"PETERSBURG, N.Y. — A heavy snow was falling here in the Taconic Mountain Range outside Albany when Leah Penniman moved to the farm she bought with her husband. It was the day after Christmas, Penniman recalled, “and I cried.”
They were not tears of joy.
Penniman was having second thoughts. “I was, like, can we just stay in Albany?” Her family had left that city’s impoverished South End community because it was a food desert — devoid of grocery stores with fresh produce or sit-down restaurants. But she worried about losing friends she made there. “I wasn’t so sure about this rural thing.” The tears came when a pile of snow made it impossible to turn around. “When I saw we were stranded, I just cried,” Penniman said."