We are celebrating our 32nd anniversary soon and I realized that we have lived here in this house for exactly half of our married life! And while I love it here, it’s starting to feel a bit cramped.

Not the house, although I do need to clear out some clutter, but the area itself. We have had such a huge influx of new people moving in, mostly those fleeing the left coast areas, and while I don’t blame them it is a bit depressing.

Yesterday we took a drive into town to do some shopping and took the back roads, of which there are many, and I couldn’t help but notice all the new subdivisions going in. What used to be miles and miles of farms and farmhouses scattered here and there is now slowly but surely filling in with McMansions and apartments.

Lots of apartments.

Sooo many apartments.

Which means more “affordable” places to live but also sooo much more traffic.

Ugh.

The once nearly-empty back roads were no longer empty. This was never an issue just a few years ago. We passed two accidents and narrowly avoided one ourselves thanks to an inattentive driver on their cell phone swerving into our lane.

What bothered me the most, though, wasn’t the extra people and cars or even the bad drivers but the fact that so many of the places we passed that used to have cows and horses and other livestock now seem like ghost towns! I was actually shocked at the lack of farm life going on out there.

The price of hay is a factor, I’m sure. It’s why we sold our goats and horses a few years back.

We barely saw any farm animals except a few chickens and cows here and there where this area used to be teeming with them. Even the subdivision we’re in has special covenants in place to allow for livestock and that’s what sold us on it. No HOA, lots of space between houses and it still felt like we were out in the country. Most of our neighbors had horses or sheep or goats or chickens and now very few do. We seem to be the exception and not the rule anymore.

Now the lots are getting smaller, most of the newer subdivisions have strict HOAs and the farmland is disappearing more each year. Slowly but surely SE Idaho is losing the charm of what drew us here to begin with.

Will we spend another sixteen years here?

I guess time will tell…