Keepers of Christmas generally have a rich store of memories to draw upon when they build a new Christmas each year. We hold on to family traditions that grow more and more precious with the passage of time. Cherished are the memories we fondly recall, bits & pieces of Christmas past … loved ones who are no longer with us, special gifts you gave and received, and very likely one particularly brilliant memory that for some reason wears a crown in your Christmas memories book.
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Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
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~ Mark TwainDebbie Bosworth
is a certified farmgirl at heart. She’s happily married to her beach bum Yankee husband of 20 years. She went from career gal to being a creative homeschooling mom for two of her biggest blessings and hasn’t looked back since. Debbie left her lifelong home in the high desert of Northern Nevada 10 years ago and washed up on the shore of America’s hometown, Plymouth, MA, where she and her family are now firmly planted. They spend part of each summer in a tiny, off–grid beach cottage named “The Sea Horse.”
“I found a piece of my farmgirl heart when I discovered MaryJanesFarm. Suddenly, everything I loved just made more sense! I enjoy unwinding at the beach, writing, gardening, and turning yard-sale furniture into ‘Painted Ladies’ I’m passionate about living a creative life and encouraging others to ‘make each day their masterpiece.’”
Column contents © Deb Bosworth. All rights reserved.
Being a farmgirl is not
about where you live,
but how you live.Rebekah Teal
is a “MaryJane Farmgirl” who lives in a large metropolitan area. She is a lawyer who has worked in both criminal defense and prosecution. She has been a judge, a business woman and a stay-at-home mom. In addition to her law degree, she has a Masters of Theological Studies.
“Mustering up the courage to do the things you dream about,” she says, “is the essence of being a MaryJane Farmgirl.” Learning to live more organically and closer to nature is Rebekah’s current pursuit. She finds strength and encouragement through MaryJane’s writings, life, and products. And MaryJane’s Farmgirl Connection provides her a wealth of knowledge from true-blue farmgirls.
Column contents © Rebekah Teal. All rights reserved.
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Keep close to Nature’s heart … and break clear away once in awhile to climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods, to wash your spirit clean.
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~ John MuirCathi Belcher
an old-fashioned farmgirl with a pioneer spirit, lives in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. As a “lifelong learner” in the “Live-Free-or-Die” state, she fiercely values self-reliance, independence, freedom, and fresh mountain air. Married to her childhood sweetheart of 40+ years (a few of them “uphill climbs”), she’s had plenty of time to reinvent herself. From museum curator, restaurant owner, homeschool mom/conference speaker, to post-and-beam house builder and entrepreneur, she’s also a multi-media artist, with an obsession for off-grid living and alternative housing. Cathi owns and operates a 32-room mountain lodge. Her specialty has evolved to include “hermit hospitality” at her rustic cabin in the mountains, where she offers weekend workshops of special interest to women.
“Mountains speak to my soul, and farming is an important part of my heritage. I want to pass on my love of these things to others through my writing. Living in the mountains has its own particular challenges, but I delight in turning them into opportunities from which we can all learn and grow.”
Column contents © Cathi Belcher. All rights reserved.
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Wherever you go, no matter the weather, always bring your own sunshine.
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~ Anthony J. D’AngeloDori Troutman
Dori Troutman is the daughter of second generation cattle ranchers in New Mexico. She grew up working and playing on the ranch that her grandparents homesteaded in 1928. That ranch, with the old adobe home, is still in the family today. Dori and her husband always yearned for a ranch of their own. That dream came true when they retired to the beautiful green rolling hills of Tennessee. Truly a cattleman’s paradise!
Dori loves all things farmgirl and actually has known no other life but that. She loves to cook, craft, garden, and help with any and all things on their cattle farm.
Column contents © Dori Troutman. All rights reserved.
Shery Jespersen
Previous Ranch Farmgirl,
Oct 2009 – Nov 2013Wyoming cattle rancher and outpost writer (rider), shares the “view from her saddle.” Shery is a leather and lace cowgirl-farmgirl who’s been horse-crazy all of her life. Her other interests include “junktiques,” arts and crafts, glamping, collecting antique china, and cultivating mirth.
Mary Murray
describes herself as a goat charmer, chicken whisperer, bee maven, and farmers’ market baker renovating an 1864 farmhouse on an Ohio farm. With a degree in Design, Mary says small-town auctions and country road barn sales "always make my heart skip a beat thinking about what I could create or design out of what I’ve seen.”
Rooted in the countryside, she likes simple things and old ways … gardening, preserving the harvest, cooking, baking, and all things home. While you might find her selling baked goods from the farm’s milkhouse, teaching herself to play the fiddle, or sprucing up a vintage camper named Maizy, you will always find her in an apron!
Mary says, “I’m happiest with the simple country pleasures … an old farmhouse, too many animals, a crackling fire, books to read, and the sound of laughter … these make life just perfect.”
Column contents © Mary Murray. All rights reserved.
Farmgirl
is a condition
of the heart.Alexandra Wilson
is a budding rural farmgirl living in Palmer, the agricultural seat of Alaska. Alex is a graduate student at Alaska Pacific University pursuing an M.S. in Outdoor and Environmental Education. She lives and works on the university’s 700 acre environmental education center, Spring Creek Farm. When Alex has time outside of school, she loves to rock climb, repurpose found objects, cross-country ski on the hay fields, travel, practice yoga, and cook with new-fangled ingredients.
Alex grew up near the Twin Cities and went to college in Madison, Wisconsin—both places where perfectly painted barns and rolling green farmland are just a short drive away. After college, she taught at a rural middle school in South Korea where she biked past verdant rice paddies and old women selling home-grown produce from sidewalk stoops. She was introduced to MaryJanesFarm after returning, and found in it what she’d been searching for—a group of incredible women living their lives in ways that benefit their families, their communities, and the greater environment. What an amazing group of farmgirls to be a part of!
Column contents © Alexandra Wilson. All rights reserved.
Libbie Zenger
Previous Rural Farmgirl,
June 2010 – Jan 2012Libbie’s a small town farmgirl who lives in the high-desert Sevier Valley of Central Utah on a 140-year-old farm with her husband and two darling little farmboys—as well as 30 ewes; 60 new little lambs; a handful of rams; a lovely milk cow, Evelynn; an old horse, Doc; two dogs; a bunch o’ chickens; and two kitties.
René Groom
Previous Rural Farmgirl,
April 2009 – May 2010René lives in Washington state’s wine country. She grew up in the dry-land wheat fields of E. Washington, where learning to drive the family truck and tractors, and “snipe hunting,” were rites of passage. She has dirt under her nails and in her veins. In true farmgirl fashion, there is no place on Earth she would rather be than on the farm.
Farmgirl spirit can take root anywhere—dirt or no dirt.
Nicole Christensen
Suburban Farmgirl Nicole Christensen calls herself a “vintage enthusiast”. Born and raised in Texas, she has lived most of her life in the picturesque New England suburbs of Connecticut, just a stone’s throw from New York State. An Advanced Master Gardener, she has gardened since childhood, in several states and across numerous planting zones. In addition, she teaches knitting classes, loves to preserve, and raises backyard chickens.
Married over thirty years to her Danish-born sweetheart, Nicole has worked in various fields, been a world-traveler, an entrepreneur and a homemaker, but considers being mom to her now-adult daughter her greatest accomplishment. Loving all things creative, Nicole considers her life’s motto to be “Bloom where you are planted”.
Column contents © Nicole Christensen. All rights reserved.
Paula Spencer
Previous Suburban Farmgirl,
October 2009 – October 2010Paula is a mom of four and a journalist who’s partial to writing about common sense and women’s interests. She’s lived in five great farm states (Michigan, Iowa, New York, Tennessee, and now North Carolina), though never on a farm. She’s nevertheless inordinately fond of heirloom tomatoes, fine stitching, early mornings, and making pies. And sock monkeys.
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Archives
OMG- this is my year all the time. My parents made it UNFORGETTABLE! SO i have huge Christmas Stress that I induce on myself. While I have toned it down a bit, as the kids are now 15 and 19, I was still baking cookies before my daughter went to school this morning. The candy was done, but pep band, finals etc had prevented cookies from being baked. My daughter’s teachers truly deserve a sweet treat in appreciation for all their caring. They used to get delivered on hand-painted plates . Now to finish that quilt before next Thursday afternoon.
Oh Shery,
Thank you for the lovely trip down your "Memory Lane"…I so enjoyed it and especially your 5th paragraph. So glad you are proud of your faith when todays society is soooo trying to be P.C. about Christmas…Bless you.
Oh and we have a tradition that we carry on (German) and that is we serve Ghulwein this time of year as it is a wonderful yummy warmer-upper…it is warmed up red wine infused with spices(nutmeg, clove, cinnamom) and topped off with a wedge of orange. So yummy on a snowy day.
Don’t you just love traditions!
Merry Christmas & God Bless
I love the beauty of your prose and your eye for detail in nature. I am doing a little bit of the same idea in a blog, too. But I have to say that yours is an exquisite model to use as a pattern! Love the grogg recipe! I will be making some this holiday season.
I was 3 years old and Santa came to my house Christmas eve, but while we were still up to see if we were good. I ran to the kitchen to tell my Mom, and she didn’t believe me. I had to bring Santa to the kitchen for her to see him. Years later I fine out it was our neighbor. But I still remember Santa coming to my house, fondly.
The rule in our house was that no one could find what Santa had put in the stocking that was delivered to our bedroom door until it was six o’clock am.
I was not a good sleeper on Christmas Eve..or even in the wee hours of Christmas morning. I have no idea how Santa managed to get the jingling stocking propped up against my door without getting caught at it.
What I did on one such sleepless overnight was to go frequently into the bathroom where my father always hung his prized Hamilton watch (awarded on his 25th year in his business) on a hook on the door jamb. I could tip the face of the watch to see if it was six o’clock yet. I did this. Often. All night long. BUT at about four am I managed to unhook that watch when I tipped it to see, and it smashed on the tile floor.
This was a disaster. Really a disaster. I cried, standing there, cried with grief and shame and true misery. I was not afraid of my father, but I was afraid of the loss of the watch for my father. It was, as far as I knew, his most prized possession. And I had ruined it. Smashed to pieces.
I couldn’t stand it. I went in at that early hour and awakened my father, burst into tears, confessed my terrible act, buried myself in his arms and sobbed out my sorrows.
I am sure it took a long while for my sleepy parents to figure out what to do with this inauspicious beginning of our happy day. But they figured it out. I saw the new watch-face and hands going around as they should in the next few days, to my enormous relief.
I have no idea what I got that Christmas, other than a whole lot of love.
Susan
I am going to make a batch of your fabulous grogg tomorrow. Heck, maybe every day this week! Thanks for the sweet reminder of orange pomanders. I love making those. Happy Holidays to you at the Ranch!
You reminded me of so many great holdays at home. My mom always made Christmas so special.I have many great memories. Thanks
Sherry thank you so much for the remembrance and for reminding all of us that it is more important to take time with the Babe in the Manger.
And Susan thanks for sharing your story it was heartwarming.
Merry Christmas All, Laurel
The author of rfgblog.maryjanesfarm.org has written an excellent article. You have made your point and there is not much to argue about. It is like the following universal truth that you can not argue with: If you take life too seriously, life will start to take you seriously. Thanks for the info.