Monthly Archives: April 2013

A Day Away…A Farmgirl Roadtrip to Hartford County, Connecticut

Charming. Quaint. Historic... These words describe my favorite places.  We’ve recently spent a family day finding just that!   What do dinosaurs and heirloom seedshave in common? Both are found in New England! Come take a Suburban Farmgirl road trip with me to Hartford County, Connecticut!

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Familiar Roads

Dear Sisters,
Oh my goodness, do we have some catching up to do! I missed our visit from the shorelines two weeks ago, but there’s a good reason for my absence. It’s been seven years since I’ve traveled the familiar roads of my hometown, “THE BIGGEST LITTLE CITY IN THE WORLD” (and the outskirts) and boy was I overdue. So, I planned a week long get away for my family and off we went to Reno, Nevada. It’s nothing new that people have been traveling away from their homelands and loved ones for centuries. Destiny calls to those of us with a bit of wanderlust in our blood, but, there’s nothing like going home after a long time away. It’ll fill your soul with things you didn’t even know you were missing and then some! We’re still flying high from our trip west! Put on your traveling shoes and fasten your seatbelt for a trip to Western Nevada with Deb and the gang!
City lights, dirt roads, sagebrush, mountains, and mustangs! Oh my!

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Civic Duty

Hello all you fine, friendly farmgirls! It’s finals week here at Alaska Pacific University, and because of that…I’m sleep deprived. It happens to the best procrastinators among us year after year, generation after generation. When some people say they are sleep deprived, they are probably surviving off of just a few hours of sleep here and a few hours of sleep there. Since I’m fairly child like, sleep deprivation for me means that I’m getting less than eight hours of sleep per night for several nights in a row. The least amount I’ve slept has been five hours, and I kind of feel like a zombie. I know, it’s rough. How can I hope to be a farmer some day if five hours of sleep leaves me feeling less-than-human? I don’t know, that’s a question for another day.

Anyway, I digress. One reason for this sleep deprivation is some forced civic dutiness I was assigned to complete for a graduate level environmental law class. We had to write and submit an official public comment to a governmental agency regarding our stance on some bill, act or other decision that is recently being decided upon. Of course, this had to be regarding something related to the environment.

Evan and I enjoying a spring ski. It should be a civic duty to enjoy state and national recreational areas on a regular basis.

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Stuck Like Glue

This spring, I’m stuck like glue to my Farm.

And I’m okay with that.

Don’t ask me to go on an overnight hiking trip. Don’t invite me to make a presentation at a conference. Don’t even ask me out to lunch right now.

Because I’m stuck like glue to this Farm. There is so much going on, I can’t slip away even for a little while.

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The Harbinger

Trusting a harbinger, trusting a messenger for what it tells of things to come is a matter of faith. The visual appearance of a messenger lends strength to subtler clues … as in the case of the song of our much anticipated springtime harbinger – The Meadowlark.

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A Suburban Spring

The ol’ quote says, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder”.  I’m feeling that way about spring, and it’s refreshing arrival! After a long winter of cold temps that started here six months ago, I can’t wait to smell warm, dark, earth, and dig in the garden under the sun.  It’s a time in New England when the earth “wakes up”.  (Although with chilly, below-normal temps for April, I’m thinkin’ Mother Nature’s overslept)!  Not to worry…there’s plenty of signs of spring, so if it hasn’t arrived for you yet, it can’t be too far away!

Hooray for Spring!  Join me in celebrating the Earth!

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The Greener Side of Life

It’s the winter that keeps on giving. Maybe it’s just the winter that needs the last word, when everyone is too caught up in the impending spring and summer to retaliate against the shoveling and plowing anymore. We just give in. We put on our boots and cram our heads into our hats and head out into the white abyss without a dismissive word about the darn winter or cursing the yet-again snow-covered porch. We’ve become complacent with the winter world around us.

The only animals that seem to be protesting are the chickens. They have left their coop exactly once per day for the last five days to eat and drink. Egg laying has all but ceased.

The spring tease a few weeks ago had me excited about sitting on the GREEN grass, hiking in the GREEN wilds and strolling through the farmers market, checking out the GREENS. Im supposed to start a new farming gig in a few weeks, and it seems like the season may be off to an extended indoor start.

To compensate for this lack of natural green, this Farm Girl has been taking in some green news. Some of it has been great, some of it has been not-so-great; but the most interesting of it has been GREEN.

Does a green filter make this shot (from April 6) seem any less wintery?…No. The answer is no.

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You Can't Never Tell

You just can’t never tell.

That’s a southern saying I’ve heard my whole life. I hadn’t used it very much until I moved out to the country. Now I rather like it. It just fits some things. Like…

Spring has really sprung around here.

I find myself basking in the warm sunlight, thinking of where to plant a garden, NOT MISSING the SNOW!

What?! Me? NOT missing the snow?! That’s crazy talk.

But true. I’m not. It was wonderful while it lasted. But I’m okay with the arrival of warm spring weather. Even my daughter and Blue, the dog, were out in the front meadow spinning and dancing with joy on our first warm, sunny day. (Can you see the flower headband around her head? My flower, hippy farm child.)

See? You just can’t never tell. We loved our first winter here at the farm. But looks like we’re going to love our spring too!

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Out With The Old

Do you periodically do a “new” thing or see old things in a new way? Spring is a time of newness. Ok, everybody knows that. The seasonal change fixin’ to happen soon isn’t responsible for the “new” I’m dealing with. No, there is a new kind of new around here, a herd of new, a new look, a new spin, and a fresh view. Newness. If it had a fragrance, it would smell like rain … after a summer shower.

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