw/rainy in the winter to too friggin hot very quickly. You’re stuck inside with AC and closed windows from May to November. You could only ride horses early morning or after sunset. Even then it was too hot. I honestly don’t know how people do it.
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Environmentally brain dead. At least where I was living, proper disposal of used motor oil meant tossing it into the woods. Got leaves? Rake them into a pile and burn them. Don’t worry about all that ground level smelly smoke making it into your neighbor’s yards. Have a boat and a bilge you need to empty? Just dump it into the lake.
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Scorpions - Tiny little buggers and actually quite cute since they apparently think they are 10’ tall. Just don’t come in contact with one.
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Coral/milk snakes - just learn the rhyme that works for you and you’ll be fine on that one.
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If you’re not religious, you’ll most likely not like the south much. Religion is tied into most everything. Where I was, it was all Baptists. Everything recreational was done through church groups. You couldn’t join a softball team if you weren’t part of the church.
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If you like to garden, stay out of the clay areas. Might as will try to dig in rocks.
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Outward bigotry. While the north has it’s share of bigots, I was floored by how outwardly spoken people are down south about non-whites. They have no problems using very old slang terms to refer to non-whites.
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Rapid development and urban sprawl. I think it might just have been in the era I was living down there, but I swear entire new subdivisions were popping up over a weekend. There were so many bulldozers and earth being pushed around, I don’t think I saw so much as a squirrel no less a deer or bear the entire 4 years I lived there. It’s just humans and more humans. Then again I was only 20 minutes outside of Atlanta, so congestion is to be expected.
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Winter tornadoes. I didn’t reallize GA was in tornado alley, and I didn’t know how big and scary the January ones are.
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Thunderstorms. I love thunderstorms, or at least the ones up north. The ones in the south are so powerful, you think the sky is going to crack open. I can’t describe how scary they can get.
I’m pretty sure I just picked a crappy part of the south to try, but that’s my 2 cents on the greater Atlanta area.
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We moved to TN from PA four years ago and absolutely love it. Yes, we have chiggers. Yes, we have poisonous snakes. Yes, we have tornados. Yes, we have racists and bigots. Yes, we have religious zealots. We had all those things in PA, except chiggers, with much nastier weather!
We love where we live as well as our neighbors. Our property taxes are low, and land is affordable. The bad winter months are only December, January and February, and it is no where near as severe as the North.
Are there adjustments to make? Sure, but nothing we couldn’t live with. You learn to slow down and that being in a hurry all the time doesn’t make anything better. You learn that when neighbors tell you to ask if you need anything they usually mean it.
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For the most part, it’s impossible to answer your question without knowing where you plan to move. “The South” is hugely diverse. I’ve lived in KY, TN, NC, FL and TX and my son lived in GA. They are all very different. Even within a single state, you will have vastly different experiences depending on where you are within the state.
There are only a few negatives I can think of that apply nearly universally.
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Bugs. Without a cold winter to kill them off, bug populations thrive. Personally, I’m willing to make the tradeoff. I grew up in MI and PA, so yes, I do know winter and I don’t much like it.
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Absolutely no capacity for dealing with snow and ice. Snow? Just shut 'er down. We’re not going anywhere until it melts. On the plus side, it melts, usually within a day or two. And I’m willing to accept the brief paralysis in return for the general lack of snow.
There are also some things that I don’t view as negatives, but that many Northerners seem to be bothered by.
In many areas, social lives revolve around your church. My family has never been the least bit religious and when we moved to KY, my Mom was freaked out by the fact that the first thing people would ask when meeting you was, “What church do you go to?” This is most common in smaller and more rural areas these days.
Peple tend to talk slower, drive slower, and conduct business transactions at a slower pace. This used to be universally true, but with the large influx of Northerners into some areas, it is beginning to change somewhat in those areas.
Like I said, I grew up in MI and PA but I have spent most of my adult life in the south. I love the south and can’t imagine ever again living farther north than NC.
You may be happier if you move to an area where there are more Northern transplants around or an area that is viewed as more socially progressive. And, like WildandWickedWarmbloods said, if you do move to the south, please do not ever say “Well, where I’m from, we do things differently,” or complain about how backward we are. This kind of behavior is very common and then the offenders complain that people around here aren’t very friendly and ask what happened to that southern hospitality that we’re supposed to have.
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NC gets many retirees that thought FL was too hot and humid and moved half way back. So we called them half-backs.
Chiggers aren’t a big deal unless you don’t mow your grass. Keep it short and you won’t have issues.
Road rage is pretty much nonexistent if you are living in a small town. Bigger towns still have some jerks here and there. I never experienced it in NC except from a neighbor that moved from NJ.
Atlanta doesn’t count, the traffic around there is insane.
Humidity doesn’t bother me, but I grew up with it, and just plan your day accordingly to account for it. Use wicking fabric cause you are going to sweat, and hydrate during the summers.
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Thank you!!! If you don’t like the way we do things in the South, move to where they do things your way. Stop trying to make us change. Also, don’t honk if we don’t hit the gas the exact moment the light turns green, takes a moment to make sure the intersection in clear, and we are not in a hurry. We left with plenty of time so we can take our time and not rush.
NC shuts down more to ice than anything else. The snow partially melts and them dips down below freezing making the roads a skating rink. No one can stop on ice in a vehicle.
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Welp. Looks like I’ll be staying in New England. Snow and all…
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