Dear sisters,
Welcome to my Vision Board Party! In my last post I invited you to join me in slowly and ever so thoughtfully creating a vision board filled with your hopes, dreams and aspirations for 2018. I hope you’ve been having fun working on yours. If you missed my invite, no worries. There’s still time to join in the fun and send in your boards! I’m revealing mine today plus an additional board sent in by farmgirl, Joan Brown. Continue reading
Dear sisters,
Merry Christmas and Happy Winter! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday with your most cherished people. Do you find this time of year exciting, inspiring, or tiring? Here we are on the brink of a brand New Year and once again the pressure is on to make resolutions, set new goals, and get organized all before you’ve finished packing away the Christmas decorations. Don’t fall for it! Instead, relax, enjoy this time of year for recharging and when you’re ready to begin a new, chart your own course, at your own pace. In the meantime, I’ve got a few tips sure to put the wind in your sails, once hibernation season is over.
Dandelion House Mums
Dear Sisters,
Happy Thanksgiving! By the time this post goes live, you’ll have wiped the pumpkin pie crumbs from the corners of your mouth and packed away the last of the mashed potatoes and gravy. I hope you had a wonderful and restful holiday with your loved ones. We sure did. In fact, I just ordered two pair of leggings ( hip stretchy pants ) online to get me through the rest of the holiday season! This is the time of year when our sense of gratitude heightens and all that we hold dear becomes crystal clear. The obvious and most important of those being family, friends, FARMGIRLS and community. So where do flowers come into play here? I coordinated The New England Farmer Florist Community’s ” Fall Floral Exchange” earlier this month and I’m excited to share the day with you! I’ll share tips on how to plan a similar event, you’ll go behind the scenes of a dream floral studio and you’ll meet the Flower Tribe! Continue reading
” Is this not a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love- that makes life and nature harmonize.” George Eliot
Dear Sisters,
I hope this note finds you all enjoying the gifts of autumn. They are many. Here on the shorelines we’ve hardly had any rain this month and the warm moderate temps have been favorable for all sorts of ” falling” around. Another season of “beaching” and “flowering” is winding down, and that familiar feeling of wanderlust which comes over me every autumn has returned, just like clockwork. It’s leaf peeping season in New England! Turn on your favorite travel music and let’s ” fall ” around!
” Is this not a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love- that makes life and nature harmonize.” George Eliot
Dear Sisters,
I hope this note finds you all enjoying the gifts of autumn. They are many. Here on the shorelines we’ve hardly had any rain this month and the warm moderate temps have been favorable for all sorts of ” falling” around. Another season of “beaching” and “flowering” is winding down, and that familiar feeling of wanderlust which comes over me every autumn has returned, just like clockwork. It’s leaf peeping season in New England! Turn on your favorite travel music and let’s ” fall ” around!
Flowers don’t worry about how they’re going to bloom. They just open up and turn toward the light and that makes them beautiful. ~Jim Carrey
Dear Sisters,
Happy Fall! Oh how I love this time of year. The summer haze brought on by excessive heat and humidity has drifted out to sea leaving the air clearer, the skies bluer and my brain a little sharper. Something about this time of year stirs my creative soul like no other. My mind races with new ideas and plans and I feel like I have to hurry and scurry to get everything done before we fall back into hibernation. I always have grand plans and I never get it all done but one thing I can always make time for is creating posies in a pinch! Come on in to see the many ways you can make a basic Ball jar bloom!
My Aunt Nan communing with the sea.
Dear sisters,
When is the last time you stood in front of a large body of water with your arms wide open to the universe and just let out a big… long… sigh? If sea breezes and simple living tug at your farmgirl roots, this post is for you! We just returned from our annual family vacation at the cottage and I brought back some pearls… Continue reading
Dear sisters,
There’s more to having a beach cottage than fun and sun. As with any home ( no matter the size) there’s always a running list of to-do’s. Our bathroom has been in dire need of an update for several years and it finally made it to the top of the list this season! Come on in to see the before and after of our Beach-y Bathroom Vanity Reveal and find out who won the Garden Shop Giveaway! Continue reading
The garden shop/gift shop is all gussied up for summer fun in the home and garden.
Dear Sisters,
Happy, happy summer! Ah, it’s finally here! What does summer mean to you? It’s different for everyone but I think we can all agree on one thing. There’s nothing like a trip to your favorite local garden shop to kick off summer in your home and garden. Follow me to Crystal Lake Garden Shop to see all the flora, fauna and flavorful Farmgirl fare and enter the garden shop GIVEAWAY!!! Continue reading
Like mother like daughter.
Dear Sisters,
Happy belated Mother’s Day! What did you Farmgirl mamma’s do to celebrate? I find the older I get the less I want to do what’s expected on holidays. I don’t need anymore stuff or stuff-y brunches. I’d rather have an experience together that we can both enjoy and look back on as a happy time. Since my mom moved in with us we try to make time one day a week to do something together. Most of the time it’s just lunch out combined with errands. Heck, we even make the most out of trips into Boston for her Dr’s appointments. It gives us time to catch up. Even though we live in the same house life goes at pretty fast clip and it’s easy to get swept away moving from one obligation to the next. This year for Mother’s Day I was determined to do something out of the ordinary. Like tulips? Come with mom and I on our Mother’s Day adventure to Wicked Tulips Flower Farm. Continue reading
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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