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You know the sensation when you’re enjoying a fabulous meal with family or friends: Fullness, but, the food is sooo good, as is the company. So, you just keep pecking away at the remainder of goodies on your plate until you’re blissfully miserable or nearly so. Life can be that full. Wouldn’t you agree?
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I’ll admit it. I’m one proud mama! If you’re a parent, you know your heart no longer belongs to you. Parents’ hearts swell from the very minute our babies are born. As we witness their lives, we applaud their every accomplishment. I’m my daughter’s biggest fan. Beautiful inside and out, she’s intelligent, sweet, creative, and outgoing. She amazes me with her musical ability, especially since my husband and I are both tone deaf! But my favorite trait about my daughter is how kindhearted she is. Recently, she did something that made me so proud, I thought I’d burst!
Your mind is a GARDEN.
Your thoughts are the seeds.
You can grow FLOWERS
or you can grow WEEDS.
~ anonymous
Dear sisters, HAPPY SUMMER! It’s official. Today is the first day of summer and I couldn’t be happier… Why? Well, why not? Yes, it’s going to get hot, and humid and sticky and sweaty and buggy, and some days it might just be plain miserable. So miserable you can’t even think straight unless your within inches of your air conditioner at all times. I’ve been known to take my meals there if needed. ( I’m 51, and hotter than ever ) But, you know what? That’s not all that happens in summer time! For starters, once school let’s out ( three days left for our freshmen in high school) we get to spend more time with our chill ins’ just chillin’. Some people get to go on vacation to sights unseen or perhaps travel some new territory for adventure or to experience another culture. Other’s go to family reunions, or to a cottage, cabin or GLAMP- site to relax and unwind. To me the best part about going away in the summer is coming home. Not because I don’t like going away to the BEACH or other places ( you know better than that) but because I MISS MY GARDEN when I’m away and I’m always anxious to see how much things have grown in my absence.
Summer is here and it’s GOOD GROWIN’ from here on out! I can’t wait to show you what’s bloomin’ at Dandelion House ( weeds and all) and along the shorelines. Come on! Grab your big floppy garden hat and let’s get going!
Jiggity, Jig! For this post, The Rural Farmgirl is returning to her roots as a Suburban Farmgirl, but we’ll see that I can’t stay away from rural places for too long. I have been spending the last week in my home state of Minnesotaa–for the first time in over a year! Speaking of not being able to stay away from rural areas, I’m actually writing this from the grocery store, using their free wi-fi, because I am “up north” (as we say in the midwest) with my mom and nieces, spending some time at my mom’s internetless farm. Before my arrival, Minnesota had been experiencing weeks of rain. Fortunately, it has ceased and has left everything so green and beautiful! It’s good to be home, and my schedule has been (and will continue to be) jam-packed with big milestones and fun celebrations.
My mom and nieces getting ready for a nature hike at my mom’s farm near Crosby, Minnesota. Notice their outfits? These are true Farmgirls–want to stay stylish but keep out the wood ticks at the same time!
It has been 7 weeks now I’ve had those baby chickens. Well, they aren’t babies any more. They were babies for about a week and then they grew and grew and grew. Wow. They really do grow up fast. I don’t guess I’ve ever witnessed anything like it before.
I have learned many things from those chicks by welcoming them into my farm, my home, and my heart. Today I’m going to share Seven Lessons I’ve learned in Seven Weeks from my Sixteen Chickens.
Now when you read this post, you might think I’m boycotting using apostrophes. Nope, I’m not. This crazy blog program deleted them all. So Im going with it. And maybe I should boycott them? Just for the summer? Lazy days of summer and all. Okay, Im in.
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Early summer is the season of little bitties. After the buds on flowering fruit trees pass away, the baby fruit is just a tiny nubbin. Our garden plants begin as little bittie seeds. In the garden, transplanted baby greens look so small in the area they are to grow up in. Come to think of it, we’re all a little bittie idea … a seed … to begin with. Come to think of it, lots of things begin in a little bittie way.
Once upon a time there was a late twenty something Farmgirl living in Alaska. You see, in Alaska, time changes in a way that is foreign to much of the world. It seems to be the only thing people can talk about sometimes, especially farmers and those who spend a majority of their time out of doors (many Alaskans fit this bill). This changing time comes from the tilt of the Earth and how the sun plays across its surface throughout the seasons. Growing up in the Midwest, the winter nights were long and the summer days seemed endless, but she had never been to Alaska.
This Farmgirl writes about the length of days and nights often, and how quickly she and other Alaskans lose or gain daylight hours. It seemed that she was just an observer her first year in Alaska, but she became entrenched in these changes her second year…this tilt of the Earth directly influencing her Circadian rhythms.
Maybe seems unphased by Ava and Ronan (A couple of my Farm School Students)–perhaps he would like to take over one of my jobs?
I’m fascinated by inherited traits, passed down like family heirlooms. I come from strong, creative women on both sides of my family. In the Farmgirl Sisterhood, I find kinship with like-minded women. “Farmgirl” ‘s in my veins. We love the outdoors, the earth, cooking, baking, gardening, and crafts. Many of us sew. I’ve dabbled in sewing for years, and now I’m bitten by that ol’ sewing bug again! Sewing reminds me of my grandmother, an “original farmgirl”. Little did I know, sewing would also teach me things about my family tree I didn’t know before. It started with a lost letter tucked inside an old sewing pattern…
Dear Sisters,
What a whirl wind spring can be. There’s always so much to do to get a new season off the ground and let’s not forget that revolving TO-DO list we all have with the carry overs from the previous season. This year has been particularly busy here at our little homestead. It’s a good thing I caught a case of Farmgirlitus .Contrary to other ailments that might keep a girl down for a few days, Farmgirlitus has the opposite effect. There’s no mistaking it once you are infected but here’s a list of some of the more common symptoms just in case you think you might have it too:
1) your mind will race with ideas for projects inside and out
2) you’ll have the urge to dig up huge sections of your yard and replace it with food and flowers.
3) your heart will race at the sight of backyard blueberry shrubs at your local nursury and vivid paint colors.
4) you have an insatiable desire to get up early on the weekends to go junk’n and haunt your favorite thrift stores.
5) you drag home anything and everything so you can repurpose it.
6) you buy your first goat/s
7) you get your first batch of chickens
8) you build a chicken coop
9) you build a greenhouse
10) you glam up your very own vintage trailer and hit the open road with Farmgirls on the Loose
11) you have a hard time falling asleep at night due to feeling just a tad over excited about EVERYTHING… but, once you do drift off you dream in happy colors.
12). you are having WAY MORE FUN compared to those who do not suffer from Farmgirlitus.
Symptoms WILL vary depending on the farmgirl: Add yours to the list at the bottom of this post!
I remember when we went to see a farm (a farm we didn’t buy, not this one), the real estate agent took us there and told us that there were “big molecules” on the farm.
My husband and I looked at each other with a look that we’ve used for more than 20 years. You know the one, right? As soon as she was out of ear shot, we cracked up about that comment.
That was before we knew anything at all about “big molecules.”
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.’”
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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!
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”.
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