Of all of the things I am thankful this Thanksgiving, my loved ones top the list. They are my lifeblood. Second on the list is my home. Not just the farmhouse I call “home,” but the landscape in which I live. I moved down here to farm…and to be close to the southern Utah red rock sandstone. They are both in my blood – and sometimes I get so caught up in one that I forget the other. So you’ve seen some of the family and the farm – now, here’s some of the surrounding land. Here is some of “my country.”
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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.
”
~ 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.
“
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.
“
Wherever you go, no matter the weather, always bring your own sunshine.
”
~ 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
Great post Libbie! I can indentify- we live in the shadows of the Blue Ridge Mtns. of Va. and I cant imagine living anywhere else. After travelling to the midwest this past summer I realized this- boy, its flat out there! Lovely, but flat! I hope your family has a wonderful holiday and thanks for sharing your adventures with the rest of us farmgirls!
Thank you for sharing this precious experience. One of the things you shared that most touched my heart is the realization of ‘how little, really, my soul needs to thrive’. You didn’t say ‘survive’, you said ‘thrive’. Big difference and an important realization. I recently left my beautiful home in a city where I did not ever feel at home to pursue my farmgirl dream in southeast Missouri. I do not have a home here yet. I am living in a camper on 40 beautiful acres. But, I am at HOME. My soul is thriving. I am realizing how very little one truly needs as long as the soul has a home!
Thanks for a thought provoking post! One of the things that you said…"If you can let go of the need to "get somewhere," it turns out that the speed of a child is always the right one. Just slow enough to really feel the magic…" is an awesome thought! That really makes ones’ "country" so meaningful. Blessings, Reba
Libbie,
How fun!
Home for most of us is " where we hang our hat" and as you say, hopefully it’s a " given" that our souls can rest and thrive where ever we call home. Seeing you photos of the beautiful desert reminds me of my childhood in Nevada. I say the same thing to Shery J.(rfgblogger) every time she shares her " wide open spaces of Wyoming ".
As a child I played in the dry dirt amongst the sweet smell of sage and clean air chasing and catching lizards and horny toads and riding horses in the hills.
As young newlyweds, my husband and I learned to garden in dry clay and hard pan soil. Every shovel ( or ogger we had to rent)that pressed into the earth was an effort, but we were determined to GROW flowers, trees and shrubs in our bare suburban back yard(that had been formed by sand blasting)in the new subdivision we lived in. We’ve camped, hiked ,cross country skied and driven over and through the woods of the Sierra Mountains in every type of weather.
The dry wide open spaces of the west and the smell of a fresh pine forest will always be with me. Now I live and THRIVE near the sea in America’s hometown, Plymouth, MA. The high desert of Northern Nevada will always be in my soul and my DNA. The biggest ocean wave can’t wash away the dust or memories of the first half of my life there. I carry them with me always. After twenty plus years of visiting/living here in New England, the sea has become a part of me in the same way.. Now when I catch an ocean breeze in my hair, smell the ocean at low tide, feel the warm sand between my toes, or watch a beautiful sunset bouncing light across a flat calm bay I breathe it all in just as I did out west…
How fortunate am I to have two of Mother Natures best works engraved on my soul? I have two homes for my soul. My eyes have been opened to new beauties and experiences that I never would have experienced had we not moved here ten years ago!
I LOVE seeing your children playing in the rocks and sand! Reminds me of our two playing in the sand and climbing the big rocks on the beach!
It can be such a cleansing for the soul to go out and be "one" with nature where ever you are!
Thanks for the inspiration and photos of " your country "!
Beach Blessings~
Deb
I really enjoyed your pictures. The one line that struck me is how the red rock sandstone is in your blood. It helps me understand how I was so different from my siblings. I alsways wanted to be away from the city, farming. I could not understand why. My father was the same way. Then, I went back to Mexico when I was a teenager to stay for a few months with family. My family farmed and ranched. I felt so at home, like a peace that you get when you are where you are supposed to be in life. It was then I made up my mind that I was not going to live in the city, but find my calling and find some land. Though I may only be on one acre, I love it. I get to garden and do what I love, to sew and enjoy the land I am on. It is funny how something can be in your blood like that, but it is true and it is so satisfying.
I enjoy seeing your pictures and that you share your family with us. Farm girl sisterhood at its best.
Carolina