Moving to the country (we’re gonna eat a lot of peaches)

We don’t have a date yet, but Jesse and I are hoping to move our family to the Cedar City area sometime this summer. Our house will be going on the market in the next couple of weeks, just as soon as we finish some projects to increase desirability and all that. Once we have an offer on our house, we’ll get more serious about looking down south and booking a cross country moving service, but we’re basically looking for a place with some more land where we can have some fruit trees and a giant garden and some chickens and goats possibly and live all country-like. I know you all are thinking there are places we can do that in Salt Lake County and before you excitedly start sending me links to MLS listings so we don’t move out of the area, we have some other reasons for moving:

First of all, the air quality here is terrible. We’ve known that for a while, but I recently stumbled upon this site which shows you the reported pollutants in your county. Salt Lake County is among the 10% DIRTIEST counties in the entire country. Some of the biggest pollutants showing for our area are LEAD and ARSENIC which, incidentally, my kids tested high for in a recent heavy metals testing we got back. We tested the house for lead paint of course and found none. It didn’t make sense until we saw this website report. Iron County, on the other hand, is among the CLEANEST 20% in the country. Even the highest pollutant (of only two reported pollutants), ammonia, is about HALF the amount of what is reported in Salt Lake County. We’ve had some genetic testing done and have discovered that we are genetically vulnerable to environmental toxins and want to be in a cleaner environment to give our kids the best chance of healing.

Also, my parents are planning a move to southern Utah and we could really use some family support/help with the kids. There is a lot we will miss about living here, but the idea of living in a small town really appeals to us and we feel really good about the decision. Since Jesse telecommutes full time, he’ll be keeping his same job and everything. Easy Peasy.

Stay tuned for info/invitations to our final summer backyard bbq bash.